How Many Times Do I Need to Learn Something Before It Sticks?

I’ve noticed that all my learning and change really does come “line upon line, precept upon precept” (2 Nephi 28:30). Every time I think I’ve learned everything I need to know about something, I run into another hang-up spot and realize there is more for me to learn. Luckily, the Lord is a patient teacher.

Since learning the truths about emotional dependency that I shared in my last post, I have run into more situations where these feelings have come up for me, and I’ve had to sort out what’s going on and how to best understand and handle those emotions.

I think giving up the relationships where I struggle with emotional dependency is a cop-out—I want to be able to keep those relationships and learn to engage in them in healthy ways. Just disengaging from those relationships doesn’t teach me anything; staying in the struggle to learn how to manage my instinct to go into emotional dependency in those relationships teaches me a lot more (I do have to be careful not to put the burden of solving my emotional dependency on the people I am tempted to become emotionally dependent on—I’ve lost friendships that way in the past. Solving my emotional dependency issues is my job, not theirs).

In pondering my most recent run-in with emotional dependency, I realized I need to relearn a lesson I’ve learned before: I need to stop trying to control things that are outside of my control.

I think a good way to explain what is going on for me in some of these situations is that when someone is really important to me and I value my relationship with them a lot, I’m tempted to try to control not only my side of the relationship, but also the other person’s side. I’m afraid of losing something that’s so precious to me, so I try to control not only how I feel about the other person, but also how they feel about me. This is a losing battle and creates a ton of anxiety for me.

As God has taught me before, the truth is, no matter what I do, other people get to decide how they feel about me and how much time they can/want to invest in their relationship with me. I can’t control other people or their side of our relationship. Only they can. When I try to control things outside of my control, there are several things that happen:

• I feel anxious

• I need constant reassurance that I am loved so I know whether my attempts to control the other person and my relationship with them are working or not

• I come across as needy and manipulative, which is likely to decrease the other person’s desire to spend time with me

Needless to say, not only does trying to control other people not work, but it often has the opposite effect of the one I intended. And it definitely makes me feel less secure in the relationship rather than more secure, which is what my attempt at control is supposed to accomplish in the first place. Lose-lose.

My conclusion to all this is, it’s my job to be aware of my own desires and to clearly communicate them to other people. It’s other people’s job to let me know if their responsibilities, priorities and desires line up in such a way that they are able/willing to accept any invitations my desires lead me to extend to them. I don’t need to control anything about other people’s desires or responses to me. When I ask a question or extend an invitation, I am just gathering information about other people’s availability and desires—their response doesn’t mean anything about me or about my relationship with them.

Basically, I have to let go of the control that I don’t actually have anyway, and I will find myself in a much more peaceful place. That’s my emotional dependency lesson for today—one that I will probably need to be reminded of a few more times before my brain gets itself re-wired well enough to hold onto it 😜