The morning after I met my husband at a meditation, the phone rang in my office—it was him, calling to ask me to dinner that night. I couldn’t go, even though I wanted to, due to a previously scheduled date with an everyday coworker, which felt like an appointment compared to the prospect of a passion-filled evening with the new and mysterious Nick.
Miraculously I uttered a response before my heart leaped into my throat. “Tonight I have plans, but how about some other time soon?” After hanging up, a tidal wave of anxiety crashed over me, as I had not only a date that evening, but a plane ticket to visit yet a different man across the country the following weekend, damaged self-esteem from last week’s split with a twenty-three-year-old Adonis fresh out of Princeton, a broken heart over a lover in New York who hadn’t called me back in three days, two missed calls from my Puerto Rican salsa partner, and one voice message from my not yet ex-husband asking me to reconsider the divorce. Any wonder I needed meditation?
Even though I’d spread myself so thin, I still experienced moments when my love life caused me only half the stress that my job did. As the editor of a magazine for addiction counselors, I endured too much (admittedly self-induced) exposure to the concept of “codependency.” Despite its specific clinical meaning, I self-diagnosed myself as codependent simply because I depended on the approval of others, especially men, to feel even just okay about myself. I further justified this label because I was struggling to break free of guilt for leaving my ex, projecting that he “needed” me. Antidepressants and weekly counseling sessions were the only things keeping me going, it seemed.
I needed an intervention—divine intervention. So, on lonely evenings spent in Barnes & Noble aisles waiting for my phone to ring, I started reading spiritual books. Before long I noticed a message that kept on repeating: “Love is a total surrender.” Yet how could it be, when it so sharply contradicted my therapist’s mantra: “Do not lose yourself in a relationship”?
Now what was I supposed to do? All I knew is that I’d completely lost myself again. I’d fallen in love with Nick. Given the passion our togetherness incited, it was impossible not to. He showed up fifteen minutes early to each date, abolishing any luxury of last-minute preparations (e.g., makeup, perfume, and pillow-straightening) that I’d believed were “requirements” for landing a mate. The fact that he cared about me anyway, without such superficial add-ons, attracted me even more. To make matters better, he whisked me through the doors of Taco Bell to the hot-sauce counter as if waltzing me to bed on my wedding night. At the grocery store, he impelled me to ballroom-style dancing around stunned shoppers and stuffed grocery carts in the frozen-food section. On the cashier’s line, other customers smirked as he pierced open packs of cherries and fed them to me one by one, until my sheer embarrassment dissolved into raw laughter. I’d been caught off guard and cornered into making the most important decision of my life. Which mattered more: what people think of me or passion and love?
In reality, I had no choice—letting go of what other people think was the door to love. There’s nothing more liberating than loving ourselves enough to be who we are, including allowing ourselves the freedom to go for all we desire, no matter what people say. In my case, I completely craved love, romance, and a monogamous partnership—and I wanted to fall head over heels. I no longer felt well in the pit of my stomach when subjected to the diagnoses and advice of outside sources. Since they weren’t tangoing in my flip-flops, feeling this passion in precisely the way I felt it, how could they truly know my best interests? Only God’s infinite intelligence could know that—and so right in the grocery store, I’d serendipitously also learned to trust God like never before.
Certainly my faith was tested, as the withering momentum of beating myself up inside for past codependent behavior did not halt over night. Even while breaking ties with my therapist and each of the men mentioned above, I still found myself drawn to codependency titles like Codependent No More and Women Who Love Too Much. The pit bull in my head relentlessly barked desperate warnings that I needed those books in case my relationship with Nick turned out like the rest … until one day in meditation, when my inner voice asserted itself ever so gently: Enough of this mental chatter, enough of this nonsense! Let yourself feel the emotions of attraction, desire, whatever you are feeling. To be against anything is to remain imprisoned by the ego. Fortunately, you would not be privy to these words were it not time to know the truth.
And so the time had come—to face my fear of being codependent once again. Upon vowing to enter this relationship consciously, I stopped blaming myself for past unconsciousness. For who has not longed to give and receive love? The longing for a lover’s touch can be so visceral that we would do anything for it. And yet, I learned that the very looking outside ourselves for love guarantees not finding it. Any effort only pushes it further away—until in the wake of unbearable suffering, the “forbidden” surrender occurs and love is drawn unto us in spite of ourselves.
If or when you find yourself in any similar holding patterns en route to love, there is something you can do for yourself: stop labeling past relationship habits and let yourself feel every ounce of pain those labels once represented. Ultimately, it’s the pain you think you can’t face that breaks your heart open and reveals the presence of God within, that which already knows exactly what you desire and has always been guiding you to it. Emotional pain is really just a signal that something in your life situation is not supporting what you are wanting. Pain prompts you to look deeper, to become conscious of your heart’s desires and then live thereon from your truth. It’s really so simple. Loving yourself—no matter how painfully “dependent” on others you once were for love—sets you free.
Happily I must tell you, the energy of codependence does not disappear. Through love, it is alchemically transformed into the wisdom of interdependence, which can then be applied to all of your relationships, romantic or otherwise. Interdependence is a mutual reliance and trust that people continually demonstrate to each other via clear communication, keeping their word, cultivating deeper sensitivity, and expressing love with each other in unlimited ways. A significant key to love lies in allowing yourself to be vulnerable and interdependent, rather than resisting a relationship like it’s a black hole that can absorb you beyond recognition.
To sum up: interdependence is not a disease. Know the only “you” ever lost in a relationship is the egoic “you”—the real You isn’t going anywhere. I wish you deep love, incessant passion and countless blessings along this glorious adventure.