Rachel Resnick hits her forties single, broke, depressed, childless—a train wreck. After an ex-boyfriend breaks into her home and vandalizes it, Resnick takes the time to look back over her romantic and sexual history to ask the question: What is wrong with me? Her addiction to sex and love has cost her in damaging ways throughout the course of her life. At the root of her issues: a Dickensian childhood and a haunting experience she must finally confront.

Written with raw humor and unflinching honesty, Love Junkie charts Rachel Resnick's harrowing emotional journey from destructive love to intimacy, from despair to hope. By peeling back one painful layer after another, she discovers a glaring pattern: She is addicted to the fantasy of romantic bliss, marriage, and children.

Although her story is an extreme one, what we realize over the course of Resnick's journey is how many people experience aspects of this addiction and the self-destruction that comes with it—all fed by a culture where romantic obsession is stoked by the stories we read, the movies we see, and the dreams we're fed. This unique memoir cracks open one of the more elusive and pervasive modern-day compulsions—and holds a mirror up to each of us.