Emotional (co)dependency or love?

Or are we all just super scared of honest feelings?

The answer is yes. And that might just be the end of the story. And I could probably function as a great example of it. But it appears that I am not the only one.. Why is that so?

We live in a time where people seem to fragmentise and compartmentalise, dissociate and reinvent, optimise and innovate, navigating through endless realms of possible self-reiterations and creative incarnations when it comes to relationships. Then again, we are so much influenced by our culture that speculates on endless theories trying to put into words phenomena that can only be discredited by the limitating nature of language itself. We thereby over-evaluate the importance of mental representations when trying to grasp evidence that is obviously very difficult to frame and sometimes get distracted with abstract concepts instead of enjoying the simple pleasures of its mysterious beauty. We have the tendency to overanalyse instead of experiencing what might appear to us as a waste of time for the mere reason that it seems for us so totally out of reach. But what is my point?

We appear to be limited in that area as we yield to overly protect ourselves. Many women in my environment, for example, are negatively influenced because of strictly biased narratives in our culture when it comes to relationships. Of course gender-pronouns can be reversed or adapted accordingly depending on the context of the subject but for reasons of syntactic simplicity, I will stick with this perspective.

Emotional dependency in all of its forms is considered as highly problematic and women are advised to first love “themselves” before they focus on anybody else. This is usually a statement they receive from their partners that generally have a commitment phobia or pull away each time the other shows more conviction in his or her endeavours.

The Argentinian author and psychotherapist Jorge Bucay writes:

1. Love for another person is born of the capacity to love, which begins with that disposition of love for oneself.

And many people would probably agree. I do so, too. We cannot love anyone if we are not capable of loving ourselves and it would not make sense to try to compensate for an inner lack solely via the attention of others. This can be considered as a co-dependent attitude that is anything but healthy. Then again, the second statement is also true which is sadly often forgotten:

2. Love for oneself is born of the capacity to love, which (also) begins with that disposition of love of another.

In my opinion the two dynamics are strictly interconnected and whether it begins with ourselves or our environment is not the question. We are anyway an integral part of the world we live in and profoundly dependent creatures, starting already with the air that we breathe.

The first statement is certainly influenced by a cultural dimension of patriarchal structure where women were not encouraged to tune into their own natural state of being, oftentimes overly adapted to the expectations of their repressing surroundings, or sometimes even cruelly exploited. They were not well loved enough, developed dependencies instead, due to the emotional neglect in their environment and could therefore not gain any sense of trust.

Children were as a consequence often instrumentalized for parental gratification as it was so extensively lacking from the according partner(s) and this happened particularly with women and their sons. It is a perfidious form of emotional abuse in which the child became a replacement and overly responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their mother. For this reason, these individuals later usually show signs of terror when it comes to inter-relational closeness and strive to transcend the (for them) unbearable state of dependency. They feel more at ease with a strong sense of autonomy which is totally understandable and have a profound fear of committing to a relationship. That’s why the first statement would obviously make more sense to them. But it remains one-sided.

There is this common notion that a woman becomes a reflection of how you treat her. And even if this idea is probably applicable to all of us independently of our gender, there could also be some differences due to our socio-cultural upbringing. Some mystics even proclaim that — spiritually speaking — women need men to awaken their true divine self whereas men don’t need women for that in return. The latter are advised to rather follow a path of full-fledged independence before they are ready to “contain” the female energy and make her flourish in a self-less and natural way.

In conclusion, I believe that we need each other as much as we need our personal space. And when we are ready and so wish for, we will be able to easily overcome our fear. We move from a state of dependence, to independence, then to interdependence and intradependence. We should enjoy each moment of that fabulous journey and share it with the right people.