I Need You to Need Me

    Are you the kind of person that needs to be needed in order to feel validated as a person? Do you find that you will go out of your way to help people because it makes you feel valuable in the relationship?

That's the kind of person I am and let me tell you, now that I've learned that about myself, it has opened my eyes to some dysfunctional relationships in my life.

There's been several instances come up in conversation with various people recently about being used by others and having one sided friendships. I can relate so very much; because of my need to be needed, people can take advantage of me very easily. One such relationship has come to an unfortunate end because I just got plain tired of only being contacted when this person needed something.

For years, I've been this persons go to for help. Be it babysitting, loans, advice, rides to the emergency room, rides anywhere really, for prayer, etc. And when I've stopped being needed, I've also stopped seeing them. There's always the excuse, "I work all the time", "I don't have a car" "I'm sick". But  I have a car---no one works 24/7---and no one is sick 24/7. So, they're just what I called them; excuses.

If something is important to you, you make time for it. If someone had called this friend and said, "Hey there's $10,000 here for you, just come spend the day here waiting in line and listening to bad polka music and it's yours." They would have went and endured the ear torture, even if sick, even if scheduled to work, and found a way to get there without a car....because $10,000 would be that important to them.

I haven't been as important as $10,000, ever, in this persons life.

If you're in a relationship that is one sided, it is NOT HEALTHY. I don't care who it is, it isn't healthy. If it's a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, a co-worker, or boyfriend/girlfriend, it's a destructive unhealthy relationship that either has to be reconstructed or absolved.

It's a hard realization to come to and an even harder one to act upon because it may mean losing someone who you love very much. But loving someone doesn't constitute healthy relationships or justify staying in a bad one. In fact loving them often keeps us in destructive ones despite our best interests.

You have to love yourself more than you love being needed, more than you love being loved, more than you hate being alone, you have to. If you can't, you'll never have relationships that improve your quality of life, they will use you, drain you, abuse your trust, and your confidence, and your giving nature.

If you've thought of anyone while reading this, please pray about how to move forward with that person. Pray about whether God is asking you to let go of them, or if you need to confront them.

You deserve to get as much as you put into people. However, if whoever you've thought of brings up bitterness in your heart because of their treatment of you, you also must forgive them. Whatever it is they've done, God loves them and it's our job to love people, even and especially the ones who are the hardest to love.

You may say, "How can I love them if I absolve the relationship?" That was my question too.

If your definition of love is doing things for people, you need to redefine it. Loving someone doesn't mean being friends with them. Sometimes the loving thing to do is let them go. Sometimes the loving thing to do is stop trying to be God in their lives and attempting to fix everything for them. That includes love in a marriage. You can't be God to your spouse. Now, I don't advocate leaving your marriage but it can't continue with you being the only one fighting for it. In the case of marriage, you have to confront and work together to reconstruct the unhealthy patterns into a mutual give and take.

For other relationships, leaving them may be the only option left. Pray on it.

Psalm 35:11-16 

Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know. They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft. But I, when they were sick— I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest. I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning. But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing;