6. Need to be Needed
Maybe you get hooked by the sense of being depended upon or needed by your relationship partners. There is no reason to feel responsible for your relationship partners if they let you know that they are dependent upon and need you for their life to be successful and fulfilled. This is over‑dependency and is unhealthy. It is impossible to have healthy intimacy with overdependent people because there is no give and take. Your relationship partners could be parasites sucking you dry of everything you have intellectually, emotionally and physically. You get nothing in return except the "good feelings" of doing something for your relationship partners. You get no real healthy nurturing, rather you feel the weight of your relationship partners on your shoulders, neck and back. You give and give of yourself to address the needs of your relationship partners and you have nothing left to give to yourself. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to be so overly depended upon by my relationship partners who are adults. There is a need for me to be clear what I am willing and not willing to do for my relationship partners. There is a need for my relationship partners to become more independent from me so that I can maintain my own sense of identity, worth and personhood. It would be better for me to let go of the need to be needed than to allow my relationship partners to continue to have such dependency on me. I am only responsible for taking care of myself. Human adults are responsible to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. Supporting my relationship partners intellectually, emotionally and physically where I have nothing left to give to myself is unhealthy and not required in healthy relationships and I will be ALERT to when I am doing this and try to stop it immediately."
7. Belief that Time will Make it Better
Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I give it enough time things will change to be the way I want them to be." You have waited a long time to have healthy intimate relationships, you rationalize: "Don't give up on them too soon." Since you are not sure how to have them or how they feel, you rationalize that maybe what the relationships need is more time to become more healthy and intimate. You find yourself giving more and more of yourself and waiting longer and longer for something good to happen and yet things never get better. You find that your wait goes from being counted by days, weeks or months to years. Time passes and things really never get better. What keeps hooking you are those fleeting moments when the relationships approximate what you would like them to be. These fleeting moments feel like centuries and they are sufficient to keep you holding on. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to sacrifice large portions of my life, invested in relationships which are not going anywhere. It is unhealthy for me to hold on to the belief that things will change if they have not in 1 or more years. It is OK to set time limits in my relationships such as: if in 3 months or 6 months things do not get to be intimately healthier then I am getting out of them or we will need to seek professional help to work it out. It is OK to put time demands on my relationships so that I do not waste away my life waiting for something which in all probability will never happen. It is not OK for me to blow out of proportion those fleeting moments in my relationships which make me believe that there is anything more in them than there really is."
8. Belief that It Must be All of My Fault that there are Problems in the Relationships
Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I change myself more things will change to become more like I want them to be in my relationships." You rationalize that maybe the reason things are not getting healthier and more intimate is because you need to change more to be the person your relationship partners wants you to be. You feel blamed and pointed out by your relationship partners as the reason why things are not healthier or more intimate in your relationships. You find yourself having to defend yourself from attacks from your relationship partners for "not being good enough" or "doing enough" to make the relationships work. You find yourself with a mounting list of expectations, duties or responsibilities, given you by your partners, which must be accomplished if the relationships are ever to become what you want them to be. You find yourself needing to change the ways you think, feel, act, dress, talk, look, eat, work, cook, entertain, have fun, socialize, etc before you will be "good enough" for your relationships to work. You find that you will have to basically give up "who you are" for "who your partners want you to be" if the relationships are ever to work. You find yourself hooked by the challenge to change and you find yourself working harder and harder to effect the change. What keeps you hooked is the affirmation and reinforcement you get from your relationship partners when you effect a small change. The only problem is that there is always something else identified which needs to be changed after the last change has been accomplished. You are in a never ending loop of needing to change and unfortunately there never seems to be an end to it. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries for this hook is: "I have to be real to myself and be the person I am rather than to be the person my relationship partners want me to be. It is not healthy for me to give up my personhood and identity to please my partners just to maintain our relationships. I have a right to my own tastes, likes and dislikes, personal style, beliefs, values, attitudes etc. I am in control of my own thinking, feelings and actions. I will not allow my relationship partners to take control of my basic rights."