Live Your Life and No One Else’s

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.”

Helen Pryor, American Dreams

We codependents tend to want to live other people’s lives. And it seems to be especially difficult for codependent parents who are now facing the fact that their children are no longer “kids”—they’re grown adults themselves.

I gave a series of talks to mostly baby-boomers last week and a recurring theme was their need to control the lives of their adult children, in particular when it comes to God or church. Many baby-boomers are church goers. They grew-up believing that it was sinful to miss out on attending church on Sundays. Now they are faced with children and grandchildren who don’t believe it’s important to attend church. And so these baby-boomers have an intense need to rectify the situation by trying to impose their beliefs onto their adult children and grandchildren.

In effect, these baby-boomers want to live their children’s lives for them and so they coerce and nag their children about church. All this does is drive a wedge between them and their kids. Why? Because their kids feel disrespected. They are adults now and they have the right to make their own decisions in life without mom or dad butting in. They want to be treated like adults.

And so mom and dad need to realize that they have no right to live their children’s lives for them. Mom and dad don’t have to like the fact that their kids no longer attend church, but they need to respect their choice. The best thing mom and dad can do is give their children to God and allow God to lead them down the right spiritual path.

Of course, there’s always a motivating factor behind the need to control other people’s lives. Usually that motivating factor is the need to ensure our own happiness by getting people to do what we want. And that’s the case here, too. Most parents feel like they failed as parents when their kids stop attending church. Because they blame themselves, these parents feel an undying need to rectify the situation by attempting to force their kids to go back to church. Success would mean instant relief from guilt and shame for mom and dad, but at the expense of their children’s rights to live their own lives as they see fit.

So if we are feeling the need to control someone else’s life, we need to ask “What’s going on with me?” We need to understand our real inner-need that is motivating us to try and manipulate someone else and to live their life for them. Then we need to surrender that need of ours to our Higher Power and ask for help. We also need to surrender the person we are wanting to control to God and allow God to be in charge. And all will be well.