Love, Children, and Marriage – Your Erroneous Zones

The following post is a long excerpt written by Dr Wayne Dyer from his book Your Erroneous Zones and I do not take credit for any of it. You can support this author by purchasing your own copy of his works by clicking the book below.

“In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people.”

Leaving the psychological nest is one of life’s difficult chores. The dependency viper intrudes in life in many, many ways, and routing it entirely is made more difficult by the numerous people who benefit from another’s psychological dependency.

Psychological independence means total freedom from all obligatory relationships, and an absence of other-directed behavior. It means being free from having to do something you would not otherwise choose, were the relationship not to exist. The nest-leaving business is especially difficult because our society teaches us to fulfill certain expectations in special relationships, which include parents, children, authority figures and loved ones.

Leaving the nest means becoming your own person, living and choosing the behaviors that you want. It does not mean breaking off in any sense of the word. If you enjoy your way of interacting with anyone and it doesn’t interfere with your own goals, then it is something you can cherish rather than change.

Psychological dependence, on the other hand, means that you are in relationships that involve no choice, a relationship in which you are obliged to be something you don’t want to be and that you resent the way in which you are being forced to conduct yourself. This is the guts of this erroneous zone, and it is akin to the approval-seeking discussed in Chapter III.

If you want some kind of relationship, then it is not unhealthy. But if you need it, or are forced into it, and subsequently feel resentment, then you are in a self-defeating area. Thus, it is the obligation that is the problem, rather than the relationship itself. Obligation breeds guilt and dependency, while choice fosters love and independence. There is no choice in a psychologically dependent relationship, consequently there will always be indignation and ill-feelings in any such alliance.

Being psychologically independent involves not needing others. I didn’t say wanting others, I said needing. The moment you need, you become vulnerable, a slave. If the one you need leaves, or changes his mind, or dies, you are then forced into immobilization, collapse, or even death. But society teaches us to be psychologically dependent on a whole raft of folks from parents on, and you still may be holding open your mouth waiting for the worms in many significant relationships.

As long as you feel that you have to do anything because it is expected of you in a particular relationship, and your doing it creates any resentment or your not doing it any guilt, you can count yourself as having work to do in this erroneous zone.

Eliminating dependency starts with your family, with the way your parents dealt with you as a child and the way you deal with your own children today. How many psychologically dependent sentences do you carry in your head today? How many of them do you force on your children?

The Dependency Trap in Child Rearing and the Family

Walt Disney produced a superb film some years ago entitled Bear Country. It traced a mother bear and her two babies through the first few months of the cubs’ lives. Mama-bear taught the cubs how to hunt, fish, and climb trees. She taught them how to protect themselves when they confronted danger. Then one day, Mama-bear, for her own instinctive reasons, decided that it was time to leave. She forced them to scamper up a tree, and without even looking back, she left.

Forever!

In her own bear mind, she had completed her parental responsibilities. She didn’t try to manipulate them into visiting her on alternate Sundays. She did not accuse them of being ungrateful, or threaten to have a nervous break down if they disappointed her. She simply let them go.

Throughout the animal kingdom, parenting means to teach the offspring the skills necessary to be independent and then to leave. With us humans, the instinct is still the same, that is, to be independent, but the neurotic need to own and live one’s life through one’s children seems to take over, and the goal of raising a child to be independent is subverted into the idea of raising a child to hold onto him.

What do you want for your children? Would you like them to be high in self-esteem and self-confidence, neurosis-free, fulfilled and happy?

Of course you would.

But how can you help to ensure such an outcome?

Only by being that way yourself.

Children learn from the behavior of their models. If you are full of guilt and unfulfilled in your life, but telling your children not to be, then you are selling a tainted product. If you model low self-esteem, then you’ll teach your children to adopt the same attitudes for themselves.

Even more significantly, if you make your children more important than yourself, you are not helping them, you are merely teaching them to put others ahead of themselves, and to take a back seat while remaining unfulfilled.

