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Shia LaBeouf has made a great deal about his recovery, meaning his use of drugs and alcohol.
But he is out of control of his need for love.
We know this because his former partner has sued LaBeouf.
The lawsuit includes these allegations:
Just after Valentine’s Day in 2019, the musician FKA twigs was in a car speeding toward Los Angeles. At the wheel was her boyfriend, the actor Shia LaBeouf. He was driving recklessly, she said in a lawsuit filed on Friday, removing his seatbelt and threatening to crash unless she professed her love for him.
They were returning from the desert, where Mr. LaBeouf, the star of “Transformers,” had raged at her throughout the trip, FKA twigs said in the lawsuit, once waking her up in the middle of the night, choking her. After she begged to be let out of the car, she said he pulled over at a gas station and she took her bags from the trunk. But Mr. LaBeouf followed, and assaulted her, throwing her against the car while screaming in her face, according to the suit. He then forced her back in the car.
The gas station incident is at the heart of the lawsuit that says Mr. LaBeouf, 34, abused FKA twigs physically, emotionally, and mentally many times in a relationship that lasted just short of a year. Her aim in coming forward, she said in an interview, was to explain how even a critically acclaimed artist with money, a home, and a strong network of supporters could be caught in such a cycle.
LaBeouf needed FKA twigs “to profess her love for him.” Such an intense need for love makes LaBeouf seem to be an extreme example of anxious attachment.
But, obviously, most people with anxieties about love attachments don’t threaten to kill their love mates. LaBeouf also seems to lack ordinary social restraints on his actions.
What he doesn’t seem to be is under the influence of substances. For example, his driving style seems to be skilled, but deranged.
Why does someone demand that another person declare their love for them, or else violently attack them? Can we call that “love addiction”?
It takes two
In our 1975 book Love and Addiction, Archie Brodsky and I declare that love addiction requires two participants. That is, only Twigs can sue over the relationship — she perpetrated no violence.
On the other hand, we need to ask, why was she in the relationship? Twigs is a person with resources. Yet she was running on empty, having been eviscerated by LaBeouf.
In other parts of the lawsuit, Twigs accuses LaBeouf of often bruising her in his grip, becoming jealous if she acknowledged male waiters, forcing her to avert her gaze when talking to men, and imposing quotas on how frequently she had to kiss and touch him each day. He would insist she sleep naked, Twigs says, and kept a loaded firearm by his bedside, that she feared he might use against her if she moved in the night.
The couple met on the set of LaBeouf’s semi-autobiographical film Honey Boy in 2018, and eventually moved in together in LaBeouf’s Los Angeles home. The lawsuit alleges that the move further isolated her and made it harder for her to leave. “The whole time I was with him, I could have bought myself a business-flight plane ticket back to my four-story townhouse in Hackney, [London],” Twigs told the Times. But “he brought me so low, below myself, that the idea of leaving him and having to work myself back up just seemed impossible.”
“He brought me so low, below myself, that the idea of leaving him and having to work myself back up just seemed impossible.”
She was incapable of removing herself from the addiction.
Lessons for abused partners
Can we develop some signs for people to be alert for, to not end up in Twigs’ situation: abuse victim with no escape route.
- Don’t give up friendships, family relationships et al. for the relationship.
- Maintain your own resources: work, space, activities.
- Insist on normal behavior for yourself (e.g., talking to waiters) and your partner (no guns, life threats, assaults, crazed driving).
There have to be basic parameters in any intimate relationship. Make clear that you can’t participate in a relationship where these are violated.
Lessons for child-rearing
Having written Addiction-Proof Your Child and Outgrowing Addiction with child development specialist Zach Rhoads, I have focused on the childhood experience of those most resistant to addiction, and of those who raise them.
- Allow children to manage themselves and their lives as much as possible, to nurture independence.
- Encourage children to value themselves and to expect others to respect them.
- Teach children to live according to fundamental values of health, self-respect, community, and achievement; and that they need to reject anything or anyone who attacks these values and personal strengths.
Because they may not have the time and resources to take such violators to court.
