Voluntary Self-Sacrifice or Codependence?

Sometimes it's a slippery slope

(photo from the author)

I’ve spent some considerable degree of time in these writings exploring what I believe to be the pursuit of a life of greatest possible fulfillment. First of all, I believe that life should be lived as intentionally as possible. No decision is too small to be made on purpose: from how you put on your socks on some random Tuesday to who your life partner will be and how you show up for your kids, to what you want your life to be like in your old age. Secondly, as I just inferred, intention should also be focused on the long-term greater good. Short-term, hedonistic, and self-focused decisions will inevitably lead to dissatisfaction at best and some degree of destruction at worst.

I believe that living within an intentionally applied voluntary self-sacrifice is the path toward fulfillment, and I’ve explored this idea a number of times in my writing. There is a nested hierarchical structure in the application of voluntary self-sacrifice, much like concentric circles. There is very little separation at the top of the hierarchy, between the innermost of the circles. The separation grows as we move outward. Each later is built on the fundamental essential element of voluntary self-sacrifice at its core, sacrificing a bit of selfishness at that layer for the subsequent layer. Like all decisions, the distinction between prioritizing the needs of that layer and self-sacrifice for the next layer(s) should be made with full intention.

Self-care is at the top of the hierarchy. But it is important to understand that self-care, as appropriately conceptualized and applied, is about actual needs, not wants. Wants are short-term, driven mostly by pleasure indulgence or discomfort avoidance. Needs are long-term, fundamental essentials for survival physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. The self-sacrifice at the top layer of self-care is the sacrifice of your short-term, hedonistic desires for your own long-term benefit. Self-care includes the most primal needs like air, food, water, shelter, and safety. Then it includes sleep, nutrition, exercise, and stress management. Finally, it includes intimate connection, community, and purpose. 

The next level of the hierarchy would be your intimate partner relationship, most ideally a monogamous marriage that lasts for a lifetime. After prioritizing self-care, so that you show up in your marriage as your best possible self, then it’s right to prioritize the marriage. Self-sacrifice at this layer involves the sacrifice of your own selfish wants for the benefit of your marriage. All intimate partner conflict is the result of getting this wrong. I’ve written before about the importance of “we > me.” The connection in the relationship is the highest possible priority. When I get that backward, and prioritize me over we, that’s when problems arise. It’s literally destructive to the relationship.

I tell clients sometimes that the most helpful thing you can ever say in your relationship is, “ok.” I find this to be an interesting observation: you thought enough of this person to marry him or her. You trusted this person’s judgment and you were aligned on way more things than you weren’t. But then something comes along where you want something different than your partner, and all of a sudden, you engage with your partner like he or she has the cognitive capacity of a 5 year old. “Why can’t he/she see it the way I see it? It’s SO obvious!!!” Then emotions escalate and arguments lead to high conflict and disconnect. 

It probably wasn’t all that serious, if you take your ego out of it. Your partner probably has pretty good judgment, or you would not have married him or her. Maybe you have something to learn by listening to your partner’s point of view, and giving it honest consideration. I had a family attorney friend back in KY who used to say, “You can win every argument that you want on your way to a divorce.” That doesn’t sound like a good strategy to me.

I wrote a lot about voluntary self-sacrifice and servant leadership in my post about masculinity. I also wrote about the idea that “It’s not about me,” in my post about Navy SEAL Michael Murphy. I firmly believe that’s how I am supposed to show up in a relationship, fully oriented toward making my partner feel loved and appreciated, and help her work toward the greatest possible version of herself. The paradox of healthy relationships is that when I am fully oriented toward loving her, she is most likely to love me back just as actively, and thus I am most likely to get my needs met. If, instead, I focus on me and what I want, I have created an egocentric power struggle dynamic in the relationship, I’m probably exhibiting some degree of tyrannical behavior (there’s a post coming out about that soon), and we are both likely to be left feeling unloved and unhappy.