Such irony.

You cannot hand your children self-confidence; they must acquire it by seeing you living the same way yourself. Only by treating yourself as the most important person and not always sacrificing yourself for your children will you teach them to have their own self-confidence and belief in themselves. If you are a sacrificer, you are modeling sacrificing behavior.

And what does sacrificing behavior mean?

Putting others before yourself, not liking yourself, seeking approval and other erroneous behavior. While doing for others is sometimes admirable, if it is at the expense of yourself, you are merely teaching the others the same kind of resentment-breeding behavior.

From the very beginning children want to do things for themselves. “I can do it myself!” “Watch me, Mommy, I can do it without any help” “I’ll feed myself.” On and on the signals come. And while there is a great deal of dependence in those early years, there is also the distinctive push toward autonomy from almost from the first day.

As a four-year-old, little Roxanne will always come to Mommy and Daddy when she is hurt or in need of an emotional support of any sort. She pours out her soul when she is eight and ten years of age. While she wants to be thought of as a big girl (I’ll button my own coat!”), she also wants the support of a caring parent. (“Look Mom, I scratched my knee and it’s bleeding.”) Her self-concept is developing through the views of her parents and other significant people in her life.

Suddenly, Roxanne is fourteen.

She comes home crying because of a fight with her boyfriend, and she runs into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Mamma comes up and asks her to talk about it in her typically caring way. But now she is told by Roxanne in no uncertain terms,, “I don’t’ want to talk about it. Leave me alone.”

Instead of Mamma understanding that this little scene is evidence that she has been an effective parent, and the little Roxanne who always told all her problems to Mommy is now working on them herself (emotional independence), Mamma is distressed. She is not ready to let go, to let Roxanne work it out in her own independent way. She still sees Roxanne as the same nestling that she was only a short time ago. But if Mamma persists, and forces the issue, she will be in for a huge dose of resentment from Roxanne.

The child’s desire to get out of the nest is strong, but when ownership and sacrifice have been the lubrication for the family machine, the natural act of leaving turns into a crisis. Nest-leaving in a psychologically sound atmosphere involves neither crisis nor turmoil; it is the natural consequence of effective living. But when guilt and fear of disappointment color the nest-leaving, they continue throughout life, sometimes to the point that the marriage relationship becomes one of parenting, rather than of two individuals sharing on an equal footing.

What then are your goals of parenting, and of working out an effective present relationship with your own parents?

Certainly the family is an important unit in the developmental process, but it should not be the permanent unit. It should not be a vehicle of guilt and neurosis when its various members make moves for emotional independence. You may have heard parents say, “I have a right to make my child into anything I choose.”

But what is the payoff for such a domineering attitude?

Hate, resentment, anger, and frustrating guilt when the child grows up. As you examine effective parent-child relationships which have no requirements or obligations attached, you’ll discover parents who treat their children as friends.

If a child spills the catsup on the table, it’s not a “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing; you’re so clumsy” routine. Instead, you’ll see the same kind of a response that would be given to a friend were they to spill something. “Can I help you?” No abuse because they are owned, but a respect for the child’s dignity. You’ll also discover that effective parents foster independence rather than dependence, and create no scenes about normal desires to be autonomous.

Differences Between Dependent and Independent Focused Families

In families that focus on independence, movement toward being one’s own person is seen as normal, rather than as a challenge to anyone’s authority. Clinging and needing are not emphasized. Similarly, there are no demands that a child have allegiance forever, simply because of membership in a family. The result is family members who want to be together, rather than feel obligated to be together. There is also a respect for privacy rather than a demand to share everything.

In families like this, the woman has a life of her own beyond being a mother and wife. She will model effective living for her children, rather than live her life for and through them. The parents feel that their own happiness is paramount, because without it there can be no family harmony.

