#co-dependance

I care about him a lot and want to show compassion/ be there for him when he needs me most, because the last thing I am is a fair weather friend. But I'll be starting grad school soon, and I just can't afford to take on this level of stress and time spent essentially acting as his therapist. I have encouraged him to see a professional but he is reluctant, and I'm at a loss. I've also brought it up with him and he seems to understand where I'm coming from, but it continues. Any suggestions?

you’re rt, you’re not able solve his problems. your role as partner requires you to listen with empathy and reassure the other person tht you love and care for them. “fixing” issues in their life is not and should not be part of your repertoire. 

if you’re offering him comfort and letting him kno tht his feelings are valid-tht’s all you need to do. if he wants things to change then he’s got to be the one to start tht shift by going to see a mental health professional (MHP). you can even offer to go with him (skype/facetime/phone call) if he’s nervous.

what’s not your responsibility, is to get him there. it’s like the expression about leading a horse to water. you did your part, you encouraged him to seek help, if he does/doesn’t want to take it- tht’s his right.

so, when he’s upset about something, go ahead and listen with empathy. like offer statements such as, “uh huh,” “oh yeah?,” “wow tht sucks!,” and leave it at tht. if later on, he repeats himself, you can remind him of tht. what you don’t wanna do, is give him advice or steer him in any direction. just listen w/ an open heart and equally important, make sure he listens to you too.

relationships are a two way street and if you don’t feel validated and cared about, then you’ll just come to resent him. which is a hop, skip and jump to breakupsville. even if he’s having a rly hard time, you still deserve someone who’ll listen w/ kindness and compassion.

Honourable, protected Wife, Mother, Matron of the House, Keeper of Tradition, had been a ritual sacrificed—burning on the ceiling altar engulfed in fire, gutted to serve the Yellow Eyed Demon— a holocaust sacrifice.

Honourable  Husband, Father, Defender, had dishonored his name, as well as his Mate turning his offspring into orphans, forever out cast into the wilderness. Without battle, he had…

So I'm co-dependant. Not seriosuly, just to a certain degree. I can do things for myself, but I've been spoiled rotten my entire life and I'm honestly really lazy, so I try to get others to do things for me. But that's not what I see as the co-dependant part in me. That's just the lazy part.

My co-dependance comes from the fact that I can't function properly without other people I love and care about around me. I need someone to talk to, someone to be with, someone to literally cling on. Because I get so restless otherwise, I sometimes wonder if I'm on the verge of going insane.

That's why I don't go outside alone. That's why I don't go to 'fun' places like the pool or whatever alone. If I am alone, I see little reason for doing anything. Sure, if it's about playing videogames or reading, that's a different matter. But if I'm in public places, I usually stay completely silent, shying away inside myself, and just... I just stand there. I idle about, but I don't actually do what I might've originally come for. I make myself as tiny and un-noticed as I can... Because I feel silly, exposed, and lonely when I'm alone.

I'm a fairly open and accepting person.  I tend to favour individuality in people and I'm almost always willing to give exceptions and concessions to people.  Oftentimes, I come across extremely codependent people.

I am always willing to help people with their problems.  In fact, I absolutely love helping others.  If I wasn't a dancer, I would be a therapist of some sort.  But I've come to find that a huge part of helping people is knowing when to let them handle their problems on their own.

There have a few people in my life who have completely attached themselves to me and relied on me to make decisions for them well after the original problem has been solved.  All too often I've been the mediator between two fighting people and I've had to step back and let them speak to each other themselves without a third party.

Co-dependance is a nasty and often addictive thing.  You feel like you can't go on without another person.  I've been the codependent and I've been the one relied on, so I know this phenomenon very well.  In a way, co-dependance is you sacrificing your own autonomy for the ease of having someone else think for you.  You can't live like that.  You lose your strength while the one you depend on is strained with the effort of living two lives, one of which they have no control over.

It's okay to rely on others for help and it's okay to rely on others for support and teaching.  But ultimately you have to take matters into your own hands.  Live for yourself, but know you'll always have others to help you when you need it.  I'm always here to help.  I'm not here to live for you.

I've learned to kind of hate the people I've known who go around flaunting their "logical" minds and decisions.  I've never really understood why.

I think it might be that they somehow find themselves superior for making "logical" decisions.  They see logic as being mightier than feeling, emotion, intuition.

None of these people have ever been in love.  Not the way I have been.

I don't want to say it, but I'm a fairly logical person.  I have good reasoning skills.  I'm pretty good at using them.  However, those people have made me never want to call myself or my decisions "logical."

Love has taught me that logic can be pointless.  Furthermore, it has recently taught me that logic can be hard to abide by.

My ex and I were in an open relationship when I left to study abroad.  We had both agreed that this only made sense.  After all, we loved each other, and sex is just sex, right?  Neither of us had ever actually acted on our sexual freedom before.

One day, she told me she had slept with a girl she'd met at a gay pride event.  My heart leaped into my throat and I started to panic.

But why?  Why was I panicking?  I tried to get a hold of her, and got no response for three days.  In those three days, I was a madwoman.

I felt hurt, I felt used, I felt forgotten, I felt afraid, I felt unloved, I felt angry, I felt neglected.  That feeling didn't go away for a long while.

