Roses Are Red, Boundaries Are Healthy: Choosing Self-Love Over Codependent Love This Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day gets sold to us as the ultimate proof of love. Grand gestures, constant connection, and “you complete me” energy are everywhere. But for many people, especially those in recovery, that version of love can quietly slide into something unhealthy:
Codependence.
Codependent relationships do not usually start toxic. They start intense, passionate, and comforting. They feel safe until they don’t. In addiction recovery, where identity rebuilding and emotional regulation are already tender, codependence can become just another substance. It looks like love but functions like control, fear, and self-abandonment. This Valentine’s Day, let’s flip the script. Instead of choosing codependent love, let’s talk about choosing self-love.
What Is Codependence, Really?
Codependence is when your sense of worth, stability, or identity becomes tied to another person. Their mood dictates your mood. Their approval dictates your choices. Their needs come before yours every time.
It is not about loving deeply. It is about losing yourself in the process.
Signs You May Be in a Codependent Relationship
Let’s call it out plainly. No judgment, just awareness.
1. You Feel Responsible for Their Emotions
You are constantly managing how they feel. If they are upset, anxious, angry, or distant, you feel like it is your job to fix it. Their discomfort feels like your failure.
2. You Struggle to Say No
You agree to things that drain you because setting boundaries feels selfish, scary, or like it might cause abandonment.
3. Your Needs Come Last
You can name their needs instantly, but freeze when asked what you need. You have gotten so used to accommodating that your own voice has gone quiet.
4. You Fear Being Alone More Than Being Unhappy
Even when the relationship feels heavy or unhealthy, the idea of being alone feels worse. So, you stay. You tolerate. You minimize.
5. Your Identity Revolves Around the Relationship
Your time, energy, routines, and even goals revolve around them. Without the relationship, you are not sure who you are.
6. Love Feels Like Anxiety, Not Safety
You are constantly on edge. Overthinking texts, monitoring tone changes, bracing for emotional shifts. Love feels like walking on eggshells.If any of this hit close to home, pause and breathe. Awareness is not failure. It is growth.
Why Codependence Hits Hard in Recovery
Addiction often teaches us to seek relief outside ourselves through substances, people, or chaos. When substances are removed, relationships can become the new escape. Codependent love can feel intoxicating because it temporarily quiets loneliness, fear, and insecurity.
Long-term, it undermines recovery by:
Replacing one dependency with another
Blocking emotional independence
Creating instability that threatens sobriety
Reinforcing the belief that you are only okay if someone else stays
Recovery is not just about staying sober. It is about learning to stay with yourself.
What Choosing Self-Love Actually Looks Like
Self-love is not just bubble baths and affirmations. Sometimes it is uncomfortable. Sometimes it is lonely. Sometimes it is saying no when you desperately want to say yes.
Choosing self-love means:
Setting boundaries even when your voice shakes
Allowing others to feel their feelings without fixing them
Choosing peace over intensity
Sitting with discomfort instead of chasing reassurance
Building a relationship with yourself that does not disappear when someone else leaves
Self-love says, “I do not abandon myself to keep someone else.”
A Different Kind of Valentine’s Day
This Valentine’s Day, love might look like:
Spending time alone without numbing or escaping
Writing down boundaries you are committing to honor
Checking in with what you actually need
Choosing stability over chaos
Choosing yourself, even if no one taught you how
You do not need to be in a relationship to be whole.
You do not need to suffer to be loved.
And you do not need to lose yourself to keep someone.
Final Thought
Healthy love supports recovery. It does not replace it.
It adds to your life. It does not consume it.
This Valentine’s Day, let self-love be your foundation. Everything else should be a bonus, not a lifeline.
By: Chanel Beruman