PDF Summary:All the Way to the River, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Can a romantic obsession drive you to plot a murder? It happened to Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love. In her 2025 memoir All the Way to the River, Gilbert details her relationship with musician Rayya Elias—a relationship characterized by both deep love and harrowing addiction, which spun so far out of control that Gilbert considered murdering Elias. Gilbert also explains how after Elias’s death from cancer in 2018, she came to understand herself as a sex and love addict, worked a 12-step program, and achieved over five years of sobriety.

Our guide explores Gilbert’s memoir in two parts: First, we explain how her relationship with Elias began, blossomed, blew up, and bloomed again at the end of Elias’s life. Then, we cover Gilbert’s experiences with sex and love addiction and recovery. Along the way, we’ll explore expert perspectives on healthy relationships, addiction, grief, and healing.

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To treat her unbearable pain, Elias’s doctors prescribed morphine—they estimated that she only had about two months to live, so they weren’t worried about the drug’s addictiveness. Morphine brought Elias, and therefore Gilbert, tremendous peace at first. But Gilbert says that due to Elias’s history of addiction, her brain processed narcotics differently, so the morphine became less effective, and Elias was prescribed stronger and stronger drugs.

(Shortform note: End-of-life pain management often involves powerful opioids like morphine, and at this stage, providers usually prioritize quality of life concerns (like reducing suffering, promoting sleep, and easing emotional distress) over concerns about addiction. But adequate pain management requires careful monitoring: Even in patients without a history of substance use, the brain can develop a tolerance for narcotic drugs, making standard doses less effective.)

Then, at Elias’s request, Gilbert began supplying her with cocaine and helping her inject it. Elias felt she needed the drugs to numb the pain, and both reasoned that since she was dying, sobriety didn’t matter anymore. Furthermore, Gilbert—codependent as ever—was willing to do whatever it took to make Elias happy and to keep earning her affection.

(Shortform note: In addiction recovery communities, helping an addict get or use drugs is known as enabling them. Enabling can take many other forms, too. For example, agreeing with an addict’s justifications for their continued substance use—as Gilbert did by reasoning that Elias’s sobriety no longer mattered—also counts as enabling. So does using substances with an addict, which Gilbert had been doing throughout their honeymoon phase. Enablers often believe they’re acting out of compassion, but in reality, their behavior is usually rooted in their own needs—such as the desire to feel needed, maintain closeness, or avoid conflict—and it tends to cause more problems for the addict than it solves.)

Murder Plot and Separation

Elias outlived her prognosis, and as time went on, her drug abuse ramped up. The longer she used drugs, the more she suffered from paranoid delusions and the more verbally abusive she became. Gilbert was depleted emotionally and physically. She explains that in this exhausted state, she began to think that the only way out of this situation was to murder Elias. She couldn’t continue living like this, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to convince Elias to stop using drugs. She left their penthouse one day to plot her murder via overdose, but when she came home, she suspected that Elias knew what she was up to and that her plan was of no use. Feeling helpless, she began thinking of suicide.

Gilbert says that as she contemplated suicide, she heard God’s voice tell her to seek help instead. She called everyone she could think of, opened up about the situation she’d been outwardly pretending was fine, and asked for advice. People told her that Elias’s addiction was not her fault and that a lot of addicts manage illnesses like cancer without relapsing. They also told her that she needed to take care of herself and possibly extricate herself from the situation before she collapsed, and to go to a 12-step program for the loved ones of addicts or a 12-step program for sex and love addiction.

Hitting Rock Bottom

In addiction recovery communities, the state Gilbert had reached when she contemplated murder and suicide is known as rock bottom. Rock bottom is an addict’s lowest point (as we’ll discuss later, Gilbert would soon come to understand herself as a sex and love addict). When someone hits rock bottom, they feel trapped and mired in their addiction; they can no longer ignore or escape its consequences, and the situation they’re living in feels completely untenable.