Hence the parents can go off alone occasionally, and not feel obliged to always be there for their children. The mother isn’t a slave, because she doesn’t want her own children (especially the girls) to become one. And she doesn’t want to be one herself. She doesn’t feel that she must be there all the time for her infant’s every need. She feels that she can appreciate her children and vice versa all the more if she is fulfilling herself and contributing to her family, her community and her culture on an equal footing with the men in this world.

In this sort of family there is no subtle manipulation via guilt or threats to keep the children dependent and responsible to the parents. As the children mature, the parents don’t want their kids to visit them out of obligation. Besides, the parents are too busy being effective in their own way to be sitting around waiting for children and grandchildren to show up and give them a reason for living.

Parents like these don’t believe that they should spare their own children all of the hardships that they suffered because they recognize that the very act of working at a hardship is what gave them their own self-confidence and self-esteem. They wouldn’t want to rob their children of such precious experiences.

These parents perceive the desire of their children to struggle for themselves, with the assistance but not overbearance of a caring parent, as healthy and not to be denied. Hesse’s Demian talks about the variety of paths to independence.

Sooner or later each of us must take the step that separates him from his father, from his mentors; each of us must have some cruelly lonely experience . . . I myself had not parted from my parents and their world, the “luminous” world in a violent struggle, but had gradually and almost imperceptibly become estranged. I was sad that it had to be this way, and it made for many unpleasant hours during my visits back home.*

You can have all visits back home be fond experiences, if you get a firm handle on your own struggle for independence from your parents. And if you model self-pride and self-worth for your children, they will in turn leave the nest with an absence of stress and turmoil for all concerned.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher summed it up perfectly in Her Son’s Wife:

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

So be it. You can make nest-leaving a natural event, or one which is loaded with trauma and which will haunt the child and the relationship forever. But you were also a child at one time, and if you learned the psychological dependency routine well, then perhaps when you married you substituted one dependent relationship for another.

Psychological Dependence and Marriage Crisis

You may have resolved your dependency on your parents, and perhaps your relationship with your own children is under control as well. Perhaps you recognize your children’s need for independence and are encouraging it. But you may still have a dependency problem in your life. If you’re one of those people who left one dependent relationship with your parents and entered into another when you married, then you have an erroneous zone that needs work.

Louis Anspacher wrote about marriage in America–

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.

There they are, the two ugly words, dependence and obligation, which account for the state of marriage and rate of divorce in our country. The simple fact is that most folks just don’t like marriage, and while they may endure it, or get out of it, the psychological casualties persist.

A relationship based on love, as was said earlier, is one in which each partner allows the other to be what he chooses, with no expectations and no demands. It is a simple association of two people who love each other so much that each would never expect the other to be something that he wouldn’t choose for himself. It is a union based on independence, rather than dependence. But this sort of relationship is so rare in our culture that it is almost mythological.

Imagine a union with the one you love, in which each of you can be whatever you desire. Now consider the reality of most relationships. How does that grisly dependency sneak in and muck up the works?

A Typical Marriage

The thread that winds through most marriages is one of dominance and submission. While the roles may shift regularly, different for various marital situations, the thread is nevertheless present. One partner dominates the other as a condition of the alliance. A case history of a typical marriage and its psychological crisis points goes something like that of our fictional couple below.

At the time of marriage, the husband is twenty-three and his wife is twenty. He has slightly more education, and has secured the money-earning prestige position, while the woman works as a secretary, clerk, or perhaps in a profession dominated by women such as teacher or nurse. The woman’s job is a filler, until she can become a mother.

After four years of marriage, there are two or three children, and the woman is serving as a wife and mother in the home. Her role is that of taking care of the house, her children, and her husband. From a job standpoint, her position is that of a domestic, and psychologically she is in a submissive position. The man’s work is given more significance, largely because he brings in money to support the family. His successes become his wife’s successes, and his social contacts become their friends. He is given more status in the home, and the woman’s role is often one of making his life as comfortable as she can.

