Four years ago, Yanti (not her real name), a 42-year-old literary writer and stage actress, had a love affair with a married man who was 15 years older; her senior whom she met in her theatrical troupe.

“I knew he was already married. I got into the relationship simply because I was so lonely. One day, when we were rehearsing for a play and he was falling asleep on the studio floor, I grabbed his cell phone, which he left lying there, browsed through his WhatsApp messages and found some pornographic conversations he had with multiple women,” Yanti said.

Upon being confronted about his other affairs, the man eventually dumped her.

She said she had always fallen in love with unavailable men: “Married men, those much younger or older than me. I have even fallen in love with Catholic seminarians” she said, laughing a bitter laugh.

Yanti was a self-proclaimed love addict, defined by United States-based Center for Healthy Sex website (centerforhealthysex.com) as compulsively seeking relationships or romance despite negative social, emotional, financial or physical consequences.

According to the center’s clinical director, Alexandra Katehakis, preoccupation, fantasy and obsession are distinctive hallmarks of the love addict’s plight.

“There’s also a narcissistic configuration whereby they look at someone who seemingly has all the qualities they perceive as lacking in themselves, along with a rescue fantasy,” Katehakis told The Jakarta Post in a video call interview recently.

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