Knowing someone you love needs you, I mean really needs you, can’t-live-without-you type “need”, can make that love feel very secure.

They’re not going anywhere. They’ll always be right where you want them because you’re their rock, their shield, their crutch.

What a vulnerable type of love they have offered you. They have given you their all. When you move they shake. When you are still you are their peace.

When their weight is upon you the connection is high, the risk is great, the rawness real, and the passion strong.

Knowing that they are so close tells you that you can finally open up. Through their great need their is room for yours. If your falling tower can fall into theirs perhaps you can make a lean-to of shelter against the world. You can take your weight off your feet and bring your shuddering need to rest, for a while.

…

When I think about this kind of love and need and the times that it has been both offered and expected of me, I think of a poem by Khalil Gibran. This section seems most relevant:

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

I am often tempted by the insecure part of me that would want to cram myself together into someone else. To have them bond to me in a way that might say to me that they’ll never leave. Yet I’ve found this security to be false and it’s road to be limiting. It’s important to me to be able to stand on my own feet, face my own demons, and tend my own garden. To know my own worth and value and share that with those in my life I choose to love. I don’t believe that this means I need to do this alone, but instead that there is a true line between support and enablement and between inter-dependence and co-dependence.

If you cannot live without your partner, then perhaps you need to find the love and strength you need to live in yourself first.