The woman spends the greater part of her day interacting with children or she talks with neighborhood women who are in the same psychological snare. When her husband has a crisis on the job, it becomes her crisis, and generally speaking, any objective observer would see that there is a dominating and a submissive member in this arrangement. The woman has accepted and perhaps sought out this kind of relationship, because it is all she has ever known.

Her marriage is modeled on that of her parents and others she saw as she grew up. And more often than not, her dependence on her husband merely replaced her dependence on her parents. The man similarly sought out a woman who was soft spoken, gentle, and who would reinforce the fact that he was the breadwinner and headwinner in all interactions. Thus, both people got what they were looking for, and what they had seen all of their own lives in terms of how a marriage operates.

After several years of of marriage, perhaps four to seven years, a crisis begins to erupt. The submissive partner begins to feel trapped, unimportant and dissatisfied because she is not making a significant contribution. The man encourages his wife to be more her own person, to be more assertive, and to take charge of her life and stop feeling sorry for herself.

These are the first messages that conflict with what he wanted when he get married. “If you want to work, why don’t you look for a job?” or “Go back to school.” He encourages her to seek new outlets, to stop being so namby-pamby. In short, to be something different than what he married, which was submissive and domestic.

The woman, until now, has always felt that any unhappiness in her husband was her fault. “Where did I go wrong?” If he’s unhappy or frustrated, she feels that she has been inadequate, or that she must not be as attractive as she used to be. The submissive partner resorts to her own subservient mindset, and assesses all male problems as being lodged in her own self.

At this time in the marriage the man is very much occupied with job promotions, social contacts, and professional striving. He is on his way up, and a sniveling wife is something he cannot tolerate. Because of his many opportunities to deal with a great number of different people (something denied to his submissive partner) he is changing. He has become even more self-assertive, demanding and intolerant of weaknesses in others, including his family, Thus, his admonitions to “get yourself together” to his submissive wife.

This is also a time when the husband may look for sexual outlets outside the marriage. He has many opportunities and he seeks the companionship of more exciting women. Sometimes the submissive partner begins some experimentation of her own. She may take on a volunteer job, enroll in school, seek therapy, have an affair of her own, most of which is enthusiastically supported by the husband.

Perhaps the submissive partner will begin to gain new insights into her behavior. She sees her subservience as something that she has chosen all her life, not just in her marriage. Her approval-seeking behavior has now been challenged, and she begins to put herself on the road to greater self-responsibility by eliminating all dependency in her world, including that of her parents, her husband, her friends, and even her children.

She begins to gain self-confidence. She may take on a job, and begin to make new friends. She begins to stand up to her dominant husband, and stops taking all of the abuse that has been her lot since the marriage began. She demands equality, no longer satisfied to wait any longer for it to be granted to her. She simply takes it. She insists on a sharing of domestic chores, including care of the children.

This new independence and the shit from the external to internal thinking on the part of the woman is not easily accepted by her husband. He becomes threatened. Anxiety is entering his life at a time when he cannot afford it. The last thing he needs is an upstart wife, even though he encouraged her to get out more on her own and think for herself.

He didn’t expect to create a monster, least of all one that would challenge his own established supremacy. He may react with a heavy dose of dominance, which has always worked at putting his submissive partner in her place in the past. He argues against the absurdity of working, when she is paying most all of her salary for babysitters. He points to the illogic of her belief that she isn’t equal. In fact, she’s indulged. “You don’t have to work, you have it made, all you have to do is take care of a house and be a mother to your children.” He tries guilt. “The children are going to suffer.” “I can’t have this aggravation.”

Perhaps he threatens her with divorce, or as a last resort, suicide. This often works. The wife says to herself, “Wow, I almost blew it,” and reverts to her submissive role. The heavy dose of dominance served to remind her of her place.

But if she refuses to regress, the marriage itself may be in jeopardy. At any rate, there is a definite crisis. If the wife persists in replacing her submissiveness with self-reliance, the husband, who needs to dominate someone, might leave for a younger wife who will stand in awe of him and thus put her in the position of looking up to him and becoming a cute little showpiece. On the other hand, the marriage may survive the crisis, and an interesting shift may take place.

