Is It Love or Attachment/Dependency?



“When you make someone your source of love, they will also be a source of pain.”
Robert Holden, Loveability

Most every codependent knows the horrors of attachment and dependency. An active codependent can easily attach to any person who shows the slightest bit of interest in him/her. The hope is that this is the person who is going to make me feel lovable and acceptable—FINALLY! He/she is going to love me into being OK with myself and we will live happily ever after because I’m going to meet his/her every wish and need and vice-versa!

So the codependent attaches him/herself to the other person almost literally. Every thought, every hope, every dream, every moment revolves around this one person who has been thrust into the role of eternal savior. The attachment then leads to a strong dependency upon the other person.

As the attachment/dependency grows, the initial fascination and joy turn into a deep aching to constantly be in contact with the other person. Fear and anxiety start churning inside when the codependent isn’t around the desired person or doesn’t hear from him/her as often as the codependent thinks he/she should; which is sometimes every day, or several times a day or every hour depending on the level of neediness and attachment.

Fear and anxiety then force the codependent into compulsive control overdrive. He/she begins to expect that the other person should be thinking about him/her as much as he/she is thinking about them. One expectation builds on another and anxious thoughts begin to run through the codependent’s head: “He should have called me by now”… “Why hasn’t she responded to my text?” … “Why isn’t he loving me as much as I’m loving him?”

The codependent then may start compulsively calling or texting the other person to the point of becoming a pest. Neediness can often lead to smothering the other person since the codependent has made that person their source of love and affirmation. After all, deep down the codependent really wants the other person to be responsible for his/her every need, want and ounce of happiness. The average codependent has never accepted responsibility for his/her needs and happiness. The plan has always been to find someone else to provide all of it for him/her, and so he/she expects that the new object of their desire should be the person to do it all for him/her.

When a codependent gets to the point of anxiety where he/she can no longer wait for a reply or phone call, he/she will often compulsively call the other person. Sometimes that leads to the realization that the other person has a life of his/her own, and that he/she doesn’t see his/her life as revolving completely around the codependent’s life. For example, the codependent may be expecting that the other person should be spending the evening with him/her. The codependent calls the other person to find out that he/she is over at a co-workers apartment having dinner. Emergency alarms go off in the codependent’s head: “I’m being cheated on!!! I’m not the most valuable person in his/her life!!! How could he/she want to be with anyone other than me? He/she doesn’t need anyone but me!!!”

As the codependent hangs up the phone. He/she has a new dilemma. His/her compulsion has forced them out of some unrealistic thinking. They now have to face that they are not necessarily the center of the other person’s universe. He/she usually feels abandoned, hurt and angry. They return to feeling unlovable. All of their inner-emptiness rushes up from within and swallows them. Thoughts run wild: “After all I’ve done for him, why would he be having dinner with someone else? I don’t need anyone but him. Why should he need anyone but me? I thought I was number one! Just wait till the next time he calls. I won’t answer. I’ll make him suffer!”

This thinking can then nosedive into: “Well, I guess I lose again. I must have been crazy to think that she or anyone else could ever love me. What’s wrong with me? Why am I so unlovable? Everyone else has someone! Everyone else is happy! Why can’t I find the right person to make me happy?!!! Why? Because I’m a piece of crap. Nobody is ever going to love me…”

Suddenly Robert Holden’s quote “When you make someone your source of love, they will also be a source of pain” rings completely true. When we make someone else our source of love, meaning when we make them responsible for making us feel lovable and acceptable, they will eventually become our source of pain.

Recovery is about taking responsibility for our own loveability. Recovery helps us to see that no other person can be our source of love, i.e., our source of being OK with ourselves. We have to be the source of being OK with ourselves. We have to work at loving who we are, accepting who we are. We have to get OK with our imperfections and flaws. Once we learn to love the good and the bad about us, we can share ourselves with others free of attachments and dependency. We can learn to truly love and be loved.

There’s a big difference between learning to love and be loved and expecting that the love of someone else should fix us. Learning to love and be loved means that I already love who I am and that I am not looking for someone to make me OK with myself. I am already OK with me. I like me. Now I want someone to share life with, someone I can have fun times with, someone who can meet my emotional and physical needs to a degree beyond what I am naturally capable of doing. Loving and being loved is admitting that we can do only so much for ourselves and that we do need others, not to fill us up but to compliment us.

If we are experiencing pain in our relationships, it may be that we are attached and dependent on others to give us what we need to be giving to ourselves. This means we need to get to work on reclaiming ourselves and our lives, and the best way to do that is by getting to a recovery meeting: CODA, Al-Anon or ACOA. This is where we begin to love ourselves and where life begins to become much, much better.

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