…the view never changes as they say — and sometimes, that’s OK! One of my biggest pleasures in life is watching my wife’s long lean legs as we ride and if she thinks she’s going faster than me, who am I to tell her different… :-D
What’s my point? I’m always thinking. Not always about the right things, but I’m always thinking. Yesterday, taking a bike ride with my wife, it occurred to me that having a healthy relationship is a lot like taking a bike ride with a friend…
Let me take you back a year to the first time I read “Codependent No More”. A friend had suggested I might [and that's an understatement] suffer from codependency. As I read the book, I realized I was reading about me. I shared the book with my wife and she took her own lessons from it. As we drove to Illinois to celebrate my birthday with family and listening to some of our favorite love songs, we started to realize how deeply codependent so many love songs are and as a result, they affect our perspective of love. Here are some great examples of sappy love songs I’ve listened to for decades [sorry to pick on Bread, but they illustrate my point so well]…
So what’s the answer? For me it’s the analogy of the bicycle ride and this gets back to what I was saying about thinking too much some times and looking for lessons. The thought came upon me that love is less like walking hand in hand sometimes and more like taking a bike ride together. When you ride together, each person is responsible for their own equipment [oil your chain, inflate your tires, select your own gear] and their own ‘balance’ — you have to make sure you don’t fall off your own bike! You can’t hold up your partner and ride at the same time…
When my wife and I ride, we choose a general route or direction, but I can’t pedal her bike for her. We each have a different strategy for hills, etc. — sometimes I like to kick them in the butt by charging breathlessly up them; sometimes I drop into first gear and crawl up them — but the point is I have to drag my own butt up the hill and she has to get up there by herself. I do my work, she does hers and when you get to the top of the hill and pull out the water bottle it’s sweet to be together again…
Reading this you now know why I don’t write my own material often but this is a deep lesson for me that I wanted to document for myself…
Related articles
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- Fear & Codependency (toddlohenry.com)
- codependent and narcissist (adogwithfleas.wordpress.com)
- Friendship Vs. Codependency (joethepeacock.blogspot.com)
- We have choices (toddlohenry.com)
- Are You Making Someone Else Your Higher Power? (toddlohenry.com)
- Letting Go of Self Doubt (toddlohenry.com)
- Choices (toddlohenry.com)
- Do You Have a Codependent Personality? (everydayhealth.com)
Filed under: Cycling, Health, Lessons, Recovery Tagged: Choice, Codependency, Cycling, Language of Letting Go, Melody Beattie, Recovery, Sports, Travel, Travelogues, United States