All relational connections contain a degree of dependency. Too much dependency can cause relational dysfunction, and too little can lead to disconnection and isolation. This article explores how dependency relates to relational health and outlines how various levels of dependent attachment either facilitate or undermine relational connections with God, Self, and Others.

The Dependency Debate 

In 1986, Melody Beattie published a book that became a pivotal cultural influence. Codependent No More mainstreamed the concept of a co-addicted person or codependent.

First identified in the recovery community as a form of adaptive over-functioning in an addictive system, the concept of codependency highlighted the destructive potential of over-accommodation and conflated caretaking.

Initially viewed as a well-intentioned but faulty attempt to save an individual from their own poor choices, the codependency narrative progressively morphed into an internal-deficiency model. In a relatively short timeframe, codependency moved from being a part of a complex systemic issue to a personality defect. Instead of being a descriptive account of a systemic phenomenon, codependency became a marker of individual deficiency.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, codependency had become a household word. Codependency was the new buzzword that inferred a widespread cultural tendency for caretaking, over-functioning, and obsessive attempts to control the behavior of others.

In response, community support groups, instructional books, and 12-step programs became popular. All designed to help codependent people better manage their relational dysfunction.

Then, in the late 1990s, the dynamic shifted again when the codependency narrative took on a moral corrective tone, highlighting individual responsibility. The new narrative emphasized the importance of self-protection and prioritized protecting oneself from offensive or intrusive behavior by others.

Within the concept of a boundary, people attempted to reduce conflict and resist the tendency to manage another person’s choices or actions.

Today, we see a similar progression of the now significantly expanded narrative. This new narrative includes a protocol for cutting off from perceived toxic relationships and narcissistic abuse in order to manage and maintain personal integrity.

In this narrative, the codependent plays a victimized role, which requires nothing short of a comprehensive end to the relational bond. As the recipient of perceived misuse, their decision to end the relationship is considered a reasonable response to another’s poor behavior.

This cultural downhill slalom has resulted in a growing social debate about the role of dependency, the need for individuality, and a reevaluation of what constitutes healthy relational bonds, boundaries, and attachment.

Cultural Perspective on Dependence

At its best, the codependency narrative recognized the human tendency to organize identity around another person. At its worst, the narrative gave rise to a cultural battle cry against dependency, framing it as a foolish, if not dangerous, form of defenselessness. In this context, dependency became synonymous with weakness, vulnerability, dysfunction, and emotional neediness.

Thus, while codependency language helped people understand why organizing one’s identity around another person’s dysfunction is neither helpful nor healthy, it has also resulted in strong cultural narratives to avoid needing or expecting too much.

The Ambiguity of Dependency: Balancing Two Truths 

Ultimately, the problem is not the existence of dependency, but rather its complexity. Yes, dependency can become problematic if it becomes a form of fusion, loss of self, or obsessive focus. But dependency is also a natural part of what it means to be human. Connection, dependency, and the need for relational stability are part of the human experience.

Babies and children depend on their parents. Marital couplehood requires dependability. Society depends on adherence to certain culturally sanctioned norms. Radical autonomy and individuality are not achievable, productive, or desirable goals.

The most basic need of a human being is relational connection. We need people and relational connections that are safe, consistent, and stable. Perhaps the issue is not whether dependency is good or bad. But rather, a question of creative design.

If the question is not “Should we depend?” Instead, the question is “Where does dependency belong?” leading us into a completely different perspective on conversation.

Codependency Opened a Cultural Door

In modern culture, dependency is almost always framed as weakness. We are warned about becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol. We are warned about codependency and urged to establish firm boundaries. We are encouraged to become emotionally self-sufficient and less needy. Strength is often measured by independence, maturity, and autonomy.

The codependency language helps us understand our tendency to organize our identity around another person. It helps us see how dependency can become distorted and overemphasized.

But in its attempt to correct the distortion, our culture overcorrected, treating dependency as a kind of malady. Something bad, something to be avoided and renounced.

This type of all-or-nothing thinking tends to pigeonhole dependency as either all good or all bad. In reality, dependency is relative with regard to its placement. Rightly aligned, dependency is a life-giving force. Misappropriated, dependency becomes destructive and relationally restricting.

The Need to Depend is Not a Flaw: It is a Design Feature

The human need for connection and dependency brings us to the edge of relational clarity. In our innermost selves, we long for connection. We were not created to be alone.

In fact, in the absence of relational connection, human beings shrivel and decompensate. Isolation and abandonment are soul-destroying experiences that quench the heartbeat of everything it means to be human.

Our need for dependency is inherent, but because dependency is culturally coded as weakness, people often feel shame when they long for reassurance, closeness, and stability. We turn to others and are disappointed by their lack of consistency.

The Hidden Paradox

While we culturally shame dependency, structurally, we are in a continual state of dependence. We depend on something outside of ourselves every waking moment of our lives. In and of ourselves, we have limited self-agency.

Food gathering and preparation typically requires the input from others. The electricity that flows through our homes depends on a complex delivery system manned by an innumerable collective of workers.

We collectively depend on others for our healthcare system, technology, water, heat, clothing, and relationships. Our general social structure is designed for and held up by dependency.