The thread of dominance and submission still winds its way through the marriage. That is the only kind of marriage both partners recognize. Often the husband will now take on the submissive role out of fear of losing something he cherishes, or at least depends on. Staying home more, getting closer to the children (out of guilt from earlier abandonment), he may say things like, “You don’t need me anymore” or “You’re changing, you’re not the girl I married and I’m not sure I like the new you.” He has become more submissive. He may become a heavy drinker, and a self-pitier out of a need to manipulate his wife or to recapture his long-lost superiority.

The wife is now in a career, or moving toward one; she has her own circle of friends, and is developing outside interests of her own. Perhaps she is having an affair as an assertive retaliatory gesture, but at the least, she is feeling good about receiving some acclaim and compliments for her accomplishments. However, the thread is still there, and a crisis looms heavy. As long as one partner must be more important than the other or fear-of-divorce is the thing that binds the two together, dependency is still the cornerstone of the alliance. The dominant partner, be it man or woman, is not satisfied with a slave for a spouse.

The marriage may continue in a legal sense, but any love or communication between the two partners has been destroyed. Divorce is common here, but if not, two people begin to go their separate ways within the marriage—no sex, separate quarters, a communication pattern based on mutual put-down, in lieu of understanding.

A different conclusion is also possible, if both partners decide to reevaluate themselves and their relationship. If both work at becoming free of erroneous zones, and loving each other in the sense of allowing the other partner to choose his own fulfillment, then the marriage can flower and grow.

With two self-reliant people, who care enough about each other to foster independence rather than dependence, but at the same time share happiness with a loved person, marriage can be an exciting prospect. But, when two people try to merge into oneness, or one tries to dominate the other in any way, that spark that is within us all fights for one of the greatest human needs, independence.

Longevity is not an indication of success in a marriage. Many people stay married out of fear of the unknown, or because of inertia, or simply because it is the thing to do. In a successful marriage, a marriage where both partners feel genuine love, each is willing to let the other person choose for himself rather than to dominate. There is not the constant hassling that involves thinking and speaking for the other partner, and demanding that he does what he’s supposed to do.

Dependency is the serpent in the paradise of a happy marriage. It creates patterns of dominance and submission and ultimately destroys relationships. This erroneous zone can be eliminated, but it will never be an easy battle, since power and control are at stake, and few want to give them up without a fight. Most important, dependency should not be confused with love. Putting some spaces in togetherness ironically solidifies marriages.

You Are Treated the Way You Teach Others to Treat You

Dependency is not something that just happens because of association with domineering people. It is, like all erroneous zone behavior, a choice. You teach people to dominate you, and to treat you the way you’ve always been treated. There are many schemes that maintain the domineering process, and they are repeated only if they work. They work if they keep you in line and in a dependent position in the relationship. Here are some of the common strategies for maintaining dominance and control threads in marriage.

Yelling, screaming and voice-raising of any kind. This will keep you in line if you are a soft person and want things quiet and smooth.
Threatening behavior such as, “I’ll leave, I’ll get a divorce.”
Inducement of guilt. “You had no right to—-” “I don’t understand how you could have done such a thing.” If the guilt is your hang-up, then you can be kept “submissive” with such statements.
The use of anger and explosive behavior, such as throwing things, swearing, hitting objects.
The physical ailment ploy. Having a heart attack, headache, back problem, or whatever when one partner doesn’t act the way the other wants him to. You can be manipulated by this if you have taught your partner that you’ll behave when he gets sick.
The silent treatment. No talking and deliberate sulking are superlative strategies that one partner can use to maneuver the other into correct behavior.
The tears routine in which you cry in order to help the other person to feel guilty.
The leaving scene. Simply getting up and walking out is a good way to manipulate a partner into or out of certain behavior.
The “You don’t love me” or “You don’t understand me” contrivance for getting one’s way and maintaining the dependency in the relationship.
The suicide scheme. “If you don’t do what I want, then I’ll kill myself” or “If you leave me, I’ll end it all.”

