Please Don't Say You Need Me: Biblical Answers for Codependency

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What’s Wrong with Me?

CASE ONE

My telephone rang at 10:00 P.M. The sad voice was too familiar. In half-apologetic, half-desperate tones she said, You have got to tell me if I’m going crazy.

For nine years, my friend Margaret had called periodically to say her adulterous, abusive husband was once again trying to charm his way into her affections while continuing to live in adultery with his secretary. All it took from him was a kind word or a tender touch, and momentarily, the rage within her was silenced as she hoped against hope that maybe this time they would salvage their marriage.

During their lives together, he had threatened her, lied to her, abandoned her, and been unfaithful to her. Yet whenever I would suggest that we are not intended to live continuously in such relationships, she would whimper, But, if I don’t have him, I’ll be all alone. Just having him part of the time is better than not having him at all.

For years her drama has had the same story line. He cheats, she gets angry and threatens to leave. He repents with sweet words and plays the role of devoted husband. She convinces herself he has changed. He cheats, she gets angry, and the cycle starts all over again. Each time, her spirit dies a little more, and yet she can’t find a way of escape.

CASE TWO

The attractive businesswoman took me by surprise as she told the bizarre tale of chasing her roommate around the block, begging her to come home after they had quarreled. Lynn poured out her feelings of rage and disappointment about her friend Diane.

Lynn’s childlike brown eyes looked pouty as she detailed Diane’s inconsiderate actions toward her. This roommate, with whom she had shared everything, was slighting her, spending too much time with another woman at work. Their frequent arguments always seemed to be ignited by the failure of one to meet the other’s need for companionship. The weekend had been a repetition of so many others.

Lynn had wanted the two of them to go to a movie, but Diane already had made plans with her friend at work. The nagging and accusations began, and in an outburst of frustration, forty-year-old Diane stormed out of the house, vowing never to return. Lynn ran out after her, begging her to talk. Through tears, Lynn promised that she would be better if Diane would just come home.

CASE THREE

Many years ago I met a wonderful friend. We clicked immediately. We enjoyed doing many of the same things. We loved to talk and dream, and we liked the way our friendship felt. It became a real comfort zone for both of us. Whenever I needed to talk, she was there. Whenever she wanted to go somewhere, I went with her.

The easy camaraderie and the heady feeling of immediately becoming best friends flattered our egos. My friend needed me and I loved being needed. Every protective, encouraging thing I did was received as a precious gift. Her gratitude was unending, and I loved it.

Then one day things changed. I can still remember the dark cloud that quietly floated across my comfort zone. Someone else had come on the scene. She was bright, bubbly, and loved to do fun things with my friend. It soon became evident that I was not needed very much anymore.

At first my reaction was one of slight annoyance, similar to the response you have to the buzzing of a mosquito in your ear. Then my feelings became irritated. The irksome bug had bitten me. As the welt of anger and irritation grew, I realized I had been attacked by jealousy. That made me furious with myself and even more furious with my friend and her friend. Soon the welt was scratched raw and a full-blown infection set in. It didn’t take long to spread, and ugly open sores appeared for all to see. The healing of those infected areas took a long time because the jealousy episode was just one of many irrational, destructive scenes to be played out in our relationship.

Today, the sores are healed, but the scars remain as silent reminders of an agonizing time when a relationship controlled my emotions and consumed energy that should have been more profitably given to other relationships and activities.

CODEPENDENCY

While the circumstances differ in each of these cases, the root problem is the same: codependency. This root grabs hold of the soil of your heart so firmly that pulling it up and destroying it is a phenomenal task. It takes time, determination, and an unshakable faith in God and his power to intervene in your life.

What is codependency? Simply put, it is a relationship between two people who allow one another’s behavior to profoundly affect the other. In an attempt to feel good about himself, a participant in a codependency will try to control the physical, emotional, and spiritual behavior of the other person, or he will compromise his own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being for the sake of the other person. Both the control and the compromise are predicated on the belief that this relationship must exist for personal esteem, security, and intimacy. This is a very clinical description of a heart-rending, destructive situation that kills many relationships and breaks the spirits of people who had nothing but good intentions when they first met.

Unfortunately, one of the laws of human relationship is if we look to another person for security, intimacy, and esteem and can’t receive enough, the relationship will crumble. No one can sustain the unrealistic expectations of another, no matter how dear that person is, if he feels responsible to give the impossible. Eventually the intense demands will crush the relationship’s life and spontaneity, leaving only obligation and resentment. And for the individual who feels so desperately needy, disappointment after disappointment will set up a track record for failure in every significant relationship. Misery will only compound as his search for security, intimacy, and esteem goes on.

