This Much I Know

Lessons learned from one woman's journey to liberation

“Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don't know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another's. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone else. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.” - Tracey Emin, Strangeland

It is said that we teach what we most need to learn and give what we most need to receive. A little under a year ago, I went through a break up. The demise of the relationship was at once slow and painful, and gut wrenchingly sudden in the way that it tends to be when infidelity is involved. The insidious, creeping loneliness as the other syphons their attention into extracurricular pursuits. The singular earth-shattering moment of discovery that jettisons you from Life As You Know It.

In the months that followed, I was drawn to make meaning of the situation. An intense period of post-break up navel-gazing took me on a journey through my past relationships. As I scoured for clues, I realised I had been embracing a form of relationship style devoted less to the experience of love than to abstractions about love. The compulsion to rescue and caretake; the dedication to prioritising partners’ needs above my own; excusing and enabling their toxic habits for fear of breaking the ‘cool, chill girlfriend’ spell. On reflection it was clear that behaviours that had once seemed virtuous in fact added more links to the chain of maladaptive attachment that characterised my entire dating history.

In many ways Life Club is intended as my way of teaching what I most need to learn. It is the newsletter I wish I had read during past relationships. It is an attempt to demystify and unpack codependency. Despite living in a time when therapy speak has been co-opted by the mainstream (feeling ‘triggered’; knowing a ‘narcissist’), codependency has so far remained a nebulous term.

In the therapy room, it presents itself as the client who has become so attached to another that they have become detached from themselves. It’s the client who, when asked about the way they are feeling, will inadvertently talk about what the other person is feeling. (I once saw a sex & relationship therapist under the pretence of wanting to understand my attitudes towards relationships better. Looking back it was really just a way to justify spending twelve 50-minute sessions talking about my partner).

In the drug & alcohol recovery service where I work, codependency presents itself as the father whose deep concern, love and protectiveness towards their adult child who is addicted to crack has led them over the years to take control of their medical treatment, bank account, and even intercept their emails.

In the weeks that follow, I hope to share what I have learned professionally from the field as well as personally as I have moved toward recovery from codependence. As Melody Beattie says, “Codependency is a way of getting needs met that doesn’t get needs met. We’ve been doing the wrong things for the right reasons”.

I believe that the right things are well within our grasp.

Until next time,

Kitty

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Bookmarks

What I’m reading, watching, listening to right now

“The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message For An Age of Anxiety”. Alan Watts explores the quest for psychological security.

Ctrl Alt Delete #389 Sheila Heti: Art is the Opposite of an Algorithm. A podcast with writer and ‘philosopher of the modern experience’, Sheila Heti.

In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts. Revered thinker (and a personal hero of mine) Gabor Maté delves into the root causes of addiction.

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