Rock bottom looks different for everybody. While reaching that point caused Gilbert to contemplate violence, it’s not always that extreme. For example, some addicts realize they’ve hit rock bottom when they get fired or expelled from school, overdose on drugs or alcohol, become homeless, or lose the relationships that mean most to them. Whatever it looks like on the outside, rock bottom feels like you’re on the verge of losing everything and you can see no way out.

Hitting rock bottom often motivates addicts to pursue recovery: Because they’ve reached the end of their rope and their usual coping mechanisms are no longer working, they realize they need to try something different. In Gilbert’s case, she reached out for help, which is what experts advise people who’ve hit rock bottom to do. Connecting with supportive others and joining communities like 12-step programs can help an addict who’s at their lowest find a sense of hope and access resources that promote recovery.

Gilbert says that after this, she staged an intervention for Elias. It went poorly: Elias denied she had a problem, made excuses for her behavior, blamed Gilbert for controlling her, and said hurtful things that seemed to confirm Gilbert’s worst beliefs about herself. This prompted Gilbert to leave their shared apartment for weeks. During that time, she went to the 12-step program meetings she’d been recommended, where she learned the importance of focusing on her own needs rather than losing herself in someone else’s. At this point, Gilbert realized she needed to set boundaries—not only for her sake, but also for Elias’s. She believed cutting Elias off would help her realize that she had a problem and needed help.

Gilbert asked Elias to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her. She explained that she couldn’t go any further on this path with Elias because it was too destructive and apologized for the role she played in it. She also told Elias that she loved her deeply and would help her if she wanted to get sober again. Gilbert says that this time, Elias seemed to understand where she was coming from. After their conversation, Elias moved back to her hometown of Detroit to get sober with the help of her friend and ex-partner, Stacey.

How to Support an Addict or Alcoholic

Once Gilbert realized that Elias’s drug use was out of control, she tried to influence her to get sober. But experts caution that this is a difficult task. Al-Anon, a community for families of people with alcoholism and other addictions, encourages loved ones to remember the three C’s: You didn’t cause the addiction, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it. Ultimately, the addict is the only one who can take responsibility for their behavior and decide to pursue recovery. But that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t try to help someone you love get sober. If you’re in a similar position, here’s what the experts advise:

Be wary of interventions: Interventions sometimes motivate addicts to get sober, but often they only provoke defensiveness—and when they go poorly, they can easily destroy relationships. If you decide to stage an intervention, ask for guidance from a mental health professional, and approach the conversation with compassion rather than shame.

Set firm boundaries: You can’t pour from an empty cup, so it’s important to protect your mental health reserves. If an addict’s behavior is driving you to your wit’s end, it’s OK to step back, say no to enabling behaviors, and enforce limits on what you will tolerate. Boundaries might include refusing to provide money, not covering for the person’s mistakes, or limiting contact when their behavior becomes abusive or unsafe. Clear, consistent boundaries help protect your well-being and can also show the addicted person the real consequences of their actions, which may motivate them to seek help.

Offer reasonable support: Addicts who decide to get sober often need emotional and material support. For example, they may need encouragement, accountability, and help accessing treatment or recovery programs. It’s OK to offer this kind of help, but don’t stretch yourself too thin. One simple thing you can do is create opportunities to enjoy life together sober. For example, if you used to be drinking buddies, you might start hitting up a juice bar together after work instead. If you live together, keeping the house substance-free is helpful, too.

Reunion and Death

Stacey helped Elias detox, took over her pain management (since Elias wasn’t capable of handling her pain medication responsibly), and got her back into hospice. She continually updated Gilbert on how Elias was doing, and in the fall of 2017, Gilbert visited. It was immediately clear that Elias would die soon. Gilbert explains that Elias was frail and had trouble eating, and she’d been dreaming about deceased loved ones, interpreting this to mean that they were shepherding her to the other side.

