Sometimes it helps to understand that we may be receiving a payoff from relationships that cause us distress.
The relationship may be feeding into our helplessness or our martyr role.
Maybe the relationships feeds our need to be needed, enhancing our self-esteem by allowing us to feel in control or morally superior to the other person.
Some of us feel alleviated from financial or other kinds of responsibility by staying in a particular relationship.
"My father sexually abused me when I was a child," said one woman. "I went on to spend the next twenty years blackmailing him emotionally and financially on this. I could get money from him whenever I wanted, and I never had to take financial responsibility for myself."
Realizing that we may have gotten a codependent payoff from a relationship is not a cause for shame. It means we are searching out the blocks in ourselves that may be stopping our growth.
We can take responsibility for the part we may have played in keeping ourselves victimized. When we are willing to look honestly and fearlessly at the payoff and let it go, we will find the healing we've been seeking. We'll also be ready to receive the positive, healthy payoffs available in relationships, the payoffs we really want and need.
Today, I will be open to looking at the payoffs I may have received from staying in unhealthy relationships, or from keeping destructive systems operating. I will become ready to let go of my need to stay in unhealthy systems; I am ready to face myself.
The thought of having no one but myself scares me to death. One of my payoffs is that I don't have to be alone even in a bad relationship. To be alone, to me, is like not existing. What do I do with myself, I always ask myself. I can commit 2000% to a bad relationship but can't commit to being alone and committing to a job so I can take care of myself and treat myself well. Sometimes I wonder if all the little sayings my parents used to have took super root in my brain. For example, my mom said that if you had money when you were young you'd be poor when you were grown. Well, I'm on a very limited income as if proof that she was right. What started out keeping me from working was panic disorder/attacks and now I, at my age, I have a back the is crumbling and a hip that won't work so my dream of going back to nursing has fallen apart. I have more brick walls in front of me than I know what to do with! Leandra
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"Life doesn't come with a remote, you have to get up and change it yourself!"~~Tyler Perry