Dependency never disappeared. We just culturally redefined it. We reject emotional and relational dependency while tolerating systemic dependency. So, dependency is not pathological. It is not evil or unhealthy. It is simply misplaced because finite human beings are incapable of the consistent, stable, and unconditional acceptance and validation we naturally long for and seek.

Dependency is Natural

If dependency is natural, then our longing for safety is not weakness. It is a signal. It is our internal smoke detector telling us that something is missing. The question is not whether we depend. The question is where that dependency belongs.

It is not wrong to long for safety. It is not immature to want security and shelter. It is not a weakness to ache for something stable enough to stand alongside you when you need it most. The mistake is not in the longing. The mistake is in asking finite human beings to provide what only an unchanging covenant of love and grace can provide.

That ache for something unshakable is not evidence of emotional immaturity. It is evidence of design. The instability we experience in relationships is not caused by dependency itself, but by placing our dependency on sources that were never meant to be ultimate. Horizontal relationships were not designed to replace our need for vertical connection.

No fallible human relationship can bear the weight of our need for unconditional love, acceptance, and unwavering stability. People are imperfect and love in imperfect ways. The very people we love often become the very people who fail us and fall short of our need for stability, unconditional love, and support.

So, if dependency is natural and it is normal for us to desire and long for connection and dependability…where does that leave us?

Created for Dependency on Our Creator

The reason for our disappointment and frustrated efforts to manage our emotional connections stems from a sense that we need something we cannot manufacture within ourselves.

We seek our most basic needs from those least able to meet them. Our inherent need for belonging and acceptance was designed for alignment with the One who created us, and it cannot find satisfaction in anything less than orientation to that design.

When we realize that the real reason we struggle with the dependency question is our misplaced expectation that human relationships can meet our most basic relational needs, the pieces all seem to fall into place.

The friend who said they would stay in touch but didn’t. The parent who fell way short of supplying the safety and security we needed and deserved. The spouse who becomes distracted and self-absorbed. They are just like us.

Fallible human beings with clay feet who will never, no matter how hard they try, perfectly reflect the likeness of the One who created us. We are created in the image of God, but we are the imperfect versions sullied by sin and our fallen world. Our need for a savior reflects our need for redemption and reconciliation with our Creator God.

The Cure for Our Dependency Need

The restoration of our vertical relational connection is the most significant relational shift we will ever make. When we choose to realign our relentless need for unconditional love, acceptance, belonging, safety, security, consistency, and purpose, we let go of impossible expectations and find rest.

Horizontal relationships collapse when they are asked to carry ultimate dependency. Vertical alignment frees horizontal relationships to function within their limits.

There is freedom when we realize that our parents were never meant to be our ultimate covering. There is freedom when we can offer grace and forgiveness to a repentant spouse who falters and fails. There is freedom in realizing that horizontal, human relationships are always finite.

When our dependency is anchored in God, who never fails, never abandons, and never shifts, we are free to see our spouse, our parents, our friends, and our neighbors as fellow finite human beings rather than inadequate saviors. The pressure eases. Empathy grows. Resentment softens. Not because our needs disappear, but because they are rightly aligned.

That is relief. That is rest. 

The Wisdom of Desperate Dependency

We started this conversation by questioning whether desperate dependency was a sign of weakness or wisdom. We explored the cultural narrative of dependency, beginning with the coining of the phrase codependency and following its development through to our current culture of overmagnified individuality, self-sufficiency, and expectations.

We considered the design of dependency and realized that it is not our need to depend on someone or something problematic; it is where we direct that need. We established that the need to depend is natural. And we concluded that human relationships were never designed to bear the weight of our innate need for connection, unconditional love, and acceptance.

Dependency is only satisfied when I choose to enter into and abide in God’s rest. It is that which my heart clamors and for which it is DESPERATE. When we set aside our conditioned response to dependency and view it not as a design flaw or character defect, but a natural internal longing for something beyond human ability, our whole relational compass recalibrates.

In the light of this new north star, we realize that the futility of our search for belonging lies not in the need to belong but in confusion about who and what is capable of satisfying that need.

Regardless of what or with whom we try to fulfill our desperate dependency need, nothing earthly will ever satisfy the God void. Not that we don’t try. For centuries, people have tried to fill that void with power, influence, relationships, substances, careers, and a myriad of obsessions.

We blame our spouse. We blame our children. We blame our bosses, friends, and colleagues for not being able to satisfy our needs and service the unrelenting longing for acceptance, faithfulness, forgiveness, and healing. When they fail to live up to our expectations, we imagine they don’t care, are selfish, or, worse yet, that we are unworthy and defective.

But when we surrender. When we give in to the need for dependency and find our one true north, that dependency need, that desperate, unrelenting need settles, and we find rest. Desperate dependence is the key to entering into and remaining in God’s rest.

It is our opportunity to join with the apostle Paul and “gladly glory in our weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9). It is our opportunity to release others from our exaggerated expectations. It is, paradoxically, our opportunity to enter into the most loving, amazing, fulfilling, safe, and consistent relationship we will ever know by letting go of our lives to find it.

In His grace and service,

Teresa

If you would like to learn more about the role dependency plays in relational connection please be sure to check out:

Relationship with God

Essential Biblical Principles That Will Transform Your Life, Relationships, and Future

Relational Health Services 

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