All of us, whether we choose to admit it or not, have dependency needs and feelings. But for most of us these desires or feelings do not rule our lives; they are not the predominant theme of our existence. When they do rule our lives and dictate the quality of our existence, then we have something more than just dependency needs or feelings. We are dependent.¹ Despite the needs we all have, we are healthy when we retain the ability to make choices in our relationships. We can choose to stay and work on difficulties. We can choose to leave. The freedom and health is found in the fact that we can choose!

Because every relationship involves two or more people, in every codependent relationship, there is one person who is the primary dependent. This individual views connection to another person as the essential source for self-esteem and security. For the sake of clarity, throughout the book, I will refer to this person as the emotionally dependent or the weaker individual in the relationship. The codependent in the relationship is the individual who is the stronger of the two. This person views caring for the needs and protecting the feelings of the emotionally dependent person as vitally significant for his self-esteem and security.

Ironically, an emotionally dependent person in our relationship can become the codependent in another relationship. This may seem confusing until you understand that control and compromise can vacillate back and forth depending on the state of the relationship at the moment.

Dependent people often continue to hang on to a relationship even when the other person is unattainable or has made his or her lack of interest clear. Codependent people often stay in situations where they have nothing in common, where they have ceased to enjoy the other person, or where they are desperately lonely or emotionally assaulted. And although it takes two to make and break a relationship, dependent and codependent people will often experience sickening guilt when their friend, mate, lover, or parent blames them for the deterioration of the relationship. Any thought that things could be different never seems to cross their mind. The thought of altering the status quo by leaving or firmly setting limits is extremely frightening. Often they will be willing to compromise almost any personal freedom to maintain a comfort zone, no matter how destructive life in that zone might be.

In his book How to Break Your Addiction to a Person, Dr. Howard M. Halpern gives this sad commentary:

Many basically rational and practical people find that they are unable to leave a relationship even though they can see that it is bad for them…Friends…may have pointed out to them that in reality their prison door is wide open and that all they need do is step outside. And yet as desperately unhappy as they are, they hold back. Some of them approach the threshold, then hesitate. Some may make brief sallies outside, but quickly retreat to the safety of prison in relief and despair…Something in them knows that they were not meant to live this way. Yet people in droves choose to remain in their prisons, making no effort to change them—except, perhaps to hang pretty curtains over the bars and paint the walls in decorator colors. They may end up dying in a corner of their cell without having really been alive for years.²

At one time, if a person was chronically angry and possessive it meant he or she had a bad temper. A person who tried to control another’s life was a busybody. If a woman used her persuasive powers to wrap a man around her finger, she was coy. And a man who dominated his wife and children to the extreme was respectfully labeled authoritarian.

But times and understandings have changed. The bondage that has kept husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and parishioners, teachers and students, friend and friend, lover and lover trapped in unhappiness and misery has now been identified and given a name: codependency. The most descriptive term, however, is people addiction. And in many ways people addiction is similar to substance addiction. Like alcoholics or heroin addicts, emotionally dependent and codependent people can’t face breaking relationships, even if they realize they are destructive. They obsessively hold on to a person they know is bad for them. They also panic when they think they will have to live without that person. This isn’t the feeling of sadness we all feel for the loss of someone close to us; it’s rather the unconsolable grief of people experiencing the loss of themselves.

BREAKING CODEPENDENCY

Emotionally dependent people who try to break out of an addictive relationship go through the same withdrawal symptoms that substance addicts experience when they quit drugs or alcohol. When the process first begins, the emotional devastation is overwhelming. It feels as if the world is falling apart. Emotions fluctuate and the individual hopes against hope that the problem was misdiagnosed and the whole thing can be salvaged. If the process is successful and the dependency is broken, there will be a period of mourning. Bouts of looking back, wondering what might have been, wishing for the comfort of the good times, and longing for the feelings that existed in the early days are all part of the grief experience of breaking a codependency.

Like recovering alcoholics, recovering dependents have to live one day at a time. The temptation to turn around and get right back into the codependency is strong both for the emotionally dependent person and the codependent, particularly in the first days after independence has been declared.

After mourning the end of the relationship, both the emotionally dependent and codependent individual will have a feeling of excitement and well-being—the exhilaration of freedom—because the battle for liberation was so difficult and costly. Often they will look for new and different experiences. One woman I know took up karate at age fifty. She had finally broken a codependency that had held her in bondage for thirty years. Her new sense of freedom was almost humorous as she began to find new ways to express her liberty. Sadly, some emotionally dependent people immediately stumble into another unhealthy relationship, looking for what they are always longing to find—a sense of belonging, a sense of wholeness.

M. Scott Peck described such an incident in The Road Less Traveled. A man came to Peck’s office in despair. His wife had left him, and he claimed to be suicidal.

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