The Discomfort of Co-Dependency...

There are many definitions of co-dependency.  For me, it is doing something I don’t want to do because I feel insecure in the relationship so much so that I have to do things I do not want to do in order to maintain the connection.  It also requires me being responsible for other people’s feelings.

I lived in a very co-dependent state for a very long time.  And still do, at times.  I work on it, and I am better, but I am not “healed” by a long shot.

I am getting better.  Slowly...

I work on being able to say what I think and feel when I think and feel it.  For me, the counterbalance to co-dependent behavior is presence.  I can take care of myself in the here and now, and if I engage in thinking that delays my thoughts and feelings until some other time, that is usually the co-dependent play.  If I have to wait to say it, then I am likely trying to avoid an interpersonal conflict because I am very worried about how my thoughts and feelings are going to impact the relationship.

For me, I like to have some time to process it.  But I realized that while discretion is the better part of valor, I often delay a response because I am trying to NOT have a conflict, or issue, or whatever.  I am not really taking time to figure out how I feel or what I think, I am taking the time so that I can process the whole deal without you ever knowing how I felt or thought.

So contemporaneousness is what is needed for me to be less co-dependent...if I can tell you now, that is going to be a lot more honest. If I wait until I have processed it all by myself and you will most likely never even know there is an issue.

I don’t want to care for other people’s emotions; I have a hard enough time with my own.  I don’t want to hurt people or behave like an ass, but I do not want to have to come talk to you about your feelings because you refuse to bring it up.  But I have often violated this desire because I didn’t want to be in a place where I felt the dis-ease of the ruffled relationship, so I come to you to discuss it, even though it is you that has the problem.

I am there right now in a relationship.  This other person’s behavior has largely changed towards me, I can see it and feel it.  And I have been very tempted to address it with this other person because I do not like feeling at odds with someone.  In this situation, I think I know what it is about.  But I do not KNOW what it is about.  And in review, I have done nothing wrong to this other person.  I have not behaved badly or wrecked some injustice upon them.  I am not upset with them so much as I am unhappy with the change in treatment towards me.

And when I am engaging in co-dependent behavior, I want to come on over to your side of the street and clean it up for you.  I want to resolve the issue so that I can feel better about the whole endeavor.  But I am not doing that this time.  I am just letting it ride, trusting that whatever the result, it is not my resentment to air.  And this other person will come clean, process it themselves or move on.  I do not like the anxiety it still gives me leaving this “unresolved” but I also do not feel like me jumping in and attempting to work it out with them when they have yet to address it as an issue.  I can just feel it coming...

Sometimes I feel like I am like a prey animal, always on high alert for things that are unsafe in this world.  I am just in high fucking alert all the time waiting for something to come and take me out.  And I know this whole co-dependent relating is part of that whole process.  It is why I am usually the one to address the issue.  And it isn’t really about you at all, I need to get things to some sort of homeostasis so that I can allow my nervous system to not be on high fucking alert all the damn time.

So the decision in this case, to sit with it and not address it, while it makes me feel uneasy and upset, is not a comfortable proposition.  But I am also tired of feeling responsible for the feelings of others.  So, for now, I am sitting with the anxiety and attempting to believe that no matter what happens, I will be ok.  It is a newer thing for me.  And all newer things are uncomfortable for me...but if I want to get to a different place within myself, I have to be willing to do something differently.  And with that comes a level of acceptance about the fact that in order to get to another place in this life, I have to be willing to make myself, and others, a little uncomfortable.

Again, still...