Is Dependancy LOVE?

I just finished talking to my friend for 30 minutes who's in the states right now and was crying in the beginning of our conversation. This was the first statement he delivered: "I do not want to live, I cannot live without my boyfriend, I love him so much!!!". And when I responded, "You are mistaken! You do not love your boyfriend". He was shocked and asked, "What do you mean? I just told you I can't live without him..."

I tried explaining to him what I learned from M. Scott Peck's book titled The Road Less Travelled, that what he is experiencing is parasitism, and not love. It is when you require another individual for your survival, you become a parasite on that person. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love.

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 be with each other. I pity my friend. That no matter how I try to console him, and make him understand of reality, and suggest to do practical things, he still chose not to listen. He has truly become a certified parasite. May not sound good to our ears, but truth sometimes sucks!


Another thing that I notice is that one of the common misconceptions about love is the idea that DEPENDENCY is love. This is a misconception with which psychotherapists must deal with on a daily basis (right Doctor Allen?). Its effect is seen most dramatically in an individual who makes an attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide, or who becomes incapacitatingly depressed in response to a rejection or separation from a spouse or lover.

That's one thing I've learned from my past. Never to be dependent too much with somebody that you are having a relationship with. I've learned it the hard way so I wanna make sure that past mistake will never happen again. To my poor friend, I just hope he learns from it, and wakes up from his sleeping senses...