Love People for Who They Are



“You love people for what you want them to be, not for what they are.”
Ted Bessell, That Girl

Codependents certainly do love people for who they (the codependent) wants them to be, not for who they actually are. I know before recovery, my job was to rescue and remake people. I’d subconsciously choose a very needy person and befriend them by caretaking their every need and soothing their every drama.

In the back of my head, I knew who I wanted these people to be. I had an idea about how to remake and remodel each and every one of them to be the person that I needed them to be. They were like clay and I had to reshape their personalities to ensure that they made me happy in all the ways I thought I needed to be made happy by them.

This sometimes went on for months or years before I finally realized that they didn’t appreciate being rearranged to meet my needs. This “realization” was purely on a subconscious level, though. I never got it consciously before recovery. Instead, on a conscious level, I thought they were all ingrates who didn’t appreciate how much I “loved” them and how much I had “selflessly” done for them.

Recovery was the Reality Pill that finally helped me to see that I never really “loved” any of them for who they were. I “loved” them all for who I wanted them to be: The persons who were supposed to rescue me from all of my own unhappiness.

Today, I do a much better job of taking care of my own happiness. I don’t have the need any longer to rearrange people into being the persons I need them to be to make me happy. Now I am better able to love people for who and what they are.

Ted Bessell played Donald Hollinger, boyfriend of Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) in the 1960s TV show That Girl. In the 1968 episode that the above quote is taken from, Donald goes on to say that loving people for who we want them to be is called “wish fulfillment.” The problem for most codependents is that we are always dreaming and wishing for someone to rescue us from our self-imposed misery.

Well, today is the day to stop all that wishing. We are the only people who can rescue us and we have the POWER to rescue ourselves. We don’t need anyone else to do it. And the best way to begin is by getting yourself to a recovery meeting today!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

Happiness is Something We Cultivate and Share

Who makes you happy? In reality, no one can make you happy. People in your life can enhance your happiness through sharing your interests. Or they can add to your frustrations by pushing your buttons. But no one can be responsible for your happiness or your misery—aside from you. One of the biggest problems for codependents is that we too often enter relationships looking for everlasting happiness. We expect that the person we choose to attach our dreams to should be responsible for making us happy. In our minds, we fantasize that he/she will be focused solely on us, will spend every waking hour with us and will do everything in his/her power to insure that we are as happy as we can possibly be. In other words, we assume this person will meet all of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs in the same way that we plan to meet all of his/her needs. In our little dream world we will smother each other with attention and we will both drip with the honey of happiness. R...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who ca...
Read more