All of the above strategies are methods that keep the other person in the desired role in marriage. They are used when they work. If one partner refuses to be manipulated by them, the other will not continue to use them. It is only when one mate is responsive to these ploys that the other gets in the habit of using them. If you give the proper submissive reactions, you are teaching the other what you will tolerate.

If you get pushed around, you’ve been sending push-me-around signals. You can learn to teach others to treat you the way you wanted to be treated. It will take time and effort because it has taken a lot of time to teach others how you wanted to be treated until now. But you can make the change whether it be on the job, in the family, at a restaurant, on the bus, any place at all that you receive shabby treatment which you dislike. Rather than saying, “Why don’t you treat me better?” begin to say, “What am I doing to teach others to treat me this way?” Put the focus on you, and begin changing those reactions.

Some Common Dependency and Dependency-Fostering Behavior

Feeling unable to leave the nest or leaving it with bad feelings on both sides.
Feeling required or obliged to visit, telephone, entertain, chauffeur and the like.
Asking permission of a spouse for anything, including spending money, authority to speak, or use of the car.
Invasions of privacy, such as looking through drawers and private records of children.
Sentences like, “I could never tell him how I feel, he wouldn’t like it.”
Falling into depression and immobilization after the death of a loved one.
Feeling committed to a particular job and never venturing out on your own.
Having expectations for how a spouse, parent, or child has to be.
Being embarrassed by a child’s, spouse’s, or parent’s behavior, as if what they are is a part of what you are.
Being in training all of your life for a job or position. Never leaving the training phase for self-reliance.
Being hurt by what others say, feel, think, or do.
Only feeling happy or successful if your mate is feeling that way.
Taking orders from someone.
Allowing someone else to make decisions for you, or always asking advice before deciding.
“You owe me, look what I did for you.” The obligations that go with being dependent.
Not doing something in front of a parent or dominant person because they wouldn’t approve. Not smoking, drinking, swearing, eating a hot fudge sundae, or whatever, because of your submissive role.
Giving up on your own life when a loved one dies, or becomes seriously ill.
Using careful language around a dominant person, so that he won’t be upset with you.
Persistently lying about your own behavior, and having to distort the truth so that “they” won’t be upset with you.

The Psychological Compensation of Dependency

The reasons for hanging on to this self-thwarting behavior are not very complicated. You may know the payoffs for being a dependent, but do you know how destructive they are? Dependency may appear harmless, but it is the enemy of all happiness and fulfillment. Here are the more common dividends for keeping yourself in a dependent state.

Being dependent can keep you in the protective custody of others, and give you the little child benefits of not being responsible for your own behavior.
By staying dependent, you can blame your shortcomings on others.
If you are dependent on others, you don’t have to undertake the hard work and risk of change. You are secure in your reliance on others who will take responsibility for you.
You can feel good about yourself because you are pleasing others. You learned that the way to be good is to please Mommy, and now many symbolic Mommies manipulate you.
You can avoid guild which you choose when you behave assertively. It is easier to behave than to learn to eliminate guilt.
You needn’t make choices or decisions for yourself. You model yourself on the parent, spouse, or individual on whom you depend. So long as you think what they think or feel what they feel, there’s no need for the hard work of determining what you think or feel.
When everything else is boiled away, it is just plain easier to be a follower than a leader. You can do what you’re told and avoid trouble, even though you may not like the way you feel as a follower. It’s still simpler than taking all those risks that go with being your own person. Dependency is distasteful because it makes you into less than a whole, independently functioning person. But it is easier, that’s for sure.

