In codependent relationships, your partner’s well-being becomes fundamentally entangled with your well-being. You may find yourself confused as you try to make choices and decisions. Putting attention on your partner’s real or imagined reactions and responses feels safer and easier than putting attention on yourself, especially during key, emotionally charged moments. This can make it hard to set, respect, and recognize your own and other’s boundaries or to know and honor what you want when your desires are distinct from your partner’s. A close friend says, “You need to get away. Let’s book a flight to Miami, together. I found us the perfect B&B. I’ll buy the tickets. You can pay me back later.” You’ve been feeling lonely, and you’re grateful she’s thinking of you. At the same time, you don’t want to travel right now. “You have to do this!” she says. “You won’t regret it! Flights are cheap.” “It sounds lovely…” you hesitate. “Done! We’re going! I knew you’d agree.” she exclaims. When you get off the phone, you feel disoriented. Your stomach sinks. What just happened? “This will be good,” you try to convince yourself. “Maybe she’s right and I need to get away.” You can’t imagine backing out of the trip now. The idea of telling your friend you don’t want to go doesn’t even cross your mind. If you’re chronically or habitually more focused on others than on yourself, you can become like a ship that’s all sails with no anchor. You float around on the currents and breezes of others’ needs, requests, desires, and schedules—adrift, at best; at worst, lost. When caring for and about others isn’t counterbalanced with a strong sense of who you are—someone with your own needs and limitations—you can over-rely on other people’s compasses for your own trajectories and sense of purpose. Codependency also has a psychological function. Often, it develops in early childhood when this pattern of “merging” with others’ needs offered you the safest and best way of staying connected to caregivers who were unable to prioritize you and your needs—many times in spite of good intentions. Find ways to more fully acknowledge the value in these parts of yourself. There are many lovingkindness meditations and audios you can access on the internet or through different phone apps, which may help. To keep yourself from veering to far on your end of the spectrum, notice patterns in your responses to people you’re close to. Could you respond differently and feel better, in the long run? Let yourself practice small acts of “smart selfishness”—acts where you honor your needs, wants, and feelings for the long-term good of your relationship. Use your awareness to recognize when you’ve gone too far in putting others first, and then try something new. Don’t judge or berate yourself. Yes, you may disappoint people. Yes, they may temporarily have negative feelings toward you. You don’t have to be happy about this possibility, but you do need to practice tolerating it, so you can be freer to be you. Cultivate practices that locate you within a larger field of being, so you’re not weighed down by fear of rejection or existential loneliness. Prioritize joy. Remind yourself that your worth and value don’t rest on making others happy. Meditate, pray, journal, connect with others. These present-moment practices can help you experience more “flow” in the here and now with less anxiety about the future. This, in turn, can increase trust in your own present-moment experiences. This is where life can be most fully lived.
