Kris Gage pushes back on the social norm of romantic, possessive love, and exposes it for a co-dependent myth. The romance version is that your soulmate will somehow become responsible for your negative emotions and make you happy.
The codependent myth is very popular, because it promises so much — i.e., that our partners will love us the way that our mothers did when we were infants. As babies, we could not communicate our needs. We could only cry. Our parents took responsibility for figuring out how we felt, and how to make us happy.
The co-dependent myth of romantic love says that, if only we can find our true soulmates, then they will love us the same way — without requiring anything of us.
The classic, romantic myth of co-dependent love is dangerous garbage because when we believe that anyone other than ourselves are responsible for our emotions, then the only way we can protect ourselves from negative emotions is by controlling other’s behavior. It means that when we feel bad, we have to manipulate other people into behaving in ways that will make us feel batter.
The interim step out of co-dependence is INdependence, which requires us to each take responsibility for our own emotions. The difficulty with independence is that it prevents us from forming healthy attachments.
In this one sentence, Kris gives us a glimpse of a higher relationship state, which I call INTERdependence:
There’s a difference between coming to each other as individuals with free will, who add to each others’ lives — and depending on one another for care.
Interdependence requires two people who have already taken responsibility for their own emotions (i.e, independence) and still realize that they can be even happier together. The challenge to achieving interdependence is that at first it feels like slipping back into co-dependence. It’s hard to tell the difference between co-dependence and interdependence, because at first all we know is that neither one of them is independence, and soooo much relationship advice (including Kris’) focuses on establishing independence.
Article source : Thomas P Seager, PhD
