I Love How You Love Me?



“I thought I was in love with you, but then I realized that I was in love
with how much you were in love with me.”
Anonymous

The emotional neediness of many codependents drives them to lavish others with praise, gifts, attention and a false concept of love, especially in romantic relationships. Too many codependents are starved for romantic fulfillment and so it’s easy for them to overwhelm the target of their romantic affections.

Initially those on the receiving end of all that romantic attention are sometimes knocked for a loop. They are so overwhelmed by all of the attention they are receiving from the codependent that they at first think that they, too, are equally head-over-heals for this person (the codependent). But once they get their feet back on the ground, they begin to get some inner-clarity. And often times they come to an understanding that they really aren’t head-over-heals for the person who is showering them with affection, but rather, they are head-over-heals for all of the attention they have received.

Some eight years before I entered recovery, I was the codependent who lavished an avalanche of affection on someone that I was so sure was The ONE. But it only took a few months before I heard the words “I thought I was in love with you, but then I realized I was in love with how much you were in love with me.” Those words shattered my insides. They didn’t wake me up to my inner-neediness or my dysfunctional behavior, but they brought an abrupt end to the relationship.

Looking back now, I realize that I was never really in love, either. I may have been in lust, or in needy desperation for someone to love me, but I wasn’t in love with that particular person.

Love isn’t about needy feelings. Love is a positive feeling that gets us through difficult times in our relationships, but love should never feel needy or anxious. If we’re feeling needy or anxious, we aren’t experiencing love. Instead we are trying to fill up an emptiness by using someone we think we love. In truth we don’t need that person to love us as much as we need ourselves to love us.

It’s self-love that sets us free from the needy, clingy feelings of anxiousness that we are so accustomed to experiencing. Once we develop that self-love, the neediness with eventually evaporate. Our hearts will be able to breathe and we will be able to enter love relationships without smothering the other person with attention, gifts and needy demands.

And we’ll know when love is real. We will learn that love is real when we love others for who they are and they love us for who we are; not for what we do for or give to each other. Love isn’t about doing or earning or accomplishing. Love is simply about being. And being is all about self-acceptance. The more we accept and love ourselves just the way we are, the less needy we will feel and the more open to true love we will be.

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