When Do Friendships Between Women Become Codependent?

“Our friendship started because of our mutual love for Jesus.” “She helped me grow in my faith and to understand the Bible.” “I feel so loved and known when I’m with her.” “I don’t know how we got here, but can’t we just go back to where we started?” “I can’t imagine my life without her.”

Over the years, I’ve sat with many women in deep emotional pain who have said things like this about a mentoring relationship or a friendship between two Christian women: relationships which may have started off anchored in Christ but were derailed. They became very messy, messy because one or both women began to feed on the intoxication of emotional intimacy and feeling needed, secure, longed for, and known.

When those feelings lodge in our hearts but are dependent on a person rather than on Jesus, codependency, or relational idolatry, is all but certain. The emotional feel-goodness of such a connection fuels the desire to become physically affectionate and perhaps sexual.

Consider the richness of Psalm 16’s vertical and horizontal focus, and how codependent relationships distort this. Verses 1-4 say, “Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.’ I say of the holy people who are in the land, ‘They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.’ Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.”

The Lord is our refuge, the one we truly can’t live without. Relationships with people are a sweet gift offered to us by the gracious Giver in heaven. Codependency happens when we allow that gift to become so exalted in our lives that the person, or the feelings we have because of them, become all-consuming, effectively pushing Christ to the side. For many of us, it’s a common temptation to turn from Christ and run after people, craving that they meet all of our emotional needs.

If you’re in an entangled, messy attachment to someone, you need to take some decisive, courageous steps out. At the end of this video, you’ll see a link to my blog that talks about this and how to do it.

But for now, turn to the Lord, your true refuge, and ask him to help you believe some of the other promises in Psalm 16: that he will counsel you, stand by your side, and not allow you to be shaken; that in his presence alone there is fullness of joy. He loves you too much to allow a person to displace him in your life. And he knows how to get you out of this mess, one step at a time. Trust him. Cry out to him. He is near, and he is able to deliver you into a spacious place of freedom.