Because Elias hadn’t been in her right mind, she remembered little about how their relationship ended. Gilbert told her everything, including her plan to murder her. She writes that Elias was strangely proud of her for the murder plot because it meant she’d finally accessed a primal part of herself that she’d buried. Because Elias didn’t have enough time left for them to work on repairing their relationship, they decided to simply forgive each other, move on, and spend the rest of Elias’s life together.

(Shortform note: Forgiving someone who’s hurt you isn’t easy, but it can be restorative. Religious leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama describe forgiveness as a path to freedom: They explain that holding onto anger makes you a prisoner of the past, forcing you to replay your wounds over and over rather than heal from them and move forward. Forgiveness ends this cycle of suffering by helping you distinguish between the person who harmed you and their actions so you can release your anger at them. In some situations, this creates space for reconciliation—in this case, it made it possible for Gilbert and Elias to fully embrace the time they had left together.)

Elias’s final weeks were difficult for Gilbert. Elias sometimes felt peaceful about dying; other times, she was enraged or in denial. She began sleeping more, experiencing hallucinations, and she stopped eating and drinking. It was difficult to watch, and Gilbert says she was struck by the fact that a dying person is on the brink of losing literally everything—once they die, they’ll have no more chances to do or experience anything they love. (Shortform note: Some thinkers, like philosopher Thomas Nagel, share Gilbert’s view of death as the ultimate loss. Others see death differently: For example, in No Death, No Fear, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn suggests that death is merely a transformation after which conscious experience continues in a different form.)

It looked like Elias might die on Christmas—she wouldn’t wake up, turned blue, and had trouble breathing—but she lived until the beginning of January 2018. Gilbert writes that it wasn’t peaceful—the closer death came, the more Elias fought it. The dying process also seemed painful, despite the sedatives and painkillers hospice provided—Gilbert believed Elias’s long history of opioid use had likely blunted their effectiveness. However, as soon as she died, Elias’s face relaxed into an expression of contentedness, which brought Gilbert some comfort.

The Dying Process

People who are near death often report experiencing visitations from late loved ones, as Elias did, or from divine figures such as God. They also stop eating, sleep more, talk less, lose bowel and bladder function, and detach from their surroundings, losing interest in the activities, conversations, people, and pets around them.

Then, as death approaches, their skin often deteriorates, their breathing changes, and they may lose consciousness. They may also experience what’s known as terminal agitation: Because the body is wired to survive, the brain resists death and the dying person may appear restless or anxious. This can manifest as fidgeting, pulling at sheets, or vocalizing distress. Terminal agitation is upsetting for the dying person’s loved ones, but it can usually be managed with comfort-focused interventions like gentle touch, repositioning, or medications. These ease suffering and help the dying maintain their dignity in their final hours.

It’s impossible to predict in what order these changes will occur, how long each stage will last, or which symptoms a person will experience. End-of-life experiences are highly individual, influenced by physical condition, emotional state, and spiritual or cultural factors. End-of-life doulas can help both the dying person and their survivors navigate these transitions more comfortably.

The Aftermath

Gilbert writes that her relationship with Elias persisted after Elias’s death. In the weeks after she died, Gilbert visited a medium, who relayed a message from Elias: She still existed, only in another form, and she’d see Gilbert again when Gilbert eventually died; in the meantime, they could keep communicating with each other—directly, without the use of a medium. After this, Gilbert says she received ongoing visitations and communications from Elias, and she also got in touch with her when using psychedelic drugs. In this way, Elias continued to rule her emotional world for the first year or so after her death, even though Gilbert busied herself with other pursuits, like finishing her novel City of Girls.

Eventually, though, Gilbert began to feel the need to pursue a new romantic partner. She went on what she describes as a binge, in which she hurt herself and others because, as usual, she was only using sex and love as a crutch. (Shortform note: It’s not uncommon for people who are grieving to use sex and romance to cope, even if they’re not sex and love addicts. When approached with care and done safely, this can be healthy—it helps the bereaved meet the intimacy needs that have gone unfulfilled since the death of their partner. But when romantic or sexual behavior is compulsive, like Gilbert’s binge was, it can lead to stress, heartbreak, and increased sexual risk-taking.)

