Enjoying Healthy Dependency

Individuals who achieve optimum emotional health are willing to need others and to let others need them. Emotionally healthy individuals do not develop as a result of being alone. Individual well-being and positive self-esteem are developed within the context of a safe, secure, intimate, interdependent relationship.

Key elements of these kinds of relationships include:

• Sharing taking care of one another.
• Enjoying care taking and helping each other
• Making a difference in each other’s life
• Feeling a sense of real commitment, stability, and permanence in the relationship.
• Enabling and enhancing one another’s growth as independent individuals
• Celebrating one another’s successes

Being willing to love others by words, actions, and deeds, demonstrates the ability to be connected in a healthy way.

When does healthy dependency in a relationship become codependency? There are several signs to alert us if we are involved in a codependent relationship.

These include:

• Feeling constantly pressured and anxious by your partner’s demands.
• Accepting responsibility for all the decisions that are made, and then feeling resentful toward your partner for putting you in this position.
• Constantly anticipating your partner’s needs.
• Feeling unappreciated and victimized.
• Feeling anxious and guilty is your partner has a problem.

Being in a codependent relationship creates feelings of anger, resentment, and guilt toward one another. However, this negative need if often mistakenly translated as being "in love".

In contrast, intimacy, respect, and love are the operative components of healthy, interdependent relationships. This loving, accepting environment provides the safety required to explore us, take risks, and grows emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Laura R. Meers, Ph.D.

Consulting Psychologist