This dance of Codependence is a dance of dysfunctional relationships - of relationships that do not work to meet our needs. That does not mean just romantic relationships, or family relationships, or even human relationships in general.

The fact that dysfunction exists in our romantic, family, and human relationships is a symptom of the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with life - with being human. It is a symptom of the dysfunction which exists in our relationships with ourselves as human beings.

And the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with ourselves is a symptom of Spiritual dis-ease, of not being in balance and harmony with the universe, of feeling disconnected from our Spiritual source.

That is why it is so important to enlarge our perspective. To look beyond the romantic relationship in which we are having problems. To look beyond the dysfunction that exists in our relationships with other people.

The more we enlarge our perspective, the closer we get to the cause instead of just dealing with the symptoms. For example, the more we look at the dysfunction in our relationship with ourselves as human beings the more we can understand the dysfunction in our romantic relationships.

"As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply - using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love - nor is it Loving." - Robert Burney

The following quote was written as an introduction to a web page called The Heartbreak of Romantic Relationships that I wrote in February of 1999.

"In the past 3 or 4 months the Universe has led me to focus more and more of my attention on the area of Romantic Relationships. This led to me scheduling a workshop and announcing on my web site that I would have some new articles ready by Valentines Day 1999. I have had a great deal of trouble in writing those articles. I have been talking about the issues and aspects of relationship dysfunction for many years but have not written very much about it (perhaps because until recently I hadn't been able to get past my own terror of intimacy.) So I have an overabundance of things to say on the subject. The problem has been trying to decide how many articles I was writing, what the focus of each was going to be, and how to communicate as clearly as possible about this issue. It turns out that there is so much material that I may just be writing a book here.

Romantic Relationships may be the most powerful, meaningful, traumatic, painful, explosive, heart wrenching single topic for most people. As I say on my flyer for my new workshop "Our hearts have been broken because we were taught to do the Dance of Love in a dysfunctional way/to the wrong music."