At the end of her binge, Gilbert realized that she couldn’t continue living this way because it was too destructive. And because she’d been introduced to 12-step programs during Elias’s relapse, she knew where to seek help. She started going to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meetings, kickstarting her journey toward recovery. As she healed, she heard Elias’s voice less often, but they still maintained a relationship—she writes that Elias encouraged her to keep healing and to write this memoir.

Speaking to the Dead, or Speaking for the Dead?

Many people report having interactions with loved ones who’ve passed away. In fact, as many as half of all Americans have had this experience, and it happens to spiritual and irreligious people alike. People who report contact with the dead find that it brings them comfort and imbues life with a deeper sense of meaning.

While after-death communication is a common and comforting experience, some people don’t believe that the dead are actually contacting the living. Skeptics argue that these experiences are illusory and can be explained by science: Under stress, grief, or altered states of consciousness brought on by psychedelics, the brain can produce vivid hallucinations, heightened pattern recognition, or false sensory perceptions.

Some also theorize that such experiences happen because it takes time for the brain to fully process death, and in the meantime, it keeps searching for the signs it expects of a dead person’s presence. Psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor lends support to this view in The Grieving Brain, where she explains that our brains are wired for connection with loved ones and struggle to comprehend their absence once they die.

Others, like Gilbert, consider after-death communication a genuine spiritual experience. For example, the College of Psychic Studies contends that the dead communicate in myriad ways—not only through mediums, but also through dreams, scents, barely perceptible whispers, and animals. Psychics argue that although we’re often quick to dismiss these experiences as irrational and unrealistic, we should take them seriously.

Because after-death communication is so controversial, it tends to draw criticism. Mediums like the one Gilbert met with are often painted as predatory frauds who exploit people’s grief by pretending to speak on behalf of the dead. Gilbert herself has been criticized for speaking on Elias’s behalf, since Elias can’t tell her side of the story: Elias’s sister voiced concern that Gilbert has used Elias’s story, without Elias’s consent, to turn a profit. Meanwhile, other critics see Gilbert’s claim that Elias told her to write this memoir as a rhetorical move meant to put readers at ease with what may otherwise seem like a massive invasion of Elias’s privacy.

Part 2: Addiction and Recovery

Now that you understand the nature of Gilbert’s relationship with Elias and how it led her to understand herself as a sex and love addict, let’s take a closer look at sex and love addiction and recovery. Ahead, we’ll explore Gilbert’s observations on the nature of addiction, what recovery looks like for her, and her spiritual growth.

What Is Sex and Love Addiction?

Gilbert defines sex and love addiction as a pattern of using sex and romantic connection as a form of emotional medication—an attempt to soothe deep psychological wounds by seeking relief, safety, and wholeness from another person. For her, the addiction isn’t primarily about sex, but about what the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) community calls “LAVA”: love, approval, validation, and acceptance. Before recovery, her addict brain clung to the belief that someone else could finally heal her and make her feel secure.

Gilbert distinguishes sex and love addiction from healthy intimacy by its intensity, urgency, and destructiveness. While everyone enjoys love and intimacy, these experiences feel chemically inebriating—far more intense, to the point of being all-consuming—for addicts. This makes unhealthy dynamics especially hard to relinquish. Sex and love addiction is also cyclical:

• An unhealthy dynamic begins with a fantasy that a sexual or romantic partner can save you from your pain.
• You become emotionally fixated on the person, organizing your thoughts, time, and sense of worth around them.
• The relationship escalates rapidly, fueled by intensity rather than mutual stability or trust. You ignore or rationalize warning signs, boundaries, and incompatibilities.
• You might abandon yourself, violate boundaries, or manipulate others to keep the relationship going, even as it becomes clear that it isn’t healthy for you.
• Inevitably, the relationship collapses, which triggers shame, despair, or emotional withdrawal. Your negative emotions might be so intense that they result in suicidal or violent thoughts.
• To escape that pain, you return to fantasy, and the cycle begins again. You feel unable to stop chasing romantic relief despite its devastating consequences.

