Co-Dependent Love

‎ 

"I've been told I'm too co-dependent on my husband ...no I'm co-created to be connected to my husband thank you. He doesn't MAKE me happy I just AM happy with him." -Gwenn Townsend

What an awesome testimony to her marriage!  There is a lot of talk today about "self-help" or "self-esteem", or "finding your self" etc.  It's all about me!  When you're in a marriage it is no longer just about you.  It is about the "whole" that is now you and your spouse.  Sometimes it will feel in your marriage like there is no "you" any more.  I'm not saying this is ok, or that you should just ignore that, but it is important to know that this happens in every marriage.  There are times when your marriage has to be about your spouse.  Your life has to be about your spouse.  There are times when you will have to put things that you want, or things you want to do on the back burner for a while, or longer, to support your marriage.  Listen, there are times when your spouse will do the same for you- some you will know about and some you will not.  You won't always know all of the sacrifices your spouse makes for you, and they will not know all of the sacrifices you make for them.  You just do it, because you love that person more than yourself.  Even when you're in a place where love is something you do, not feel.  It's during those times that we should be especially gracious to our spouse, because they're probably feeling the same pain we are.

Is it possible to be a co-dependent wife?  or Husband?  Well, I suppose so, but not as often as the world would have you believe.  Consider this definition from the Bible:  "A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh" (Genesis 2:18-24). 

I've written on the idea of 2 parts of one whole before, but let's look at it in another way.  If you have 2 oranges, and you want to make them into one orange, you can not keep all of the parts of each orange.  You have to let pieces of each orange go that do not compliment the other orange.  Or, if you have a glob of red paint and a glob of blue paint and you combine them together, you have a glob of purple paint.  You no longer have a glob of red, or a glob of blue.  You have a color that resembles a little bit of blue and a little bit of red, but is not one or the other.

If each spouse look at their marriage in this way, looking at what they can give to their spouse, rather than what they can get from their spouse, they will both be happier.

The very act of bringing joy to your spouse will bring you more joy than you can bring to yourself.

My husband has a saying, that he says in a joking manner to me often, but he lives it too: "Anything I can do to make your day just a little bit brighter"....  Isn't that how we should all live?