People leave and reappear, relationships end and new ones begin, but the inner emptiness is never filled. It seems that this is completely impossible, and then a feeling of despair and helplessness sets in. You become incredibly sorry for yourself and your life, in which it turns out to be impossible to meet someone who will accept and love you for who you are, and completely give you all of yourself and your life in return. Love becomes something unattainable, because no one can be trusted completely. Every time you entrust your soul and heart to someone else, you become disappointed. It seems no one can love you the way you expect. The belief that your soulmate exists somewhere in the world is lost... With each separation, it’s as if a part of you dies, and in the end, it begins to seem that this inner emptiness is simply devouring. How can you get close to someone again and believe in love, if already at the beginning of a new relationship, anxiety arises inside - what if this is not forever again? Feeling one with someone, it is very painful to break this connection, you must agree. With the loss of that very other half, it seems as if an arm or a leg was torn from you, your heart was torn out - in general, as if a part of you was taken with them. Such an experience of relationships is so commonplace that in all centuries it has become the leading theme of love stories. They write novels about this, make movies, sing songs... Just remember “I am you, you are me, and we don’t need anyone.” Art at all times has depicted exactly this - neurotic love, when the world is not nice without a loved one. When you don’t want to live apart! When the other becomes the whole world, “and life itself is more valuable.” Why are such relationships so attractive and attractive that they are glorified and elevated to something ideal? Finding your other half, your destiny, becomes the ultimate goal of your entire life. Being one with another seems to be the only possible form of true love. In fact, everyone who has experienced such feelings can say with confidence that the search for such true love can continue endlessly. There is no limit to perfection, every partner one day turns out to be not ideal, not “the one,” and every such relationship experiences disappointment. Love suddenly disappears somewhere.... Or someone alone betrays love, and takes away the heart of the beloved, leaving a gaping hole in his chest... Let's try to figure out whether this hole, this internal irreparable emptiness, existed long before how did a person realize it when experiencing a breakup in a relationship? Dependency has one undeniable quality that distinguishes it from love - permanent pain. It can be so background that while experiencing euphoria at the first stage of a relationship - the stage of falling in love, meeting “images” - a person does not recognize or identify this pain. He completely immerses himself in another person, throws himself into a relationship like a whirlpool, and begins to dissolve in them. Often there is a catastrophically short period of time between acquaintance and the whirlpool. Getting closer is like jumping into an abyss - people literally skip the important gap where contact is established and boundaries touch, and, closing their eyes, jump into each other's arms. This is often called “love at first sight,” but this phenomenon has nothing to do with love. People are accustomed to thinking that love is just a feeling. An experienced bundle of emotions in relation to another person, a mutual erasure of boundaries and penetration into each other’s field, without taking into account any of each other’s needs and expectations from the relationship itself - this is what is considered love. It is not seen as a set of very specific actions, very specific values. And yet, love reflects the actual needs of each couple here and today, and therefore, over the years, it can seem to disappear. Or for one it disappeared, but for the other it remained. But in fact, the components have changed; in the conventional sense, the values ​​today are no longer the same as yesterday. Sowhat happens is outgrowth. But there is no talk about this. Moreover, this is not taken into account at all. The context of love is narrowed down to attraction to each other, we are stuck in the stage of images, rather than the real ourselves interacting consciously. And that is why, instead of becoming happier, enjoying living life together, developing and helping each other to be freer and stronger, creating, bringing each other joy and sharing the experience of difficult life moments - the two find themselves in a suffocating emotional bond, they are literally glued to each other and each ceases to recognize himself as a self-sufficient, separate, independent unit. It is impossible to say where “I” ends and “you” begins; there is only “we” as a unified system of values, beliefs, interests, desires, decisions. By the way, interests in a couple can literally narrow to each other. Close people, friends, families of such couples can observe their alienation, merging with each other - now they do everything together: sleep together, eat together, go to meetings together, relax together. They like the same thing - the same food, the same movie, clothing style, hobbies, books. The worldview is directed to one point, they say, we look in one direction like true lovers! The critical view in such couples disappears, and the opinion of the two becomes a single opinion, causing the same decisions - one for two. This is a whole planet of compromises, when we erase the edges of our needs and desires until they, like a puzzle, are combined into one picture. There are many options for the emergence and development of dependent relationships, we can look at several of them. Have you ever heard a man call his woman “my little”, “my girl” and other similar variations? Isn’t it true that this is very reminiscent of the relationship between a father and his beloved daughter? She is so small and defenseless, so stupid and needy. And