My cup runneth over.

These last few months I’ve been working diligently on my growth and self-healing specifically surrounding one aspect: codependency. This is excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner. At first, I didn’t believe or know that anything was amiss. This type of schema can be learned through abusive/narcissistic relationships or passed down through generations. I’m not a psychologist, nor a therapist. In fact, I started therapy after first realizing the level of codependency that I was experiencing.

Spirit helped me through this process of unraveling and alchemizing the seemingly transparent layers I had no idea existed. It’s not like one day I woke up knowing I was codependent. It was more like an unveiling of sorts, and my eyesight got clearer the more I investigated. Like most things we learn about ourselves, I was left breadcrumbs weeks, even years, before the moment of full realization. At first, my wife and I had been learning about narcissists and narcissistic behaviors. This had been an arduous process of learning forms of manipulation that we’d been gaslit to believe were representations of our own shortcomings.

The next breadcrumb came in just the form of the word “codependency.” I hadn’t ever heard it before. It wasn’t until I looked it up days or weeks later that I recognized some of the traits aligned with the way I would approach relationships. This had been my next inkling, and the process continued until I was laying in my bed in contemplation and received a download of sorts: I was loving people to feel safe. It’s a form of manipulation in and of itself. I would use my intuition to discern the other person’s emotional state, and if it were negative, I’d do anything I could to rectify the situation for safety and security within the relationship. This is also why I was such a “fixer” in relationships. I’d take the blows by ignoring my own best interest in order to keep the peace.

What’s difficult with codependency is in understanding that you’re doing something that’s not good for you; particularly, because I wouldn’t have considered the partners I’d been with as abusive or narcissistic. They had some flaws, but nobody’s perfect. Except, abuse doesn’t have one form, and narcissistic tendencies doesn’t make a person a fully blown narcissist. Additionally, I was ignoring red flags, because in my mind all I had to focus on was keeping the other person happy in order to exist safely. It’s important to understand too that I wasn’t knowingly using these relationships just to feel safe. I was in love with these women. I had love for them, and they loved me in return; but more often that not, they loved what I could do for them or how I made them feel, most of all.

The major realization that I was loving to feel safe is only the core layer. There were more and more layers of behaviors and beliefs about love that I had which reinforced my codependency before I could reach that core belief. One in particular, was that not only was I loving to feel safe, but I was loving to feel loved. I was giving to people so that their reaction towards me would be loving. Usually, my type was someone who was emotionally unavailable that I could pour into in order to receive affection and love. Their cups were usually empty and they were focused solely on survival and what they needed to do to get by and take care of their kids. When I came along and poured into them, they usually responded graciously and lovingly in return. Unfortunately, I usually had to pour in before I could receive, and that one of the hardest layers to see. I didn’t know that I was emotionally monitoring these women and responding accordingly. These actions were second nature and something I learned growing up.

Imagine women in the earlier half of the twentieth century (the 1900’s in case anyone is confused). Women in those times, and much further back I’d imagine, were subjugated to the patriarchy. In order for women to feel safe, secure and possibly even loved, was to tend to the man of the house that brought home and provided for all of the woman’s needs. Imagine being in such a precarious situation with someone you know doesn’t always have your best interest at heart, because his own interests are at the forefront. It was the woman’s sole mission to make sure that her man was happy, or else she would suffer the consequences of his emotions and his decisions. The power imbalance was/is massive.

Now, maybe you were lucky and had a husband that had the emotional intelligence to value his wife for what she provided and could operate in tandem; well, you basically won the lottery, because that wasn’t every women’s experience. It may have been what kept women so trapped for so long: the romanticization of finding a good husband. Those who didn’t win the husband lottery were forced to work with what they had. Women did not have the capability or the opportunity to live freely or outside of a state of survival, because they were, and most still are, operating under the will of the patriarchy - under the will of their husband. This is to say that women have had to put their existence and their joy second to what they could provide to their partner all for the sake of maintaining balance and peace within the household.

I’d realized that I was manipulating and attempting to control my environment to feel safe and loved, too. This is why women are strategic and maintain their entire household down to the size of someone’s underwear, because they were forced into a role that required them to observe and take action on what would create the safest environment. This is why men are so confused by women, today. They do not comprehend the extended battle we’ve gone through just to exist within peace. We are battle worn and experienced linemen when it comes to traversing and strategizing through precarious, tenuous and volatile situations. Men are provided for while the women carry the entire burden of family life. If he’s happy, then she can rest easy. She mustn’t let her guard down, though, because any day could bring a different set of circumstances.

I know that this took a bit of a macrospective turn. But it is imperative to understand that we exist within layers of society, community, family, and individual relationships. The person we are can change based on perspective, and that’s primarily a defensive mechanism that helps us assimilate and adapt to our environment. The ego takes care of this mostly as it carries the burden of memorizing the rules that keep us safe from one situation to the next. People tend to be pretty harsh on their ego when all it really exists to do is protect us. We just don’t always agree with what it was programmed with to keep us safe.

Regardless, what I’m realizing today is that I don’t know how to receive genuine love. That’s the real reason I started therapy. My understanding of love has drastically shifted. I was manipulating my partners by giving them what they wanted all for the purpose of receiving what I wanted. This meant that I learned and knew what actions to take in order to receive whichever experience I wanted. I wanted to feel loved most of the time, so that meant I gave and gave in order to receive. It may seem obvious to someone that something might be wrong here with that logic, but I was completely convinced everyone else had the problem. I’d be upset and think my partner should do more or try harder.

But that’s how it often goes doesn’t it? We interpret our world and make judgements on other people based on our experiences, instead of interpreting what an experience says about us and what we’re creating. That’s where alchemy comes in. This new perspective of thought that can lead to growth and entirely new realities. I’m learning now that love is easy, and that I really am my only priority when it comes to love, because no one can love me the way I can. I can’t ask, nor should I expect someone to put me above themselves. I shouldn’t expect someone to love me to that extreme, because they’ll have nothing left to love themselves with. I’m certainly not carrying that burden. I’ve realized the hard way that I do not have the capacity to love both of us. That’s codependency. That’s loving someone from an empty cup, and also why it feels like nobody loves us, because they couldn’t possibly carry that weight on their shoulders. It’s our job first and foremost to love ourselves, and as corny as it sounds it’s based on truth.

I feel so unsteady when it comes to the idea of loving from my full cup. I have no idea what that looks like without dumping myself into a relationship. I’m so used to giving and having nothing left over for myself, but that’s not how I want to move forward. It seems so selfish to love myself first, like what do I do for the other person? Everything feels backwards. Another thought I had was “what’s even the point of having a relationship if I love myself?” That made my guides laugh. But they said it’s still important to have people in our lives to help us grow more in love. That idea seems so foreign and unfathomable. More love? How can there be more than what I already provide to myself? I guess that’s the cup running over, huh?