The Codependent Waiting Game

Codependents play the waiting game in various ways. Probably the most notorious waiting game we play is also the one that comes most naturally. Since so many of us have damaged self love and worth from childhood, we end up playing the waiting game that goes like this: One day, someone will come walking into my life who will love and need me so much that they’ll fill up all my inner-emptiness and make me love myself.

I refer to this one as the “Forever F’ed Up Waiting Game.” Why? Because without Recovery, this game is played endlessly by codependents until the day they die. To ensure it’s longevity, we (subconsciously and repeatedly) choose toxic people to rescue us. The problem here is that the very people we pick as “The Chosen One” don’t love themselves any better than we love ourselves. There’s no way they are ever going to love us into loving ourselves. Even a healthy person can’t accomplish that fete. So eventually the Chosen One becomes the devil, the relationship falls apart and we start playing the Waiting Game all over again. And again. And again.

This particular form of Waiting Game can consume an entire lifetime, if a person never hits bottom and enters a recovery program. It leads to perpetual misery and a wasted life.

Another form of Waiting Game we play involves control. Even if we build a relationship with a somewhat healthy person, we will still find fault with them. The fault(s) we find immediately go on to our “to do” list. We’re sure we can change or fix this person’s particular faults and so we engage in seriously controlling patterns of behavior and we wait and wait for them to get the message and change into what we want them to be. And we do this again, and again and again until they grow tired of our behavior. Sometimes they blow up at us and sometimes they’ve had enough, so they leave the relationship.

Recovery teaches us to stop playing whatever Waiting Game we may be playing. No one is coming to rescue us by loving us into loving ourselves: NOBODY! And no one is going to change in whatever ways we demand in order to be what we want them to be: NOBODY!

We need to learn to value and love ourselves first, through recovery programs, so that we can find ourselves attracted to people who also value and love themselves. We need to accept each other’s flaws and to complement each other. This is how genuine love grows in relationships. It never grows through the Waiting Game or through negative control patterns of behavior.