Linda Ellerbee Quotes

Being codependent means that when you die, someone else's life passes before your eyes.

If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love.

Your whole being is involved in taking care of someone else, worrying about what they think of you, how they treat you, how you can make them treat you better. Right now everyone in the world seems to think that they are codependent and that they come from dysfunctional families. They call it codependency. I call it the human condition.

The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important. I write in order to be worth your while and to finance the way I want to live with you. Not the way you want to live. The way I want to live with you. Without you I wouldn't care. I'd eat tinned spaghetti and put on yesterday's clothes. But as it is I change my socks, and make money, and tart up Brodie's unspeakable drivel into speakable drivel so he can be an author too, like me.

I'm a perfectionist. I need to be needed. I need to do things for a man. But I don't need to do them as much, these days.

It drives me nuts how I rely on my wife for everything. I can't imagine a day without her!

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn't even want the beastly thing.

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

we had each other. I never needed anyone else. That’s the difference between you and me. You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed one person. Only ever needed you.

I feel more helpless with you than without you.

A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.

Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.

Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?

Two halves don't make a whole. Two wholes make a whole. In my relationship, I was giving myself away to make the relationship better, but in actuality, wasn't doing better by doing that. I became less of a man.

When you're together with someone for some time, you will automatically depend on them as if they were a crutch. And then it ends.

I would describe my relationship with my couch as symbiotic - others would describe it as dangerous.

There's the bond of a connection and the bond of bondage... When you are connected to somebody, everything each one does affects the other, and it's a kind of bondage. You're not as free as you would be if that person wasn't in your life.

One of the ironies of being with someone you really love for a long time is becoming completely incapable of handling stressful or difficult things by yourself.

I've definitely been in that situation many times - staying in a relationship longer than I should. I think there's so much of your identity that comes from a relationship.

I'd got into the habit of needing that security, love, and acceptance from a guy to make me happy.

You can live without me." "I don't want to." I feared a love like this - that made us incomplete without each other. It was beautiful but treacherous, like snow that looked white and pure and lovely from the safety of your window, but when you stepped out to touch the softness, the cold first stole your breath, and then your will to move, until you could just lay down in it and let the numbness take you. yet I didn't want to be without him either, so I didn't chide him for the statement.

The way i see it, love is just a bigger, stickier form of trust.

I love you. You're my only reason to stay alive... if that's what I am.

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story.