The Road Less Traveled
    A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Dependency

- Misconception #2 about love: dependency is love
- When you require another individual for survival, you are a parasite on that individual
- Love is the free exercise of choice:
    - Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other
- Dependency in healthy adults is pathological
    - Always a manifestation of a mental illness or defect
- We all have dependency needs and feelings
    - No matter how strong we are, we have some wish to be taken care of for a change
- Passive dependent personality disorder
    - One whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs
    - So busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love
    - They always feel "a part of me is missing"
    - Tolerate loneliness very poorly
    - No sense of identity, define themselves solely by their relationships
    - Doesn't matter so much what their identity is, as long as someone is there for them
    - Concern themselves with what others can do for them, to the exclusion of what they themselves can do
- If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it
    - Only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love
- Dependency in marriage
    - Healthy couples instinctively switch roles from time to time
    - Process that diminshes their mutual dependency
    - Passive dependent people: their roles are rigid, and they seek to increase, rather
        than diminish, mutual dependency
- Good marriage can exist only between two strong and independent people
- Passive dependency has its genesis in lack of love
- Passive dependent individuals lack self-discipline
    - Cling to outworn relationships when they should give them up
    - Lack a sense of responsibility for themselves
- If you expect someone else to make you happy, you'll be endlessly disappointed
- Dependency may appear to be love, because it causes people to attach themselves to each other fiercely
    - Traps and constricts rather than liberating
    - Destroys rather than builds relationships

Dependency can be mistaken for love, but it is not real love.  People with passive dependent personality disorders focus on being loved instead of exercising self-discipline and taking responsibility for their own lives.  This form of dependency is pathological, and does not lead to healthy relationships.