That's when I realized that logic has no place in love.

Logically, and open relationship seemed great.  We could be together but still sleep with other people.  It would make sense.  There was no reason to be upset by it.

I couldn't understand, for a long time after it happened, why I was so upset.

And then I started to think, maybe this "jealousy" thing has some merit.  I started thinking, and I began to realize that jealousy has been a recorded phenomenon among humans across many cultures, across eons.

It wasn't just me being stupid and illogical.  It was me being human.

That issue resolved itself, and then there was a very prickly problem with her most recent roommate, who she became involved with.  I thought I was being madly jealous, insanely jealous for what should be appropriate.

After it ended, in an ugly, ugly way, I fully understood that the dynamics of this other relationship were so unhealthy, and reflected on our relationship in an unhealthy way, that this was mainly why I was upset.

She closed our relationship.  She said it made her happier.  Things were great.

Things are not great now.

She's been sweet as pie ever since that awful, awful night.  I keep trying, desperately, to remember how hurt I was.  But sometimes I can't.

That's not logical.  That's not even remotely logical.

Because I'm in love.  I'm in real love, real love with the person I know she is, the person I fell in love with in the first place.  I'm in unhealthy love with the idea of who she is now, what that means to me, what that does for me.

It feels more like obsession than love.  But I still love her.  They're both there.  I still genuinely love her, because I know who she is, and that person is impossible not to love.  But there's more to her now.  And it's not good.  And it will hurt me as it has hurt me before.

And there's more to me, too.  There's co-dependence.  It's unhealthy, it feels wrong, it makes me crazy.

It makes me stupid.

She's coming over tonight, and she's been trying to wiggle her way down my pants for a while.  And, god, do I ever want to just give in, for reasons completely aside from love.

Because, sometimes, sex is just sex.  If I were to sleep with anybody else right now, that's what it would be, and it would be okay--because I am not the sort of person to do something like that without knowing first it will be okay.

Sex is not just sex with her.  Sex is so much more when it's with her.  As much as I want to strip it of its meaning and just enjoy what is purely physical, I can't.

I want to, I want to so badly.  It would be great if I could be a logical creature and decide to leave emotions out of the mix.  But I'm not, and I can't be.

We would be flirty and I would be seductive and we'd be almost like we were for a few days.  Today I told one of my friends I didn't know if I should sleep with her or not.  She told me I shouldn't.

For some reason, this hit me like a brick.  To the face.

I had fallen back into the old pattern we'd had.  And I had started to think that maybe, just maybe, I could get away with this.  I could just sleep with her and it would all be okay.

But I can't.  Things aren't okay.  Things aren't better.  We need to start from scratch, my friend told me.  We need to keep sex out of it and really, honestly just be friends.  And then she needs to get better.

And I know she's right.  I know she's perfectly right.  Maybe I had started to think that it was okay now.  That I was done grieving now.  It became clear to me that I'm not.  It still hurts.  It's still something I have to let go.  It's something I have to watch leave, watch die, die in the way that a flower would, with all the grace and dignity of a living thing within the realm of life fulfilling its purpose, treating death as simply a process in life.

When I really let myself think about it, think about this all being over, it hurts.  It hurts in a way that nothing else hurts.  It hurts in a true way, a true, deep, wrenching way.

I've never grieved before.  I've never had anything to grieve.

And what's more, this isn't just a simple, natural loss.  It's not a simple removal of something I was used to.  It's a removal of something complicated.  A complication.  Something that needs to be wrenched out because I got it stuck inside of me.  It's something I was unhealthily involved in, and that makes it hurt so much worse.

I have to accept, finally, that what I was doing wasn't right.  It wasn't right for me.  I've never been forced to accept that until now.

And if I can't sleep with her, I have to accept it.  I have to accept that things are different, and that reverting back to what was normal is making things how they used to be.  And that is bad.

I have to let this thing get torn out of me, see it for what it truly is, and watch it die.  It sounds as painful as it is, but it is also beautiful, in a way.

Because it is the truth.

The truth always feels beautiful.  Even when it hurts, it is beautiful, because it is what is right.  I don't know what "right" means, but I know what it feels like.  All the pain I felt before, all the suffering that happened while this thing was inside of me, it all felt ugly.  It all felt ugly and dirty.  Because I didn't know it was a lie, I didn't accept that it was "wrong."

Now, it feels painful, but it feels clean.  It's a pain that I haven't felt before, not in this way.  It is grieving, but it is clean.

I still love her.  Saying that feels clean.  On a certain level.  It also feels dirty on another level.  It feels dirty when it reminds me of that thing inside of me, that thing that needs to leave me.  But if feels clean if you accept a more ethereal definition of love.

(I lost my train of thought)

Is this logical?  I honestly don't know.  It could be.  It might be.  But I think love is above logic.  Or maybe logic actually declares that love is what love is.  Maybe love being devoid of logic is logical in of itself.  Maybe it's a type of logic that scientists have yet to discover.  Maybe it's a logic that nobody understands.

Maybe it's just me who doesn't understand it.

I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.

Hahaha anymore.  I never knew.

All I really, honestly know is that things are changing.  In a big, big way for me right now.  I've never gone through anything like this before.