Superglue Relationships – Recovery from Codependency

What creates the crisis of codependency? Many factors, including the fear of abandonment or yearning for acceptance, can contribute to the excessive need of attachment to another. To get to the heart of the problem, let’s examine some real-life scenarios.

Lori shares her story: “As a young teen my sister, Piper, became addicted to drugs. Our parents, who had issues of their own, were clueless on how to deal with an out-of-control, drug-addicted teen. Our father used physical force to try controlling her and our mother recoiled into a shell of denial.

Eventually my father left home and I soon followed. My mother, unwilling to suffer more loss, spent the next twenty years at Piper’s side, responding to her every whim and request. Her life is absorbed by my sister’s addiction and codependent behavior.”

Jason was affectionately referred to by his friends as “the army brat.” Living in more than thirteen states in the past seventeen years, Jason’s perception of stability was anything but typical. Rigid and stern, his father taught him emotions are superfluous and unnecessary.

His idea of masculinity was to avoid any emotional interaction. It is common for children who are raised in a home where emotional response is discouraged to form codependent relationships as adults. The need to verbalize and express unguarded emotional feelings becomes overwhelming.

Codependent relationships simply do not work. Someone always ends up holding the short end of the stick. Tossed a line that somewhere, out there, is someone who completes us, we believe it. Perhaps that is the reason so many stay frustrated and leap from relationship to relationship.

No one person has everything you need to complete you. A loving spouse can fulfill many of our longings and desires. But the plain truth is, there remains a void in each of us only God’s love and mercy can fulfill. There is a chamber within our heart God reserved entirely for Himself.

Money, fame, career, sex, and people cannot fulfill the space hallowed out by His hand. You can spend your entire life trying to keep the love of others. But God’s love is the only perfect love you will ever discover. The true foundation for recovery from codependency.

“So we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love.
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them”
(1 John 4:16 NIV).

Ready for more godly relationship advice? You might also like Dr. Tracey’s blog The Capacity for Love

A national conference speaker, Tracey travels 40+ weeks a year, sharing Biblical principles and wisdom. Her real life experiences – though painful and challenging enable her to identify with the hurting, lonely, and rejected. Whether speaking corporate CEO’s or the homeless, Tracey’s passion for re-writing the lives of the brokenhearted makes her messages relevant and empowering.

A frequent television guest and host of “Today With Tracey”, she is an advocate of those having experienced rejection, poverty or emotional abuse.

To learn more about the author please visit Tracey Mitchell