When co-dependency feels like a disease

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve always found myself in relationships. For the past decade, I’ve had maybe one or two year-long stints where I did not have a boyfriend. As a result, I think I have developed a severe issue with co-dependency, to the detriment of a few of those relationships.

Now that I’ve started my first job out of university, I’d like to fix that. I am in talks with a therapist who helps me find methods of coping, but I’d like to hear from other people who are older, or smarter, or know better.

I’ve been dating someone for a year now, and we’re happy together. He’s a bit older, with more life experiences, and I can tell that he’s the sort of person who likes to be independent, even within the context of a relationship.

On the other hand, I want to spend all my free time with him. Sometimes I feel offended when he says that he wants to hang out with his own friends alone. I know I shouldn’t, but something inside me tells me that he should want me there. Which is unfair.

I feel guilty when I go out with friends without him, like I’m letting him down, but most of the time he finds other things to do, either by himself or with friends. He has never made me feel bad for going out without him, but I still feel bad, and I tend to want to rush to him to make reassurances (I’m definitely projecting here).

I have hobbies, though. I enjoy gaming, reading, cross-stitching. Those are all activities that can be done alone, but I just find myself constantly pining for him to reach out when I’m doing things without him.

I know that this is deeply unhealthy, and I think the romantic notions I’ve picked up from media and fantasy have corrupted my expectations for what a relationship looks like. It’s the animalistic part of my brain telling me that true love is spending 24/7 together, with your SO being the center of your world.

But being attached at the hip is not the kind of couple I want us to be. I’d like, ideally, for us to both be well-developed individuals outside of our relationship. Can you tell me how you became (or stayed) an individual within your relationship?

2

Good for you. You’re asking all the right questions. And, yet, I think you’re sort of asking them the wrong way, because what I read sounds more like you want to be healthy for the sake of the relationship’s health, and you want the relationship healthy for his sake.

I’ve had the same kind of struggles, and I have also grown to like to spend more of my time with friends, especially if it’s to do things my partner doesn’t do. Like you I have spent very little of my life on my own, though I think it’s important to do so we can have clear minds.

This is gonna sound awful, but here goes: I wish I had another lifetime to spend on getting this right. Perhaps what has been most helpful to me is realizing this is the only chance I get to do what I want in life, and leaning harder into doing whatever it is I want.

If there’s a most important piece of advice, it’s probably to work on making and keeping yourself OK. Like you say, your SO being the center of your world is deeply unhealthy. When you can see yourself doing it, try to set the thought of them aside and make yourself the center of your world. If it helps, imagine being deeply in love with YOU, maybe from an outside perspective, and tenderly ask what are the needs of this you you’re in love with.

Good luck!

-63

3

I’ll second @Napier here and say, good for you for trying to figure this out. I struggled with codependency for most of my adult life, which caused me to stay in very unhealthy relationships and rush into new ones. I felt exactly like you do, always wanting some form of reassurance when I was away from him that he still cared, still wanted me, wasn’t finding someone else, hadn’t forgotten me in the two hours since we’d last spoken. Desperation like that is a horrible feeling.

In my experience, codependency is rooted in insecurity. For me, my insecurity was about money. I was convinced, by my father, by the media, by whatever, that the only way I could have the life I wanted was if a man bought it for me. That is, I believed I could not support myself without a man’s help. .

I learned this, really, truly understood it, when my counselor asked me that, if I won the lottery, would I feel desperate for a relationship? My immediate, gut-felt answer was “no.” Relationships had mostly brought me misery, not happiness, because I was in them for the wrong reasons. If I was financially self-sufficient, I wouldn’t need one (wanting one was a different thing).

My point is simply that you need to uncover your “Achilles Heel” in regard to relationships. Is it a fear of not having enough money? It is a need to be reassured about being attractive? Is it that you think you are nothing without a man, that having a man is the gold standard for assessing self-worth? The essential question to ask yourself is: What am I afraid will happen if I am alone? And please don’t accept the first glib answer that comes: I’ll be lonely, I won’t get to have sex, I won’t have someone to take me to dinner, whatever. It’s more than that. It’s more like, I’m afraid I’ll end up living under bridge in a refrigerator box. Or, I’m afraid I’ll die alone and unmourned. Then, just sit with the answer. Feel it. Acknowledge it. Really seek to understand it. I can tell you, it might not feel very good at first but stay with it. It is a fear that you have kept buried for a long time. It will sting when it comes into the light. But that is a good thing in the long run. Light is healing. When I did this exercise, I cried like a lost child for an hour. But it was a healing cry. I began to recover from my codependency then.

I wish you the best with this journey. It is the healthiest thing you can do for yourself. You are on the road to setting yourself free, which doesn’t mean you won’t be in anymore relationships. It means you’ll have healthy relationships, without the fear that being who you are will scare someone off.

JR

4

Man, I feel this so hard. I did not figure my shit out until my very late 30s. I wish I was the same awesome, confident person that I am now in my 40s when I was in my 20s. My life would have been soooo much different. I definitely felt I lost a lot of time there (like 20 years) not knowing “how to live.”

And when I want to give people advice about confidence or self love the only thing I can tell them is “get older.” That’s terrible advice!