It is a fundamental psychological truth that there is very little difference between being highly self-aware and negative emotion. Thinking too much about yourself literally makes you miserable. There are a lot of conclusions to be drawn from that, but one is that you cannot possibly live the most fulfilling life by putting too much focus only on what you want. What is actually much more fulfilling is integrating yourself into something bigger, in this case your marriage, and working toward the best possible version of that. This means giving up your own selfish desires for the benefit of the relationship. Mental health is much better conceptualized as the degree to which you can integrate into the different hierarchical layers of relationships and society than something internal and individual. You can’t be fully mentally healthy if your relationships with the world around you are a mess. This is most especially true with regard to your marriage.

So, consistent, reciprocal voluntary self-sacrifice is the highest ideal between two partners in an intimate relationship. But there is some nuance there that has to be explored, within which the idea of voluntary self-sacrifice has to be fleshed out more carefully. The way that I act that out ought to be decided very intentionally.

John Bowlby was a psychotherapist in the 1950s and he is credited with developing what mental health professionals refer to as attachment theory. The idea is that the emotional bonds that infants and young children form with primary caregivers, especially their parents, profoundly affect how they are able to relate to others across the rest of their lives. This is particularly significant in intimate partner relationships: your attachment style determines a lot of how you show up with your partner. Specifically here, I want to explore what is referred to as anxious (or insecure) attachment.

Anxious attachment can be the result of a primary caregiver being disengaged, or even absent, during a person’s childhood. This results in an almost primal fear of abandonment and a strong need for closeness and reassurance in an intimate relationship. This can manifest in a relationship where the affected partner sacrifices his own needs to those of the partner so that the partner won’t leave. He equates love with being needed. For this person, the idea of voluntary self-sacrifice will have  a lot of appeal; that’s how he’s learned to “earn” love anyway. But for him, this creates a slippery slope toward codependence.

Anxious attachment, masquerading as voluntary self-sacrifice, becoming codependent, means sacrificing my own legitimate needs in an effort to keep you happy, so that you will (hopefully) behave lovingly toward me. It includes overdoing in the relationship, and acting from a sense of heightened responsibility for your wants, often to my own significant detriment. I am no longer acting out of love, but rather from a place of unhealthy neediness. Even though it may not seem like it, our interactions are much more transactional at their essence. In this way, self-sacrifice is not an act of love, but rather of manipulation, recognized or not. 

For the anxiously attached, intentional application of voluntary self-sacrifice is very important in order to avoid the potential for codependence. The anxious attachment partner has to work on improving his capacity for self-awareness, emotional regulation, intention, and boundary setting. It’s important to remember the hierarchical order: self care first, then the good of the relationship. Self-sacrifice that actually does me damage is not loving, for either of us. Next, you need to get into the habit of asking yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Am I behaving in a way that makes your life better purely from a place of love? Or to get something back from you out of insecurity or fear? Am I doing for you because I truly want to, or so that you won’t leave me? Am I saying, “I love you,” just to get you to say it back? If so, that’s manipulative, and that is a likely sign of codependence. 

It’s often hard for the anxious attachment person to say no. But voluntary self-sacrifice that is not oriented toward your partner’s betterment is not actually loving. If your partner asks for something that does not serve her, or the relationship, well, then your healthiest choice is to refuse. Doing the thing anyway is probably driven by codependence. Similarly, overdoing for your partner keeps your partner from having to practice her own self-care, and it might even enable unhealthy behavior. Figuring out healthy boundaries around doing for your partner is an important part of avoiding codependence.

Finally, voluntary self-sacrifice does not mean that you never ask for your own needs to be met. Remember, in the healthiest of all relationships, there is a reciprocity of voluntary self-sacrifice, each for the other. You avoid codependence by expressing your needs appropriately and giving your partner a chance to give back to you. Of course, that means you have to know your own needs, which means you might have to give some time to introspection and learning more about yourself first. You can’t ask for what you haven’t taken the time to figure out that you need.

While voluntary self-sacrifice is the foundation of a healthy intimate relationship, it has to be oriented appropriately. Acting from a place of anxious attachment and codependence is not loving, it’s manipulative. Your partner will not possibly be able to meet your needs because they are never expressed, and resentment, then disconnect, will inevitably be the result. 

Know yourself well, and take care of yourself. Then take care of your partner. It has to be done in the right order.