The other night I was in a codependency meeting, and a guy who was new raised his hand and said, “I think I’m codependent, but I have a question. Can you be codependent on things other than people?”
I piped up immediately. “I was codependent on my dog.”
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how complicated—and honestly, how beautiful—that statement is.
I think a lot of us become dependent on our animals in ways we don’t even recognize while they’re healthy.
We depend on the routine. We depend on the little face waiting for us in the morning. We depend on the sound of their feet following us through the house.
We depend on having someone to come home to. We depend on that ridiculous little smile they can put on our face without saying a single word.
And maybe “codependent” isn’t technically the right word for every part of that. Maybe some of it is simply attachment. Maybe some of it is companionship. Maybe some of it is the beautiful symbiotic relationship that develops when two living beings build a life around each other.
Whatever you call it, though, you don’t always realize how much of your life has been built around another creature until something changes.
For me, something changed. My dog got sick.
And suddenly this relationship that had always felt so easy became something else. We were in the big leagues now.
Kidney disease.
Doctor appointments. Fluids. Medications. Food changes. Watching. Waiting. Checking. Hoping.
I was constantly trying to figure out what she needed and whether she was having a good day.
And without realizing it, her good day became my good day.
If she ate, I could breathe. If she seemed happy, I was happy. If she had energy, I had energy.
If she looked sad, I felt devastated. If she wasn’t okay, I wasn’t okay.
That’s when the codependency piece became very real to me.
Because she couldn’t sit down with me and say, “Hey, I’m having a rough morning, but don’t worry. I’m still okay.”
She couldn’t tell me what hurt. She couldn’t promise me tomorrow would be better.
I couldn’t give her a motivational speech and expect her to snap out of it. I couldn’t tell her to go for a walk, call a friend, meditate, journal, or get out of her own head.
She was a dog. She was doing the absolute best she could.
And I could see it in her face sometimes. It almost felt like she wanted to feel better for me.
That made it even harder. Because I wanted her happiness so badly that I had started needing it for my own.
Meanwhile, she really did need me.
She needed me to get her to the doctor. She needed me to give her fluids. She needed me to make her food. She needed me to pay attention. She needed me to advocate for her when she couldn’t advocate for herself.
Our dependence on one another had changed.
I had always depended on her for love, comfort, routine, companionship, laughter, and this incredible sense that I was never really alone.
Now she depended on me to care for her body.
So I had to learn another kind of love.
Not the easy love. Not the running-around-the-house, going-for-walks, waking-up-happy kind of love.
The hard love. The scared love. The exhausted love.
The love that gets up and does the fluids. The love that makes another meal when the first one isn’t eaten. The love that watches every breath and every bite.
The love that says positive affirmations even when part of you is terrified. The love that keeps showing up.
And that experience made me understand why people call codependency “the mother of all addictions.”
Because I know what it means to quit something. I can quit a drug. I can quit alcohol.
I can remove those things from my life and say, “I don’t need you anymore.”
But I cannot quit relationships. I don’t want to.
I need people. I need connection. I need friendship. I need family. I need animals. I need love. We all do.
That’s what makes this work so difficult.
Recovery from codependency isn’t necessarily about learning how not to need anybody.
Maybe it’s learning how to love somebody without making their emotional state the thermostat for your entire life.
That’s hard enough with humans. With an animal? Good luck.
Because animals give us something people simply cannot give us in exactly the same way. And we give them something they cannot provide for themselves.
That’s why I think the human-animal relationship is one of the most extraordinary exchanges of love we get to experience.
They depend on us. We depend on them.
Maybe that’s not something we need to pathologize completely. Maybe we just need to recognize it.
Because when an animal gets sick—or when eventually we have to say goodbye—we aren’t only grieving the animal.
We’re grieving a relationship. We’re grieving a routine. We’re grieving a responsibility.
We’re grieving the creature we talked to when nobody else was around. We’re grieving the eyes that looked at us every morning. We’re grieving the version of ourselves that existed with them.
We’re grieving thousands of tiny dependencies we didn’t even know had become woven into our lives.
And that’s why losing an animal can knock your entire world off its axis. Your life was built together.
So yes, I believe codependency can exist outside of romantic relationships, friendships, and families.
And I also think animals have taught me something important about the word itself.
There is dependence that makes us disappear. And then there is connection that makes our lives bigger.
The work is learning the difference.
Because I don’t ever want to stop loving deeply just because losing deeply hurts.
I don’t want recovery to make me afraid of attachment. I want recovery to teach me how to remain myself while loving another being with my whole heart.
And with my dog, maybe I didn’t always know where she ended and I began.
Maybe sometimes her happiness was my happiness. Maybe her pain became my pain.
But I also know this: For all the things I did for her, she did something enormous for me.
She taught me how deeply I am capable of loving another living thing.
And when you have experienced that kind of love, of course you’re going to miss it when it’s gone.
Maybe that’s not a failure of recovery. Maybe that’s grief. Maybe that’s attachment. Maybe that’s being human.
And maybe the goal isn’t to love less dependently. Maybe it’s to love consciously.
To know:
I love you.
I need you in ways I can admit.
I will care for you when you need me.
But I will also learn how to stand when you cannot stand for me.
Because our animals love us unconditionally.
And perhaps one of the greatest ways we can return that love is learning to love them just as fiercely—without losing ourselves along the way.
