I have been in CoDA for 2.5 years now and can definitely say that this program was sent to me by God! I had problems with love relationships from the beginning of time. I always felt that something was wrong with me until I found the program. I now know that I inherited codependency and love addiction from my parents but am not blaming them or angry at them anymore as I do realize they too inherited it from their parents. It is a generational disease, just like physical diseases and it takes courage, self-awareness, and surrender to God’s plan to change things. 

I want to share my new understanding of the sentence that I read almost two years ago in CoDA literature that “Love and Codependence cannot coexist”. I did not understand it well when I read it for the first time but it made me pause because love relationships were definitely my Achilles heel. After a divorce many years ago, many failed relationships and many times having a broken heart, today I can say that I believe that love and codependence cannot coexist. 

They are mutually exclusive. I finally realize that I was not looking for love, even though I thought I was, but for validation and external acceptance. Until I finally understood that until and unless I love, accept and validate myself first, no healthy love will be a part of my life. 

For the first time in my life, I was able to walk away from an unhealthy relationship and chose me instead. It feels very good even though the old feelings of fear sometimes want to take over but I know how to handle them now. Being in codependent relationships has cost me time, energy and money I can never recover. They were relationships of my will and not God’s will even though, often I thought that God had abandoned me because a person of my affection did not reciprocate. I stayed in relationships where I allowed myself to be emotionally abused and mistreated because I was too afraid to be alone. But now I know I am not alone because I have my HP on my side all of the time. All these two decades God did not abandoned me, rather it was me who abandoned God through my self-will, fear and desperation. 

I hope that my share helps anybody who reads it and realizes that self-love, self-esteem, self-worth are the keys to having loving and healthy relationships. Thank you CoDA, & my sponsors and recovery friends. 

Katie – 3/9/16