he will protect her, he will make all the important decisions, take responsibility, be caring and loving, as long as she feels safe and warm, like behind a stone wall. Do you think a woman is comfortable in this position? And how! You can also add financial support here, then the role of daddy becomes full-fledged. A man must take care and support - this is such a popular formulation. Its creators are little girls, eternal daddy's daughters. What are they willing to give in return to such a man? Of course, all the love and devotion that they have. But the more they “love” like that, the more men owe them. Let’s look at dependency relationships from the other side. What can tie a man down and keep him in a dependent relationship for a long time? Unavailability. This is a colossal internal tension that makes you alive and your existence very significant. You can develop the qualities of a superhero in yourself, just to achieve the affection of the one who seems ideal. The one who will accept you into her arms and give you irreplaceable feminine warmth, acceptance and love. Women's love is quite idealized in society; it is such a mix of fidelity, sensuality, wisdom and strength. She is both a faithful friend and a skillful lover, a super housewife coupled with a well-read, smart girl and a caring mother. And men believe in the existence of such a collective image in reality. And they can search for it all their lives. Sometimes they even find it. But very often such an ideal woman turns out to be emotionally cold or completely unavailable. Her love always needs to be earned, it’s as if you need to reach it, grow up, do something, and something else and something else... but it will always not be enough. And if a man still manages to get such a woman, then when their relationship ends, he will be completely crushed. Or, in the process of this relationship, she will turn into a tyrant and will beat her ideal because she forced him to literally worship her. However, this was his own choice. Why is this happening? All these men and women who fall into dependent relationships do not give pseudo loverealize that they are dependent individuals who experience irreparable emotional hunger and attract precisely those partners who will never, ever fill it. Not a single person, even if he breaks himself into pieces, is able to satisfy the hunger of a dependent person. It would seem, isn’t it easier to choose a person as an equal partner and enter into a mature relationship with him? For an addict it is not easier, it is simply impossible. He does not recognize among the many potential partners the one with whom he could experience an adequate relationship; he unconsciously chooses just such a partner with whom together they can each play out their neurotic needs. Doing this by creating a dependency is where it gets "easier". The main signs of dependence in a relationship are fusion, complete blurring of each other’s boundaries; destructive feelings and conditions, such as jealousy, fear of losing a loved one, permanent anxiety and a feeling of emptiness in his absence; narrowing of interests down to the existence of each other, abandonment of previous social contacts for the sake of spending time together; inability to recognize, discover, “move” and defend one’s boundaries; loss of self-worth and self-sufficiency, emotional hunger; a colossal number of projections onto each other, playing out child-parent relationships; control, pressure, restriction of each other’s freedoms, self-affirmation at the expense of another, countless manipulations; turning not to the partner himself, but to his functionality - he begins to perform certain functions, without which existence seems impossible, and a real meeting with a real partner cannot happen; eating disorders, depression, general deterioration of health - psychosomatics in dependent relationships blooms wildly; loss of self-control, self-identity, loss of the sense of “I” - “sticking” to each other, “getting stuck” at the point where the development of these relationships is impossible, and ending them is also impossible. This is such a very clear feeling of irreversibility, and some completely irrational attempts to avoid a breakup, reminiscent of convulsions. The reasons for becoming addicted are quite obvious, but they are so unconscious that the participants in dependent relationships and victims of addictive behavior themselves are not able to work through these reasons. All that is behind this is the underlying true unmet needs. They are in the field of the unconscious, and the irresistible desire to satisfy them forces a person to spend a huge amount of energy trying to finally do this. These basic needs of each of us - safety, unconditional acceptance and love, recognition and care - must be provided by our parents in the first years of life. As a rule, all these needs are partially or, worse, completely unsatisfied. And then, unconsciously, we rush in search of that ideal parent who will provide us with all this. In adulthood, this should be our partner. We single him out from the conventional crowd based on unconscious characteristics, and reach that state of anxiety and desire to get him completely, which holds our dependence and feeds it. But addiction is absolutely destructive, so very soon what seemed to fill our life with meaning yesterday destroys it today. What filled the gaping emptiness inside, today makes it even greater. The unrecognized pain, which has been in the background since childhood, at some point manifests itself - when I begin to feel that my partner’s love is not enough for me. Not enough care, not enough attention, not enough recognition. I want to absorb him, so that he becomes completely mine, to merge with him, to dissolve together, to finally take away this pain, so that it will finally disappear. I want to heal, but something just doesn’t allow me to do this, time after time. Alas, there will never be enough. The only way to overcome addiction is self-awareness. What can and should be done to make life