Male Codependence

My discovery has been that the root of my issues is called Codependency that stems from neglect, emotional abuse and trauma from my childhood. Codependency is a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively controlling ways that negatively impact relationships and quality of life. Co-dependence is said to be the most common of all addictions: the addiction to looking elsewhere. It is based in a belief that something outside of self can give us happiness and fulfillment. The ‘elsewhere’ may be people, places, things, behaviors or experiences and usually we neglect our own self for it. Codependency is at its core, a dysfunctional relationship with self. With out learning different, people such as me do not know how to love the self in healthy ways because our parents did not know how to love themselves. We were raised in shame-based families that taught us that there is something wrong with being human. The messages we got often included that there is something wrong: with making mistakes; with not being perfect; with being sexual; with being emotional; with being too fat or too thin or too tall or too short or too whatever. As children we were taught to determine our worth in comparison with others. If we were smarter than, prettier than, better grades than, faster than, etc. – then we were validated and got the message that we had worth. James Browning http://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/07/21/facing-codependence-and-finding-happiness/

We plan our lives according to a dream
that came to us in our childhood,
and we find that life alters our plans.
And yet, at the end, from a rare height,
we also see that our dream was our fate.
It’s just that providence had other ideas
as to how we would get there.
Destiny plans a different route,
or turns the dream around,
as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream
in ways we couldn’t have expected.
Ben Okri