The Lies we tell Ourselves — #1 Self-Sufficiency
We grow up in a world that teaches us - from all sides, parents, teachers, friends, media, university, everybody and everything - that the ultimate goal is self-sufficiency. That you would need it in order to be happy, and to be successful.
"You can only find true happiness and love in yourself, not in others."
"Nobody else can save you (~lead you from unhappiness to happiness) than yourself."
"If you can't love yourself, you can't love others." / "If not even you can love yourself, others can't do it either." = Self-love is a requirement for all love.
"If you can dream it, you can do it", and virtually every other quote or proverb about success. = You don't need other people to reach whatever goal you want, it all depends only on you.
"I don't need my Dominant/partner. I want them. I don't need to submit to them/be with them. I choose it."
According to all the wisdom in the world, you don't need other people to achieve happiness and success. Or if you do, there's something wrong with you, you're weak, you're lacking something that others have to compensate for. Self-sufficiency is presented as the ultimate goal of all humans, and enough to become happy. Whatever you receive from others is the icing on the cake and makes life even better, but it's not needed for a happy life. Or if it is, you're deficient.
If self-sufficiency is so important as everybody tries to make us believe, then why is it that when you ask people who are dying (and there's a lot of research and studies about this, the following are facts, not my beliefs) what their biggest achievements in life were, and what their biggest regrets are, that almost everything that they mention is directly related to their relationships to other people? I wish I would have worked less and spent more time with my family. There's nothing better and greater I did in my whole life than having born and raised my wonderful child. My only wish that I have left in life is that my family will be okay without me. - And this doesn't only apply to adults, but it's the same for children already. A child-oncologist conducted a survey with terminally ill children and asked them questions about their life and dying. What they said was... It makes me sad, that my mom will be sad when I'm gone. I wish I could leave the hospital and go to school again because all my friends are there. When I'm in heaven I will look down to my mom and dad and my little brother and make sure that nothing happens to them. What I loved most was playing with my big sister...
People who are dying, no matter if they're 9 or 90 don't regret that they haven't made more money, spent more time working on their career, won this special award, and they don't wish for after their death that their grave will be kept in order, their cars be handled with care, their money not wasted. They celebrate their relationships, regret the relationships they haven't had and wish the best for their families.
Now, what does that tell us, who we are not dying (yet), for our life? Of course that's a matter of perspective, but I would say this: It's difficult to define what happiness and a good life actually are. One definition that makes sense and feels right to me is: If I had to die tomorrow, and I would I think "It's okay, because I had a good life" or "I can't die now, because I have such a good life - I want it to continue as it is for many more years and decades", then I would say I have a good life and I'm happy. And if I had to die tomorrow and I would think "It's okay, because I'm not having a good life anyway" or "I can't die now, because I don't even know yet what it means to be happy - there's so much I want to do and change to have a good life", then I would say I don't have a good life and I'm not happy. If people, who are actually dying tomorrow, see their happiness and suffering, achievements and regrets, connected to the relationships they've had or haven't had, then this would clearly mean, that relationships are in fact *needed* for happiness, success and a good life. Not a nice extra to have, but the main ingredient, the core of it all.
And also without being dying, to me this feels intuitively right. I need relationships. I need people. Mind you, I'm an especially un-social person, I hate socializing, I'm autistic and feel very uncomfortable around people. I even find real life friendships more draining than anything else to be honest. So I'm truly not the greatest advocate for relationships. And still, I'm convinced - and not only I, there are lots of professionals who've done research of all kinds on that and agree - that I need them. That all humans need them. For virtually everything in life. And I do mean NEED them.
I am convinced that we do need other people to be successful in life. Professional success is not possible based on self-sufficiency alone. You need connections, but even more you need support, you need someone to believe in you and root for you, you need a mentor who gives you some guidance and from whose experience you can benefit, you need supporters who help and push you or hold you back, in certain situations. Success is teamwork.
I am convinced that you need a partner to be happy. Yes, need! I believe that "I don't need my partner to be happy, I just want him" is bullshit. You might not need them to survive, to pay your bills, keep your house in order, do your work, dress yourself properly, and all these daily life things. But you do need them to be happy.
And I believe that the negative connotation of 'co-dependency' is a huge contributor to the fact that so many people, everywhere in the world and of all ages, are so generally unhappy, in- and outside of relationships.
Dependency, or co-dependency, is the opposite of self-sufficiency, and thereby, with self-sufficiency being the goal, dependency is the enemy. Dependency is deficiency. People who are dependent lack something that they would need to be happy and have to get it from somebody else. And you know what - this is correct! Only that it's not a negative thing and not a deficit. It's the nature of being human. Humans just are not self-sufficient, humans do need other people for their happiness. Because happiness requires some things that you can't give yourself, by design and not due to a personal deficit.
Happiness requires affection. We need people to show us that they love us, that we are love-worthy. We need touch, emotionally and even physiologically because it releases hormones that make us feel good and confident. We need support and encouragement and compassion and comfort and trust. Happiness without all of this is not possible, and it's all things that we can only receive from others.
The human being is by design a part of a system, in many ways. For itself, alone , it has no meaning and no purpose. Recent studies show that loneliness belongs to the top triggers and contributors to almost everything that decreases life expectancy, illnesses, accidents, poverty, suicides. We even have a hard time to survive completely alone, and even more difficult is it to be happy completely alone, virtually impossible.
There are exceptions of course, and everybody is different anyway. I know people who need a big circle of friends in order to be happy and then there are people like me who can't stand much more than one regular person in their immediate vicinity, physically and mentally, but are very close to this one person. And aside from the close relationships we have like partners and friends, there's also a difference in how independent people are in handling their life, job, hobbies etc in general. But I think it's safe to say that no man is an island.
So let's please stop telling ourselves and others this lie. Let's stop to demonize dependency. Let's start to celebrate and value the connections that we have to other people as what they are, an expression of our needs. A wonderful necessity. There's nothing bad or wrong about depending on others, needing others.— Humans. Are. Not. Self. Sufficient !
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