Codependency: Intro
He brought me flowers- maybe the second nicest flowers he’s given me in the 3.5 years we dated.
I thanked him awkwardly and invited him inside. I didn’t take them out of the lavender chiffon wrapping, I just plopped them in a mason jar, stems still rubber-banded together, with the little vitamin juice thing taped to the side.
After he left, I thought about trimming the stems and putting them in a proper vase. But the idea of slowly watching them die over the next week is really bumming me out. He’s gone, but the decaying remnants of our relationship will be here taking up counter space?
I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. I’m not. I actually really like receiving flowers, even though it’s cliche. I appreciate it. But… I only really ever got flowers from him when he knew something bad was coming. In a sense, they’ve come to represent emotional blackmail.
He doubled down today, too, and also brought a 6 pack of tall can IPAs. It’s baffling, really, considering the last time he saw me, a week ago, was when he was picking me up at midnight, because I was drunk out of my mind. I told him casually in the car that night that I was planning on breaking up with him soon.
I wish I could say that was an isolated incident, but he’s picked my drunk ass up many, many times, and almost every time I am a complete bitch to him (and I don’t even really remember it, or know why.)
He never holds it against me, either. Never judges me, or even really mentions it. And that’s always made me somehow feel even worse. Until the next time.
Anyway, I gave him the 6 pack back when he left. Because regardless of his manipulative(?) gifts, and juxtaposing kindness and patience, I’d finally broken up with him… For the twelfth time in the past 3.5 years.
I go through spurts where I think I’ve solved my major issues. I think I’m emotionally intelligent, I think I can self-diagnose. I get so myopic about the issues I think I have, and how to untangle them, that sometimes I miss HUGE problems that are so in my face, I don’t even have the perspective to see what they are. (That was another thing that Fuller Seminary student noted about me: I’m too hyper focused on details that I often miss the big picture.)
I’ve always thought that because I am such a loner, and because I have not had much support in my life, that I’m a fiercely independent woman. I recognized a few years ago that I did have some very toxic love addict qualities, and I made huge strides in healing those parts of myself, and improving.
But I guess I didn’t fix a major part of my love addiction, maybe the root cause of it, because I couldn’t fathom that it was something I actually struggled with: codependency. I always thought codependency meant that you had to be with your partner or that you couldn’t stand on your own. But actually, I think that’s more of an anxious attachment style issue than actual codependency. I have never felt like I NEEDED anyone, so how could I be codependent?
Turns out, that’s not really the definition at all. Everydayhealth.com (yes, I’m using a website that I have not vetted, because this is a blog and not a research paper) defines a codependent person as displaying these qualities:
1. Difficulty making decisions in a relationship
2. Difficulty identifying your feelings
3. Difficulty communicating in a relationship
4. Valuing the approval of others more than valuing yourself
5. Lacking trust in yourself and having poor self-esteem
6. Having fears of abandonment or an obsessive need for approval
7. Having an unhealthy dependence on relationships, even at your own cost
8. Having an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others
Initially, I had planned to tackle each bullet point in this single blog post, but I’m not delusional- there is not a single person on Earth (including myself) who wants to read the length of a post it would require to give each of these points the attention they deserve. This is a pretty big problem, and if I’m going to work on myself, I need the space and the time to fully explore each issue without the stress of worrying “Oh my god, I need to wrap this up.” (I’ve always felt the invisible timer of others’ attention clicking over my head anytime I open my mouth. Like the “get the fuck off the stage” Oscars music is about to start playing any minute.) That’s probably another codependency thing.
Anyway, instead I will dedicate a post to each point, individually. Could I just google an article on how to efficiently fix myself? Probably. Could I order some self-help books on Amazon? Probably. But I am also dysfunctional in the sense that I feel I have to struggle through everything on my own in order for the lesson to stick, so allow me to drag you along for the ride.
(Btw, am I blogging correctly? I’ve never actually read a blog; unless scrolling past some mid-western Becky’s diatribe to find a tex mex recipe counts.)