"Women Who Love Too Much"

From one of the first books written on Co-Dependency; Women Who Love Too Much" by Robin Norwood. Which is just as applicable for men as well,

A woman who has overcome her pattern of loving too much is profoundly different from who and what she was prior to recovery. All women who do recover have eventually taken certain steps to do so. Women who follow these steps WILL get well. The steps are simple, but not easy. They are all equally important and they are listed in the most chronologically typical order:

1. Go for help.

2. Make sure your own recovery is the first priority in your life.

3. Find a support group of peers who understand.

4. Develop your spiritual side through daily practice.

5. Stop managing and controlling others.

6. Learn not to get hooked into games.

7. Courageously face your own problems and shortcomings.

8. Cultivate what needs to grow in yourself.

9. Become "selfish".

10. Share with others what you have experienced and what you have learned.

From Chapter 10 of "Women Who Love Too Much" by Robin Norwood.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH

No one becomes a woman who loves too much by accident. The following are typical characteristics of women with this pattern:

1. Typically, you come from a dysfunctional home in which your emotional needs were not met.

2. Having received little real nurturing yourself, you try to fill this unmet need vicariously by becoming a caregiver, especially to men who appear, in some way, needy.

3. Because you were never able to change your parent(s) into the warm, loving caretaker(s) you long for, you respond deeply to the familiar type of emotionally unavailable man whom you can again try to change, through your love.

4. Terrified of abandonment, you will do anything to keep a relationship from dissolving.

5. Almost nothing is too much trouble, takes too much time, or is too expensive if it will “help” the man you are involved with. 

6. Accustomed to lack of love in personal relationships, you are willing to wait, hope, and try harder to please.

7. You are willing to take far more than 50 percent of the responsibility, guilt, and blame in any relationship.

8. Your self-esteem is critically low, and deep inside you do not believe you deserve to be happy. Rather, you believe you must earn the right to enjoy life.

9. You have a desperate need to control your men and your relationships, having experienced little security in childhood. You mask your efforts to control people and situations as “being helpful”.

10. In a relationship, you are much more in touch with your dream of how it could be than with the reality of your situation.

11. You are addicted to men and to emotional pain.

12. You may be predisposed emotionally and often biochemically to becoming addicted to drugs, alcohol, and/or certain foods, particularly sugary ones.

13. By being drawn to people with problems that need fixing, or by being enmeshed in situations that are chaotic, uncertain, and emotionally painful, you avoid focusing on your responsibility to yourself.

14. You may have a tendency toward episodes of depression, which you try to forestall through the excitement provided by an unstable relationship.

15. You are not attracted to men who are kind, stable, reliable, and interested in you. You find such “nice” men boring.

HEALTHY CHARACTERISTICS FOR WOMEN IN RECOVERY FROM LOVING TOO MUCH

1. We accept ourselves fully, even while wanting to change parts of ourselves. There is a basic self-love and self-regard, which we carefully nurture and purposely expand.

2. We accept others as they are, without trying to change them to meet our needs.

3. We are in touch with our feelings and attitudes about every aspect of our lives, including our sexuality.

4. We cherish every aspect of ourselves: our personality, our appearance, our beliefs and values, our bodies, our interests and accomplishments. We validate ourselves rather than search for a relationship to give us a sense of self-worth.

5. Our self-esteem is great enough that we can enjoy being with others, especially those of the opposite sex, who are fine just as they are. We do not need to be needed to feel worthy.

6. We allow ourselves to be open and trusting with appropriate people. We are not afraid to be known at a deeply personal level, but we also do not expose ourselves to the exploitation of those who are not interested in our well-being.

7. We ask ourselves "Is this relationship good for me? Does it enable me to grow into all that I am capable of being?"

8. When a relationship is destructive, we are able to let go of it without experiencing disabling depression. We have a circle of supportive friends and healthy interests to see us through crises.

9. We value our own serenity above all else. All the struggles, drama and chaos of the past have lost their appeal. We are protective of ourselves, our health and well-being.

10. We know that a partnership, in order to work, must be between partners who share similar values, interests and goals, and who each have a capacity for intimacy. We also know that we are worthy of the best that life has to offer.

There are several phases in recovering from loving too much. The first phase begins when we realize what we are doing and wish we could stop. Next comes our willingness to get help for ourselves, followed by our actual initial attempt to secure help. After that, we enter the phase of recovery that requires our commitment to our own healing and our willingness to continue with our recovery program. During this period, we begin to change how we act, think, and feel. What once felt normal and familiar begins to feel uncomfortable and unhealthy. We enter the next phase of recovery when we start making choices that no longer follow our old patterns but enhance our lives and promote our well-being instead. Throughout the stages of recovery, self-love grows slowly and steadily. First we stop hating ourselves, then we become more tolerant of ourselves. Next, there is a burgeoning appreciation of our good qualities, and then self-acceptance develops. Finally, genuine self-love evolves.

Unless we have self-acceptance and self-love, we cannot tolerate being known, because without these feelings, we cannot believe we are worth loving just as we are. Instead, we try to earn love through giving it to another, through being nurturing and patient, through suffering and sacrifice, through providing exciting sex or wonderful cooking or whatever.

Once the self-acceptance and self-love begin to develop and take hold, we are then ready to consciously practice simply being ourselves without trying to please, without performing in certain ways calcul! ated to gain another’s approval and love. But stopping the performances and letting go of the act, while a relief, can also be frightening. Awkwardness and a feeling of great vulnerability come over us when we are just being rather than doing. As we struggle to believe that we are worthy, just as we are, of the love of someone important to us, the temptation will always be there to put on at least a bit of an act for him, and yet if the recovery process has progressed there will also be an unwillingness to go back into old behaviours and old manipulations.