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Love or Need?

Suppose that you broke a leg in some kind of accident and had to use crutches in order to move around; as the days pass, you'll find yourself getting more and more used to them. In your current state of injury, you certainly can't walk without them, so imagine how you'd feel if upon wanting to get up to go to another room, you couldn't find your crutches. You will, of course, feel irritated and maybe a little angry. You will probably ask everyone in the house to help you find them and you won’t be able to move until you find them again.

Now the question is, do you love your crutches? Of course not, you just needed them for a while. The same goes for relationship dependency: you just think that you love a person while the truth is that you just need him.

Relationship Dependency

I have covered relationship dependency in depth in this article, but to give a brief overview of it, it’s the case where someone gets involved in a relationship just because he is in need of a partner and not because he truly loves that person. What's really concerning is that most of the relationships people undergo are a result of pure dependency and not of a product of real love. That’s why many of them end with break-ups.

If you still can’t imagine this, just look at the previous example of the crutches. What do you think you will do when your legs heal and you're able to move around normally again? You'll just put your crutches away somewhere and never give them a second thought. The same goes for a relationship. When you fall in love with someone in order to escape a bad mood that you are having or because of an unsolved problem that you find yourself unable to deal with, you'll most probably find that you no longer need that partner as soon this bad mood goes away.

To elaborate this further, think of someone who was lacking self-confidence and was eager to enter a relationship in order to feel accepted. He then met a girl and fell in love with her(or at least he thought that he truly loved her). What will happen if that person started learning about personal development and then succeeded in building his self-confidence? He'll most probably find that he no longer needs other people's acceptance to feel good about himself and so this relationship will end with a break-up!!!

Being dependent on the relationship for fixing your mood and for feeling good can also hinder recovery from breakups. In my book How to get over anyone in few days i described how relationship addiction can be the main reason people fail to recover fast after breakups. If the person was dependent on the relationship to feel good then he may not recover before he finds another thing that makes him feel good.

Beware of the Person You Fall in Love with in Troubled Times

When we face a lot of problems, our need for someone to help us out and to take care of us is much greater, and that’s why most relationships that start at times like these are just a result of dependency and not real love, and that’s why some of them may end with break-ups.

When you experience a time of disappointment and uncertainty, just be aware that you are more vulnerable to falling in love with someone that you don’t really love. Just knowing this will help you put some control on your emotions until you get over your problems.

How to Pick a Partner

If I tell you that you have full control in choosing your partner in life I would be fooling you. So instead of giving you rigid steps to follow, I am just going to give you some guidelines that you should heed in order to increase your chance of a having a successful relationship that is based on true love and not on pure need:

• Take special care not to fall in love with someone you just need whenever you're feeling vulnerable and in need of help. It'd be far better to hook up with someone when you're in great condition and feeling good about yourself because you will be much less dependent and so probably really do love this person.
• Take the example of the guy who lacked self confidence; if that person knew for some reason that he is going to develop self-confidence sometime in the future, he would've guessed that his relation will terminate sooner or later. So when you pick a partner make sure to pick someone who can sustain the personal changes you are going to undergo in the future.
• Understand the difference between love and relationship dependency. This is the only way you can avoid falling in the trap of loving someone just because you need him.

2knowmyself has recently released the book "How to make someone fall in love with you", a book that will increase your chance of making someone fall in love with you by at least ten folds.

Want to know more?

Yes, how do I know if it's real love or just dependency?

Tell me about the psychology of falling in love.

No, I am sure that he is the one.