Because it’s cyclical, sex and love addiction is defined as a process-based addiction rather than a substance-based one like alcoholism. But Gilbert notes that it often coexists with, and can exacerbate or be exacerbated by, substance abuse. (Shortform note: Neuroscientists believe sex and love addiction works in much the same way as substance addictions. It involves over-activation in similar areas of the brain—the parts responsible for processing rewards and regulating emotions. And as Gilbert suggests, engaging in addictive sexual and romantic behavior produces an intense neurochemical high, driven by dopamine, just as substance use does.)

How Do You Know If You’re a Sex and Love Addict?

Many people struggle with an unhealthy relationship to sex and romance, but it’s less common that this rises to the level of an addiction. Statistics suggest that only about 8% of the population has a sex addiction, while about 3% are love addicts. It’s also worth noting that sex and love addiction aren’t official diagnoses—they’re not listed in the DSM, and experts disagree about whether addiction is the best framework for understanding these behaviors. Still, many therapists and support groups find the addiction model useful because it helps explain why some people continue destructive patterns despite serious consequences.

The difference between an unhealthy and an addictive pattern can be hard to define, but in her memoir The Dry Season, Melissa Febos suggests that the difference lies in how you approach sex and love. Addicts do so compulsively; they can’t stop themselves. Everyone else does so intentionally, though they still make missteps and sometimes have trouble disentangling themselves from unhealthy dynamics.

If you’re still not sure where you fall on that spectrum, SLAA provides some resources that can help you determine whether you’re suffering from sex and love addiction. First, they explain that sex and love addicts share 12 characteristics. Second, you can use SLAA’s self-diagnosis questionnaire to gauge your risk level. These resources suggest that you may be a sex and love addict if you:

• Feel the need to always be in a relationship

• Pursue more than one connection at a time, even when that’s inappropriate

• Use sexual, emotional, or romantic intimacy to solve problems or to get your way

• Become obsessed with partners to the point that it negatively impacts your life

• Avoid true intimacy, which requires vulnerability and commitment

• Feel unable to leave unhealthy relationships because you’re afraid of being alone

• Have sex or form relationships when you don’t really want to

• Hide your sexual or romantic life from others

• Feel incomplete without a partner, feel like sex is the most important thing you have to offer, or feel as if the right relationship would prove, once and for all, your worth

Where Does Sex and Love Addiction Come From?

Gilbert suggests that sex and love addiction is rooted in unmet attachment needs, often stemming from childhood. Although she deliberately avoids detailing her own childhood trauma—out of compassion for people who only hurt her because they, too, were wounded—she argues that early emotional insecurity can rewire the brain to seek regulation through external sources. Because love is a fundamental survival need, she believes it sits at the root of many other addictions: When it’s unavailable, inconsistent, or conditional at a young age, the nervous system learns to chase it at any cost.

(Shortform note: Psychologist D.W. Winnicott’s concept of “the false self” may help explain why unmet attachment needs lead to sex and love addiction. Winnicott argues that everyone has a true self—their authentic personality and desires—and a false self that adapts to meet others’ expectations. Children may overidentify with their false self when their caregivers are rejecting, inconsistent, or emotionally unavailable. In these cases, children learn to suppress their real needs and instead become who they think will earn them love and safety. As adults, this can translate into compulsive relationship-seeking or sexual behavior: Rather than expressing their true selves, they rely on external validation and intimacy to feel real, valued, or secure.)

