“Manipulation” might seem like a harsh word that you don’t relate to, but manipulating others isn’t always conniving and cruel-intentioned. For example, you might try to make yourself responsible for your partner’s feelings and tell yourself you’re doing it because you care about them—when in reality it’s a form of control to get their love and approval. Or conversely, you might be directly demanding as your form of control to get your partner to fill the empty hole within you. This relationship might seem to work for a while, until either the caretaker feels angry, hurt, and drained from never getting the love and approval they are seeking, or the taker, never feeling filled up enough, seeks attention elsewhere. Learning to love yourself and define your own worth can work wonders in your relationship, and it’s the first step in the process of how to stop being codependent. For example, if you feel alone and empty, instead of blaming your partner, go inside to see how you are treating yourself. You have no control over your partner changing, but you have total control over you changing. It might be challenging to stop trying to get love from others, but when you instead learn to see, value, and love yourself, that’s when you have love to share with your partner. There is a huge difference between trying to get love versus wanting to share love. When you want to get love, you are coming from an empty place of self-abandonment, and when you want to share love, you are feeling full of love from loving yourself, and the love spills over to your partner. Even if just one of you decides to learn to love yourself rather than continue to reject and abandon yourself, you can change your codependent relationship to a loving, interdependent relationship. When one person changes the codependent system, the whole system changes.
