Sacrificing For My Partner

You can’t get enough of it. It’s taking control of your life, but you can’t stop. You know it’s bad for you, but you can’t leave it alone. You’ve pushed friends away, compromised your responsibilities and even walked off the job for it. You’re addicted and you don’t want to admit it. I’m not talking about drugs, alcohol or gambling. I’m talking about relationships. The addiction to relationships or to a person is dangerous and can sometimes result in murder, suicide, stalking or unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as excessive alcohol or drug use.  “Codependency, by definition, means making the relationships more important to you than you are to yourself,” Dr. Tina Tessina said in an article on WebMD. “It means you’re trying to make the relationship work with someone else who’s not. Most people who didn’t grow up in a codependent atmosphere aren’t going to put up with it for too long,” Tessina said. “The ones who start with the impression that love is sacrificing for my partner and putting up with whatever my partner wants to dish out, they’re the ones who get deeply stuck in it.”

There is an ache in my heart
for the imagined beauty of a life
I haven’t had, from which
I had been locked out,
and it never goes away.
Robert Goolrick