What Recovery Looks Like

Recognizing that she had a problem wasn’t enough for Gilbert to heal—she had to take deliberate measures to change her behavior and end the unhealthy pattern she was embroiled in. Let’s discuss what she did to get sober and her strategies for staying sober over the long term.

Getting Sober

Gilbert explains that addicts find healing by participating in a recovery community that prioritizes honest reflection, mutual care, and accountability. For sex and love addicts, that community is SLAA. So, once she realized she was an addict, she found a sponsor (a mentor who helps you achieve and maintain sobriety) and started attending meetings multiple times a day. During these meetings, she listened to people share their experiences, which resonated with her, and shared her own. This helped her come to a deeper understanding of the problems she was facing and her role in perpetuating them.

To start getting sober, she worked on replacing toxic behaviors with more positive alternatives. For example, she ended contact with anyone she could become romantically or sexually entangled with and even stopped listening to songs that triggered romantic or sexual feelings. She also stopped drinking, using psychedelic drugs, and spending or giving money away irresponsibly. To fill her time, she turned to spirituality, creativity, and nature. She also learned how to care for her inner child—the wounded part of her that drove her to engage in those toxic behaviors—by allowing herself to feel her feelings and by meeting her needs in healthy ways.

Gilbert also worked the 12 steps of the SLAA program—a structured process of self-examination, accountability, and spiritual growth. Through the steps, she took responsibility for the harm she’d caused, made amends where possible, and learned to replace fantasy and compulsion with honesty, humility, and self-trust. This helped her build a daily practice of sobriety. It also helped her tune into and learn to trust God’s voice, which she says is key to maintaining her sobriety.

SLAA and Alternative Treatment Options

SLAA is a peer-led recovery community modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. It works by giving people access to shared wisdom—both in the form of regular meetings and in the form of books and pamphlets about recovery—and by helping them build safe, supportive relationships with others who understand what they’re going through. During SLAA meetings, members share anonymously about their addiction and recovery experiences. Members of SLAA also work closely with a sponsor who can help them identify harmful behavioral patterns, stay accountable to their recovery goals, and work through the 12 steps of recovery. The 12 steps include:

• Acknowledging your addiction and the negative impact it has on your life

• Surrendering control of your life to God or another higher power

• Truthfully examining and working to improve your flaws

• Acknowledging how your actions have harmed others

• Repairing the harm you’ve done when possible

• Strengthening your spiritual life

• Helping others recover

Research suggests that joining SLAA helps addicts reduce compulsive behaviors and improve their mental health. Furthermore, SLAA is often easier to access than other kinds of addiction treatment because it’s free to join and widely available. If you or someone you know would like to join SLAA but can’t find a meeting in your area, you can find one online.

That said, SLAA doesn’t work for everyone. It may not work for you if the program doesn’t resonate with you or if you require more targeted or intensive treatment. In these cases, you might find that you benefit from talk therapy or medications that help reduce compulsive behavior.

Additionally, SLAA may not work for those whose problems with sex and love don’t rise to the level of an addiction. If that applies to you, Melissa Febos offers one potential path forward in her memoir The Dry Season: Give romantic and sexual celibacy a try, and use that time to evaluate how your relationships shape your sense of self and your emotional habits. Then, come up with a list of resolutions or promises to yourself about how you’ll behave in the future—the kinds of connections you’ll seek, the boundaries you’ll maintain, and the unhealthy dynamics you’ll no longer tolerate or participate in. When you’re ready to pursue connection again, use those resolutions as your baseline.

Staying Sober

By the time her memoir was published, Gilbert had achieved over five years of sobriety. For her, sobriety requires celibacy. Sex and love addicts can learn to have healthy relationships, with time, but she feels that she should continue to avoid sex and romance until God tells her it’s OK to pursue that again. She almost threw away her sobriety once, when an attractive man invited her out for drinks, but she says God told her not to. She was furious and resented the fact that, as an addict, she couldn’t date and have fun like non-addicts can, but she listened. She says she learned later that God was right—the man had a wife and a newborn, so connecting with him wouldn’t have been good for her.

