Greetings...!
Hi everyone... I'm new here and I want to post "Emotional Depedency" as my first topic to share here in the forum.
Let me share to you the latest article about this topic that I found from http://www.exodusyouth.net
You can either visit the website or just read the article here...
God bless and He loves us all...!
Kindest regards,
LENARD
EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY
by: Mike Ensley
Author, Emotional Dependency for Guys book
I met “Greg” in high school through the drama team. He just came up to me
one day and asked me to make him laugh, so I did. We were pretty much
inseparable from then on.
It was rare for me to find another guy with the same sense of humor, the
same taste in movies and hobbies, so being together was really fun. And we
hung out—a lot. I always enjoyed spending time with Greg, so much so that I
thought about him whenever I wasn’t with him. Whatever I got involved in, I
thought of ways to get him involved, too.
We ended up going to the same college and taking a lot of classes together.
As we drifted away from our high school friends, we got even closer. He was
a really affectionate guy who had no problem hugging me, and sometimes we
even wrestled around together. He was so considerate, calling me often and
giving me silly little gifts or messages.
There was a down side to this seemingly fulfilling friendship, though. No
matter how loving Greg was toward me, I always wanted more. Even if we
spent a whole day together, for some reason I would go home at the end of
it with a sort of frustrated, dissatisfied feeling. He was very social, and
when I saw him laughing with other guys I felt jealous. I always worried,
“What if he likes them more?”
Then Greg got a girlfriend, and their relationship quickly got serious. Now
something inside me was really hurting. He always wanted to be alone with
her, and our friendship suffered. I absolutely couldn’t stand the thought
of them kissing it made me so angry—a bad angry that left me hopeless and
depressed. I realized I was jealous of her, too.
In light of the fact that I was trying to overcome my struggles with
homosexuality, this was an incredibly discouraging realization. I thought I
was building healthy friendships! I thought this meant I was changing!
Instead, I had “fallen in love” with my best friend. I felt like a failure.
Worse still was the end of me and Greg’s friendship. Ultimately, my
jealousy over his girlfriend turned into bitterness. Through sarcasm and
gossip I sabotaged our relationship, and it went down—badly. When he was no
longer a part of my life, it felt like losing a limb to a tragic accident.
I was depressed for weeks.
This was one of the worst experiences of my life, and the harder thing was
that this happened more than once, with other people. I didn’t learn until
a while later that there was a name for this: Emotional Dependency.
What is Emotional Dependency?
The truth is, Greg wasn’t just my best friend, at least not to me. I was
trying to make him my best friend, brother, mentor, dad, and honestly, even
my god. He was certainly more important to me than God. But why would I, a
Christian, do such a thing?
Well, probably because I was still looking for all those things: a brother,
a mentor, a father, and God. These were all roles that were inadequately
filled in my life. They weren’t perverted desires; they were real needs,
and I was desperate to get them filled. But emotional dependency is what
happens when we try to consolidate all these needs into one person. For a
while, we’re able to buy into the illusion that this is working, and we
become thoroughly attached to the object of our need. But eventually the
unhealthiness of this practice will get you, like it got me.
You could say I put all my emotional eggs in one basket, my friend Greg.
Problem was, he was never big enough to hold them all.
While we never technically had a homosexual relationship, it was
emotionally homosexual. In fact, while I was never really drawn to him
sexually, being around him often triggered episodes of acting out through
internet pornography or even other people. This happened because being
around him made me so aware of the deep longing for intimacy I had.
The painful truth is that relationships like this are absolutely sinful and
destructive. They’re sinful first of all because they violate the number
one commandment: to put God first in your heart and worship no one and
nothing else. This is often evident in the ways we compromise our integrity
for the sake of the unhealthy relationship—neglecting responsibilities,
being self-centered, crossing sexual boundaries, etc.
In a word, it’s idolatry.
It’s also destructive to us. Like someone addicted to junk food, we’re
trying to fill a need with something that won’t ever fill it. In the
process, we deprive ourselves of what is good and truly fulfilling.