Codependency is not love.

When people describe love, they often produce a confused description of pity.

People attach feelings to their dogs, children, family, cars, objects, experiences, and ideas, and then say that they love them. Why does someone love their car, bed, or shoes? Usually, because they are familiar and put them at ease.

Why do you love your sister? Maybe for the same reasons. But what if she didn’t make you feel familiar and at ease, and was a drug-addicted thief who you consider a stranger? Would you still love her even though thoughts of her bring nothing but pain?

“Of course,” you will say, “because she is my sister.”

Family is a powerful bond that requires no definition. There is no logic involved with love, and none is necessary. To love someone because they are who they are, or to love something because it is what it is—that is the ultimate expression of love.

If she stiffs you for twenty dollars, you remain determined not to worry about it. Why? Because you know she needs the money, and it makes you feel good that she gets twenty “honest” dollars from you rather than cheating someone else. Also, she’s your sister.

You let her sleep it off on the couch sometimes, even though you wish your kids wouldn’t see. You can’t make her sleep outside. You have a heart. She is your sister, even when she borrows your car without asking and disappears for a few days. You won’t call the police, and you will bear the frustration of your wife because, for you, there is no alternative. She is your sister, and you love her.

When people discuss pity, they almost always speak of the less fortunate. People pity Chihuahuas dogs because they are helpless pests with an unlovable attitude. They attach to a single person, bite them slightly less than everyone else, and never, ever stop barking.

Sure, you can love a Chihuahua because it is what it is (pretty much the only way), but some people are drawn to them precisely because they are defenseless and impossibly dysfunctional. Those little dogs desperately need someone to keep them alive, and generating feelings of pity is how they evolved to survive.

Some people have also evolved to survive off of pity. They don’t need you to love them, because they know pity is more powerful. They seek out and find the codependents of this world, the kind-hearted people who can’t say “no,” who always see the good in others, who have no boundaries and no backbone to enforce them.

When you ask the bruised, depressed, terrified codependent why they don’t leave the relationship, or stop supporting the destructive behavior, what you will listen to is a long, deeply empathetic explanation of all their partner’s impossible flaws.

Whoever the addict, abuser, or mentally ill person is, the codependent believes they are the only force that can keep them alive or happy. “Who else will love them?” “How will they take care of themselves?” “Nobody else likes them.” “They will be all alone.” This is pity.

Or they might instead explain how awesome their beloved is when they aren’t getting hit by them. All the wonderful times they had before. All the great promises for the future. All the explanations for unacceptable behavior, and how amazing the make-up sex always is.

Usually, this comes from a “one and only” perspective about love; a delusion that leads codependents to ask some very similar questions about themselves. “Who else will love me?” “How will I take care of myself?” “Nobody else likes me.” “I will be all alone.” This is self-pity.

Love is the energy of appreciation, and pity is manic sentiment. Like titans to the gods, pity is to love a much larger, more destructive counterpart. Babies, Chihuahuas, and any living thing that is “cute”, “precious”, “delicate”, “pathetic”, or “helpless” instantly gains our pity and our protection. It’s the only way they can survive. Pity provokes our most vicious compassion to protect living treasures from all the danger in the universe.

But it has a dark side. Pity can make us feel an irrational sense of responsibility. You can discover a wounded bird who means nothing to you and suddenly be willing to put yourself at risk for its well-being. Once overwhelmed with pity, a person can act as if possessed, willing to die clinging to the parasite who robbed them of their self-preservation instincts.

A pity-object is something you decide is either frail, beyond its prime, or incapable of caring for itself. A pity-object is, therefore, inferior to you. You are bigger, stronger, more powerful, and wiser than it, which means you have ultimate power. You can save or destroy it, help it grow or let it wither, allow it to live in ignorance, or be graced with your intellect. Pity is total and unadulterated “compassionate” narcissism.

Pity is the opposite of loving something exactly as it is. Can people love their Chihuahuas and their children? Of course. And they do. Can people love their abusive partners? Of course. And they do.

But when someone puts up with repeated abuse because they believe that no one will ever love their partner as much as they do, or that their toxic parent will be all alone, their reason has dissolved into a self-pity trap. It should be the hope and expectation, at least with children, that they will go on to find someone who loves them as much as you, marry them, and be happy. Would you want anything less?

Pity holds onto sentiment for dear life. Only love has the power to let go. In love is the belief that your best is good enough and that the universe will provide, both for you and everyone else. If you fail in romance, the power of love is where to find the strength to wish yourself and your former lover well.

Love can find beauty in pain where pity seeks only vengeance. You never fail to appreciate a love-object, but a pity-object will be discarded the instant it’s healthy enough to not need you anymore.