(Shortform note: Many people in SLAA approach dating differently than Gilbert. While Gilbert abstains from sex and romance, SLAA warns that what seems like abstinence may actually be anorexia: a pattern of avoiding healthy intimacy. When people in SLAA feel ready to start dating again—usually after they have a better understanding of their addictive behaviors and a system in place to keep them accountable—they use dating plans to guide their relationships in recovery. Dating plans require that you approach sex and love intentionally, rather than just falling back into old, negative patterns. For example, you might commit to taking relationships slow at first so that you don’t find yourself engulfed by another person as you used to.)

Gilbert explains that staying sober for this long hasn’t always been easy, but it has been worthwhile: She feels happier and more tranquil than she’s ever felt before. However, she has to remain on guard against temptation. She’s careful not to create opportunities for herself to mess up—for example, she says she stopped getting cosmetic treatments and keeps her head shaved because, if she didn’t, she could invite attention that would trigger fantasies of being seen, desired, and saved again. And when she is tempted to break her sobriety, she turns away from the temptation as quickly as she can, before her addictive tendencies take over.

(Shortform note: Recovery often involves both avoiding and managing triggers. In early stages, people are typically encouraged to limit exposure to situations that spark compulsive urges—like environments, behaviors, or sources of attention that reinforce old patterns—because their ability to resist is still fragile. But not all triggers can be avoided; for most people, attraction is part of everyday life. Therefore, it’s important to learn how to identify and cope with triggers in a constructive way. For example, SLAA recommends using the three-second rule: When you notice you’re triggered, redirect your attention within three seconds. This strategy helps people stop an initial spark of attraction or fantasy from building into a full-blown urge.)

Gilbert’s View on Life, Love, and Loss

Gilbert says that through the process of getting and staying sober, she learned to embrace spiritual surrender—the practice of giving up control to God and accepting reality as it is without trying to manipulate it. She realized that her attempts to control Elias, her relationships, and even life itself had only fueled her addictive patterns and emotional suffering. In contrast, spiritual surrender allowed her to live more effortlessly in tune with God’s plan for her and to focus on what was truly in her control: her own actions, her emotional health, and her commitment to recovery.

(Shortform note: Psychologists say that spiritual surrender is a kind of radical acceptance, a concept Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach explores in her book of the same name. To practice radical acceptance, Brach says you must fully acknowledge reality as it is—without resisting, denying, or trying to control it—while also viewing your experience with compassion rather than judgment. For a sex and love addict, this might look like acknowledging painful feelings instead of using intimacy to push them away. Brach writes that radical acceptance helps you stop struggling against yourself, which creates more inner space for you to respond thoughtfully and with greater emotional balance to your circumstances.)

Gilbert also came to see her relationship with Elias as part of God’s plan for her. She explains that she finds it helpful to think about life as a school: Before we enter this world, we decide which lessons we want to learn and volunteer to teach each others those lessons. According to this view, Elias wasn’t simply a partner or friend but a spiritual teacher whose presence helped Gilbert confront her deepest fears, compulsions, and patterns of self-abandonment. By viewing their relationship as a divinely guided learning experience, Gilbert has been able to find meaning in the pain and intensity of their connection, and embrace both love and loss as essential parts of her growth and recovery.

(Shortform note: Gilbert’s perspective on life lessons, and on pain as a tool for growth, echoes a key principle in Stoic philosophy: the idea that every problem creates an opportunity. In The Obstacle Is the Way, Ryan Holiday argues that no event is inherently good or bad; instead, your perspective determines how you experience it. This means you can choose to see even the most challenging circumstances as a gift. For Gilbert, this looks like reframing the pain of addiction and the highs and lows she and Elias faced together as chances to learn more about herself and improve her character.)