Ok, again, I am gonna start with some definitions:
Codependency - excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner or friend.
Support - the comfort, encouragement, and reassurance that people receive from others to help them navigate difficult emotions and experiences. Providing and receiving care, love, trust, and empathy as well as respect and admiration.
Not unlike yesterday’s topic, one is mutual and the other is a one way street. Codependency is where one person’s needs are met to the exclusion of all others. You receiving support and the other person is providing it. The provider is only getting to feel needed or wanted, but never truly valued.
Support seems to underscore a mutuality that codependency lacks. With support, both players are doing both roles. Receiving and giving. There is a mutual exchange going on that is discernible.
Codependency is blurrier. What the giver is getting is less tangible. It is more nebulous and ill defined. The giver is getting to be needed, wanted and desired but not for their actual value but for what they can provide the other person. The second the source stops providing the money, aid, emotional assistance, the receiver is often off to find another source. Only to circle back when they either can’t find another source, or they have tapped out all other options. They will always return to see if there is any dog left in that particular hunt.
Support is something else all together. Support is about two people who are doing their best for themselves, while also needing things. Support seems to suggest that there is a mutuality of exchange. Sometimes you are the giver and just as often you are the receiver. It isn’t one sided and you do not always play one role. The positions are always shifting and changing.
I think the quickest way to check yourself to see which one you are in is to just think about the past month of your relationship with this person. How often did they need you and what for? How often did you need them and what for? These four questions should clear it up for you immediately.
If they need you for emotional reassurance, money, a place to live, attention, affection but offer up any of the above in very limited supplies or not at all...you have your answer. If you never need the other person, or do but they rarely, if ever, show up for you, you have your answer. In codependent relationships, one person has to be the shitshow, and the other person has to have their shit together. It is never otherwise. There will be an imbalance of functionality present. Always.
We all need someone to care about us. Show up for us. Provide us support. It is where the care taking becomes stuck in directionality that it becomes toxic. One person is doing all the giving and the other person is doing all the receiving and the person doing the giving keeps thinking that someday this taker will magically transform to a giver...and they never will. It is a one way street on a loop. You will always circle back to where you started. Always.
If we are looking for supportive relationships we can’t attempt to rescue people from the life circumstances they caused in their lives. I just recently learned this lesson...again. When a person’s life is in flux and lots of transition going on, best to sit that one out and just allow that person to pass you by. You cannot help someone else through their shit. They must figure it out on their own. When you leave your side of the street and go over to theirs to “help” them, you have just crossed the line between support and codependency.
It is hard to see. It is hard not to do because the codependent wants to feel needed, it is perhaps the only safe way to feel wanted, desired. Codependents see themselves as people with answers and solutions, and often fail to see how much the way they show up is actually the beginning of the problem.
I fall into this trap myself all the fucking time. I have my shit together in my life. I don’t have a lot of drama that goes on, most especially with me. I have some rather dramatic people in my life that are chaotic but I have done a lot of work around that and have mostly gotten some distance from those people in my life. So I am often easily attracted to people who need help, and I erroneously believe I can help them. And those others seek me out because I am often all too willing to side line myself and my agenda to be of service. And then, in short order, I am off to the races setting up yet another relationship that is one sided and unsupportive.
It is hard for me to ask for help. It is hard for me to need things. It is hard for me to allow others to show up for me. I have a toxic level of self sufficiency. And I own this. I think for a very long time, I didn’t see how this set me up to be used in a variety of ways. I always help with this idea that the exchange will someday level out. But when you are selecting people who are either not capable, lack the capacity or just don’t want to be source of support, you are setting yourself up from the word go. And when you are a person that isn’t good with asking or receiving help, you can see how this quickly spirals.
So the best way to engage in relationships that are supportive and not codependent is to ask for the help you require from the outset. Let someone else help you. Ask for it. And do not shoulder all the burdens of living, alone. You will find out very quickly whether or not the person you are engaged with is interested in helping. And if they are not, believe them. If they are not willing to help in the beginning of the relationship, then they likely will not be able to help later on.
I realize now that I have set up every single codependent relationship I have ever had. Me. Not them. I selected the people to start with because of their inability to help me and my over ability to help them. We were all fucked from the start. If you want more support, you are gonna have to ask for it and withstand the anxiety and discomfort of waiting to see what the other person does. And then also the disappointment when the person you want to show up, doesn’t. But in the end, this whole process provides invaluable information. Information you can use to stop the spiral before it really develops a life of its own.
I believe I create the codependency or the support. It is totally up to me. If I want support I have to ask and receive. And I cannot afford to become overly invested in the other person and their agenda. I have my own after all. And I am accountable to and responsible for just that and no more. I am not on this earth to serve others in some toxic codependent nightmare. I am here to relate to others in a mutuality of existence that allows for sending and taking, giving and receiving. There has to be two way flow, otherwise I am not relating, I am hostage taking. Anyone who has ever done the later understands the difference. Kindness, help, support are not ties we use to bind others to us, they should be acts freely given with an expectation that this other will do the same for you. And then allow them to when the time comes instead of insisting you have it all handled, all the fucking time.
It is hard for me to let go of my own hyper competence. But if I ever want relationships that are mutual, then I have to stop insisting that I do not need anything from anyone, ever. I have to give and receive support and stop the codependent spirals that seems to manifest in this life without effort or invitation.
As with most things in this life, we find that which we seek. Repeatedly. If we do not like that which we keep receiving, then we have to do something fucking different. And for me, it starts with the giving and receiving of support and ensuring I am mindful of the delicate balance of this exchange.
Again...still.
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