From co-dependence to interdependence, via independence

In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey defined these three relationship types, co-dependent, independent, interdependent.

My shared housing plan requires people who are independent people capable of interdependence and who avoid co-dependency at all costs.

I tried to find a good video or even a good blog page explaining these terms, but they all offended me in one way or another.

So here goes.

Co-dependent
I feel good when I dominate, you feel good when you submit = co-dependence
I feel good when I am chasing you to entrap you, you feel good when you are running away = co-dependence.

Independent
Don't play your games on me, I'm not playing = independence
Don't include me in your "we". I make my own decisions = independence

Interdependent
I'm good at book-keeping and you are good at marketing, can we share our skills for mutual benefit? = interdependence
We have both failed to provide for our retirement, can we work together to improve our common situation? = interdependence


Co-dependency tends to be in the emotional realm, where one person does not feel safe without their co-dependent partner. The abuser needs the abused and vice versa. An abuser is very confronted by an independent person who refuses to accept their particular form of abuse. A controller is very confronted by an independent person who refuses to accept their attempts to control. But so too, the person who wants to be abused or controlled. They only feel safe when they have given away their power to another, and if they come across an independent person who refuses to tell them what to do and how to do it, they feel unsafe.

Independence is a necessary step out of co-dependence. Independent people are often fiercely independent. They have been seriously challenged by co-dependent relationships and have worked hard to escape from them. The relationships they have escaped are often those they had with parents or siblings or spouses, so the journey out of the co-dependency is often traumatic. These people view any attempt at partnership with them as a threat to their independence. This is a passing phase as they become more confident in their independent stance.

Independence is also the first step to interdependence. Only independent people can learn to be interdependent. No matter whether independence is hard won or natural, it is a step on the path to interdependence. Only independent people can be interdependent. Interdependence is where we recognise that we thrive better in a world where other people have our backs. We thrive better if we share our skills and specialise rather than having to do everything for ourselves. Independence is where the members of a village go about their own lives. Interdependence is when they all pitch in at harvest time to bring the harvest in. Both co-exist.

How does this relate to co-operative communities?
Most communities, no matter what high ideals they start with, end up as co-dependencies. Someone needs to control, usually, but not always a man. Many need to be controlled (which means they have no responsibility) so they love to hand away their power to the man who would be leader (usually but not always the women). Maybe some in a community remain independent and go about their own business ignoring the would-be leader and his acolytes, but this sets up potential conflict areas.

I investigated a budding community garden to see if I wanted to join. One very ignorant male, who knew nothing about gardening, was barking orders that were clearly wrong. Most of the women simply obeyed his orders. Two of the women became passive aggressive and did their own thing as secretly as possible so no-one caught them ignoring him. Some men obeyed and other men retreated into a territory where they could carve out a independent niche. One man, for example, sharpened knives and secateurs. Good independence strategy, and maybe this one man could have been a good "interdependent", but with this man in charge there could be no interdependence. The group was not organised around sharing skills to everyone's mutual benefit. It was organised around emotional reward, and too bad about those lettuces that have been planted in full sun in mid summer. They'll run to seed because the one person who knew anything about gardening was keeping a low profile and obeying orders - that's me. I never returned.

Don't underestimate the power of co-dependency
Take a look around and you will see that almost ALL relationships are co-dependencies.

When you walk away from one co-dependent relationship, you may find that you have walked away from every single relationship you have. If your relationship with your spouse is co-dependent, then the co-dependency has probably been enabled by the friends you share, and also by your family who set up your co-dependency patterns in the first place. They may be co-dependent themselves and using your relationship to justify their own. Or they may be rather sinisterly entertaining themselves at your expense, watching your antics. None of them will want you to walk away. When you do finally walk away, your spouse will get to keep all your mutual friends, because your spouse will find the next partner to play the games. If you are lucky you will have retained a few private friends who did not support your relationship. If not, you will be on your own. But worse than that is that the next relationship you walk into will probably also be a co-dependency. It will take you a while to work out what the new game is and determine that you don't want to play. You just keep walking away while you work out just what your independence is and what is means to you.

Co-dependency, hierarchy and meritocracy
But personal relationships is just where the problem starts. Almost every workplace relationship is a co-dependency, with all sorts of dysfunctional power games being conducted that are premised on winners and losers. Almost every club, almost every organisation, is also a co-dependency. Where you have hierarchy you have co-dependency, and tell me where you can go and not find hierarchy? Very few organisations are meritocracies, where the best person for the task coordinates that task, at the behest of those being coordinated.

Once you have stopped playing the game, you can no longer live, work or socialise in hierarchical arrangements, whether at the top or the bottom of the hierarchy, or buried invisibly somewhere in the middle. Hierarchy based on anything but merit becomes impossible, and hierarchy based on merit is fluid. It is ever moving with a different person leading in different situations based on merit, not status.

In a culture that supports hierarchy and co-dependency at all levels, it is no small undertaking to walk away.

My ideal community
My ideal community is where we all live independently according to our own consciences, inside our own four walls. We eat what we choose to eat, we believe what we choose to believe, we keep the hours we choose to keep, we listen to the music we like, we entertain our own friends and have a long hot bath when we want. But when we emerge from those walls to work together for the common good, we work interdependently. Our private lives are independent. Our public lives are interdependent.

How do we achieve this? I am not sure. I see very few examples of healthy interdependent communities. If you know of one, please, please, invite me to visit so I can learn from you how to do it.

But I do know we must refuse to indulge in co-dependency of any kind. I think shared rental housing is a good start, as we can more easily move on if hierarchical relationships impose themselves. Groups that start by purchasing land and then attracting members have been starting and failing since at least the 70s when I first became involved.  I believe they have failed and will continue to fail because they fail to understand co-dependencies. They accommodate and sometimes encourage (as with religious communities) co-dependency as normal. Our first step, in shared housing, is to learn to live independently of one another without feeling affronted. Once we have learned how to do that, we can experiment with interdependence designed to enhance rather than minimise our independence.

As we age, we learn independence and learn equally that we need interdependence.





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