Love vs Codependency: How to Tell the Difference

I’m fortunate to have a romantic partner who encourages me to feel all my feels and express whatever needs to be expressed. She’s often better at it than I am, but I do my best and we encourage one another.

We don’t always use the same information, teachers, verbiage, or even belief systems to process what’s happening in our lives. Yet the emotional outcome ends up looking similar because we’ve both committed to feeling all the feels.

That’s humility. Not agreeing on everything, but being willing to FEEL whatever comes up.

When You Don’t Have a Safe Space

It’s nice to have a safe relationship to practice this kind of vulnerability in. But what if you don’t have that kind of safe relationship or space?

Can you practice loving people who aren’t keen on you shining light in that way because it makes them feel uncomfortable to confront the truth?

I have some people in my life who are helping me learn to walk through those kinds of lions’ dens. It’s hard, but it’s getting easier. I’m always feeling through it and asking God to guide me.

Love vs Codependency: The Core Difference

Co-dependency is NOT love. Judgment is NOT love. Requiring that someone be a certain way or do certain things is NOT love.

We live in a world that has confused love with codependent behavior.

“If you do this for me, I’ll do that for you. I’ll play this role that you like, but only because you’re playing that role which I like.”

That’s not love. That’s a transaction.

When Empowerment Triggers Others

For anyone in your life who has gotten used to you behaving a particular way, or for anyone who has become co-dependent on you showing up in a certain way, it is INCREDIBLY triggering to all of a sudden have you don a new, more empowered, and more true persona.

“They’re acting empowered and independent of group-think! They must have joined a cult!!!”

When you take someone’s pack of cigarettes from them, temper-tantrums will result. Can you feel through those temper-tantrums and hold enough space for yourself and others to have a vivid transformation in love?

Questions to Ask in Relationship

Here are a few things to consider when showing up in relationship to another:

1. What would my love for myself motivate me to do for myself?

2. What would my love for my partner motivate me to do for my partner?

3. What would my partner’s love for themselves motivate them to do for themselves?

4. What would my partner’s love for me motivate them to do for me?

Are you doing for another what they refuse to do for themselves? Are you hoping and praying and waiting for someone to change or die, so you can avoid having to challenge them?

The Hard Part

If you project any desire onto another person for change, then you are acting out of harmony with love.

It’s easy to want to PROJECT onto the other person in your relationship and make it all their fault. I’m incredibly guilty of this (especially if they want to make it MY fault!). It’s so much easier to wish the other person would change than to really sit with the uncomfortable feelings being triggered within.

But, more and more, I am learning that it IS possible to simply sit with that discomfort and let it burn itself out. Sometimes it’s so powerful that I’ve got to express it on paper or swing a bat at a garbage pile, but more and more I can just sit with it. And it gets easier every time I do it.

We grow our capacity for experiencing fully our big feelings as we burn out the old garbage in our system.

The more I let life trigger me, and then sit with those big, triggered feelings, the more clarity I end up receiving.

It’s challenging, scary, and fun.