A Prospectus for Ridding Yourself of Dependency

Write your own Declaration of Independence in which you spell out for yourself how you want to function in all relationships, not eliminating compromise, but wiping out any manipulation without representation. “I, the person, in order to have a more perfect union, etc.”
Talk with each person that you feel you are psychologically dependent upon. Declare your aims of functioning independently, explain how you feel when you do things out of a sense of obligation. This is an excellent strategy for getting started, because the other may not even be aware of how you feel as a dependent.
Give yourself five-minute goals for how you’re going to deal with dominant people in your life. Try a one-shot “No, I don’t want to,” and test the reaction of your reaction in the other person’s.
Arrange a planning session with your dominant partner at a time when you are feeling unthreatened. During this session, explain that you sometimes feel manipulated and submissive and that you would like to arrange a nonverbal signal to let the other person know how you are feeling when it crops up, but that you don’t want to discuss it at that time. A simple tugging of the ear or a thumb in the mouth to signal you’re feeling submissive at a particular time.
At the moment you are feeling shoved-around psychologically, state how you feel to the person, and then act out the way you’d like to behave.
Remind yourself that parents, spouses, friends, bosses, children and others will often disapprove of your behavior, and that has nothing to do with who or what you are. It is a given fact in any relationship that you will incur some disapproval. If you expect it, then you won’t be thrown by it. In this way you can break many of the dependency ties that enslave you emotionally.
Even if you are deliberately avoiding dominant people (parent, spouse, boss, child), you are still being controlled by them in their absence if you are experiencing emotional immobilization because of them.
If you are feeling obligated to visit certain people, ask yourself if you would want others to visit you simply because they felt required to do so. If not, extend a similar courtesy to those you are treating in this manner, and talk it out with them. That is, reverse the logic and see how undignified a relationship of obligation really is.
Make a decision to get out of your dependency role by doing volunteer work, reading, getting a baby-sitter (even if you can’t afford it), getting a job that doesn’t necessarily even pay well. Why? Simply because the remuneration of your own high self-esteem is worth whatever the price it costs in money or time.
Insist on financial independence with no strings, and no accounting to anyone. You are a slave if you must ask for money. If that is impossible, arrange to make your own money in any creative way that you can devise.
Let them go! Let yourself go! Stop giving orders! Stop taking orders!
Recognize your desire for privacy and not having to share everything you feel and experience with someone. You are unique and private. If you feel you must share everything then you are without choice, and of course, a dependent.
Let a child’s room be his. Give him an area that he can control, and, as long as it’s not unhealthy, allow him to make decisions about how it will be organized. A made bed is not any more psychologically sound than an unmade bed, even though you may have learned the opposite.
At a party, congregate with people away from your partner. Don’t feel responsible to be with that person at all times. Split up and then join forces when it is over. You’ll double your learning and experience.
If you want to go to a movie and your partner wants to play tennis, do it that way! Allow yourself more separateness, and your moments of togetherness will be happier, and more exciting.
Take mini-trips alone, or with friends without having to feel attached to your partner. You’ll feel more strongly toward your partner when you come back, and you’ll treasure your independent functioning as well.
Keep in mind that you have no responsibility to make others happy. Other makes themselves happy. Thus, you may truly enjoy the company of another, but if you feel it is your mission to make them happy, then you are a dependent who will also feel gloom when the other person is down. Or even worse, you’ll feel as though you let him down. You are responsible for your own emotions and so is everyone else. No one has control over your feelings, except you.
Remember that habit is no reason to do anything. Just because you’ve always been submissive to other is not sufficient justification for allowing it to continue.

The business of effective living and parenting is independence. Similarly, the hallmark of effective marriage is minimal fusion and optimal autonomy and self-reliance. And while you may feel real fear about breaking away from dependent relationships, if you asked those upon whom you are emotionally dependent, you would surprisingly discover that most admire those who think and act for themselves. More irony. You get the most respect for being independent, particularly from those who try the hardest to keep you subordinate.

The nest is a beautiful place for a child to develop, but nest-leaving is even more beautiful and can be viewed that way by the one leaving, as well as the one watching the takeoff.