Signs of codependency

Today, we prepared for you an extract from our “Love Addiction” course.

Let’s review signs of codependency in detail – that way, you’d be able to match them with yourself and your relationship. You’ll see whether there’s something similar in your current relationship or your previous one.

Signs of codependency:

• You feel uncomfortable in the relationship. You don’t get satisfaction from this relationship. But you hope that things can still get better.

• You have to “earn” the love of the partner. To get his attention, certain conditions must be met. Otherwise, you will be “punished” with aloofness or criticism. And the partner’s deviations from the norms and rules that you propose to observe in your union are negatively perceived by you.

• It seems to you that you’re more interested in your relationship than your partner and invest more in it. Sometimes because of this you can get very angry with him. And you feel ready at such times to even break up. But after a while you become scared of losing this person, and you reproach yourself for seditious thoughts, rush to make amends.

• In the relationship, both you and your partner violate each other’s personal boundaries. Two individual “I”s dissolve into a common “We”. There’s no understanding of what is “mine” and what isn’t. So, for example, today I can make a sacrifice and go watch football with my husband and his friends instead of joyfully walking in the park. And tomorrow I’ll start a row with him because he doesn’t value my interests at all. In codependent relationships, this often happens.

• Your partner becomes your primary project. You’re fully concentrating on him and his activities. At the same time, your personal goals and desires are relegated to the background as less significant. You perceive his problems as your own and feel an irresistible need to take part in solving them, even if you aren’t asked.

•  You have a strong belief that the partner is the source of all problems. Therefore, it’s him who must change for his own or your common good. And you enthusiastically direct him to the path of change, whilst denying your own complicity in the problem.

• There’s not enough openness and sincerity in your relationship. Communication often takes place through hints, conjectures, and manipulations. It’s hard for you to ask and say directly what you want, but when you don’t get it, you’re upset with your partner. It seems to you that the partner should know what is on your mind and what you are feeling right now. And at the same time, you’re convinced that you interpret the thoughts and feelings of your partner correctly.

•  Your emotional state and mood are directly dependent on the emotional state and mood of the partner. And, if he, for example, seems moody, then you think that this is somehow about you.

• It’s difficult for you to take a seat at the negotiations table during a conflict. And if you do manage it, you dive into emotions and recriminations, not paying attention to the other’s point of view. And a constructive dialogue becomes very difficult.

• You need to know where the partner is at all times and what he’s doing. And he often responds in the same way. That’s because control is the eternal companion of codependent relationships. Under the obsessive need to keep a partner in sight, a lack of true trust could be hiding.

• It can be very difficult for you to accept the fact that your partner might have plans and intentions different from yours. And it seems to you that you’re being rejected if the partner spends time with friends or other people important to him. You’re jealous of his work or hobby.

• In the relationship, you want the partner to take responsibility for your safety, material well-being and happiness. Or you yourself take excessive responsibility for him.

• You often feel a sense of inexplicable anxiety related to the relationship. Sometimes you have an irrational fear that one day the partner will simply leave.

• Two opposite phases clearly manifest in your relationship – “everything’s good” and “everything’s bad”. And depending on the phase, the partner appears to you as either the most wonderful person in the world, or the devil incarnate.

• The relationship has a negative impact on other areas of life – work, career, communication with children, relatives and friends. Relationship is a priority, everything else is clearly insignificant.

• You allow that sex can happen without you wanting it in order not to offend the partner and hurt the relationship. And you can use sex in order to feel closer to the partner.

• The relationship is so engrossing that sometimes you feel trapped with no way out. Thoughts about committing suicide on the basis of unrequited love can visit you.

• You sacrifice your interests, pleasures, even needs for the sake of maintaining a “good relationship.” You are afraid to cause your partner’s displeasure and provoke a row.

• You don’t have a sense of value in the relationship, it feels to you that you can only value something for something else.

If at least a few signs we listed are present in your relationship (past or current), there’s a distinct possibility that this relationship is codependent.

And you need to tackle the relationship area in order to fix it.

You can do that in our “Love Addiction” course. Search here in the courses tab. 

Only for Russian version: You can purchase the course at a discount in our Instagram account mindspa_ru.