Codependency Is a Powerful Glue — Here’s How to Break Free

Codependence is a muscular glue that binds people together whether they want to be bound or not. The urge to depend on the other person is obsessive, compulsive, and addictive. And if you have a driven, perfectionistic personality, you may be especially vulnerable to it — without even realizing it. Rather than codependency indicating you’re weak, it may just mean you use your muscles in the wrong way.

Today, we’re going to look at how this can happen, and more importantly, how to break free. We’ll be looking at attachment theory, the messaging of popular love songs, and transformational images from alchemy.

I’ve always turned my nose up at the term “Codependent” because it isn’t technical or clinical, much less specific. I’ve also thought the “co” part of codependent was redundant since “dependent” meant pretty much the same thing, and you save yourself the trouble of saying or writing an entire syllable when you use “dependent” rather than “co-dependent.” Since I’m all into efficiency I usually stick with “dependent.”

But I was wrong. The term is useful. When people use the word codependent, they’re adding that little “co” to emphasize that it’s Not a Good Thing. The confusion arises because in many circles any sort of dependence is considered to be Not a Good Thing.

It’s Not A Good Thing for many reasons.

1. Codependence limits you from reaching your potential.
2. Codependence limits the quality of the relationship and what you might otherwise get out of it.
3. Codependence can be painful. It hurts to feel that you need someone else to be secure.

These patterns are often expressed in an unspoken push and pull between people.

For instance, John always wants Mary to stay home with him and Mary always wants to go out with her friends. The pattern of their unspoken needs colliding could finance a marriage counselor’s kid’s college tuition. Well, not at an expensive one. But anyway…

The Codependence Map

The codependence map covers a lot of territory. Codependent may refer to someone who feels safest when they’re taken care of by someone else. But it can also mean someone who feels safest when they are taking care of someone else. The common denominator is that their security comes from an unhealthily intense connection with someone else, whatever the pattern. One person needs, the other person needs to be needed, and they’ll use all of their psychological muscle to keep things as they are. It’s a match made in heaven.

For instance, John always wants Mary to stay home with him and Mary always wants to go out with her friends. But they stay together–unhappily bound in their push-pull ritual. The complicated collusion of their unspoken needs could finance a marriage counselor’s kid’s college tuition. Well, not at an expensive one. But anyway…

Is this too cynical? Is there a such thing as healthy dependency that comes out of genuine love? And is it bad to want to be needed?

These are good questions. So today we will explore how perfection, control, obsessing and compulsing affect relationships and codependence. While obsessive-compulsive traits can help relationships, they can also amplify the angst of codependency.

Codependency can evolve in romantic relationships, family relations, friendships and even work relationships. In this post I’ll focus on what codependence looks like in romantic relationships, but you can apply it to other types of relationships as well.

I’ll describe the pattern first, discuss why it emerges, suggest a better model of romantic love, and then offer some suggestions about how to forge a better connection.

Carl Jung on Marriage and Dependency

But first I want to set the stage for this discussion by pointing out that codependency is only the first act in this drama. It’s not pathological and it’s not terminal. It’s a beginning, not an end.

In the only essay he wrote on marriage, Carl Jung wrote that marriage often starts out with one person as the container and the other person as the contained. One person sets the tone, the structure, and values, and the other follows their lead. The container is more likely to absorb the emotions of the contained person. Most importantly though, Jung saw this as an initial stage in relationship and in life, a stage characterized by unconsciousness and projection. Ideally the relationship serves as a place where both individuals can eventually become more conscious, more whole, and more mutual in their love.

What is Codependence

How do you know if you’re codependent?

Here are some of the characteristics of codependence. See how many feel like they apply to you:

• You build your identity and self-worth around another person.
• It’s difficult to separate from them, for forever, or for the afternoon.
• You desperately need the other person in order to avoid anxiety.
• Your strength is used to get the other person’s validation.
• Boundaries don’t exist between you and the other person.
• You fantasize rescuing or being rescued.
• You lose awareness of your own needs, desires and potential.
• Your tendencies to control and perfect are enlisted in getting the other person to need or like you.
• You think about the other person obsessively and you compulsively try to please them.

 

My very unscientific guess is that if you have three of these traits, you might want to think about building your independence.

There are, of course, degrees of codependence, and it’s not always easy to know where you fall on a spectrum of codependence. Here are two important factors that can help you assess your position:

1. What is your motivation? Do you want to be with this person, or are you there because you need to be with them? Are you moving toward what you want, for instance, companionship with someone you respect and admire, or away from what you don’t want, feelings of insecurity?

 

2. Does this relationship support your growth, self-realization, and potential?

The Two-Way Street of Codependency

There is a potential advantage to the term codependency which I fear has been lost. The “co” part implies that both parties are getting something out of a mutual dependency. People sometimes say, “She’s so codependent,” but it takes two to tango.

So, let’s imagine.  Someone else is desperate to please you and they seem to need your approval. You might get turned off by it and block their number. Or  book a berth on a six-month cruise where you won’t be disturbed.

Or, on the other hand, you might let their dependence go on, even subtly encouraging it, because, well, it feels kind of good to be needed.

Do you need to fill your tank by knowing that someone else, someone in particular, needs you? If so, that’s codependency.

But is it wrong to need to be needed? Since we evolved with others, it’s pretty deeply baked into us to serve a role. But there are two circumstances that indicate our need to be needed is problematic:

1. When we are dependent on one particular person for a sense of our value, rather than finding where our capacities are naturally valued, and engaging with that person or those people.
2. When we betray our authenticity and true self to get validation from a romantic partner.

 

The Four Compulsive Types and Codependency

We can deepen our understanding of codependence by looking at how the four different types of obsessive-compulsive personalities manifest codependent tendencies. Please note these types can be adaptive or maladaptive. My examples below live toward the maladaptive end of the spectrum.

The Teacher/Mentor/Boss type bases their identity on fixing or rescuing others. While they can be helpful, they can also become domineering to the point of psychological abuse. They depend on the person they correct, rescue or dominate for their self-worth, but their need to be needed is unspoken. The person being corrected often can’t see that they are needed by their partner.

Karen, for instance, can’t stop correcting her companion, Carl. She feels she coupled below her station, but it’s worked for her in that she’s always in control. Constantly competent, she’s a can-do sort of gal. She needs the identity of being the one in charge—which requires someone she can control. She may not seem like a dependent person, but knowing that Carl is there with her is necessary for her. He lives out things for her that she can’t live out, like anxiety, modesty, and needs. As long as he’s the one with needs, she’s fine. But she would not be fine without him.

The Server/Friend/People-Pleaser type is the type most likely to fall into codependence. All of their capacity to control, put things in order and perfect gets poured into their relationships. Their anxiety level is determined by how well they can control the feelings, approval and reactions of others. They are conflict avoidant, and they can’t tolerate disappointing their partner. In their focus on their partner, they lose themselves and what they have to offer the world.

Carl, Karen’s husband, is terrified of Karen leaving him. He obsesses about her disapproval, and tries to prevent that by using his compulsive muscle to make more money and do things around the house. He’s affectionate toward her, both verbally and physically. And he gets her gifts. If she wants a new kitchen, he’ll move heaven and earth to get it. If she wants to join the country club, he’ll make the contacts and find the cash. If she wants pistachio mint ice cream at midnight, he’ll fetch it. He has no idea what he wants or values other than serving Karen.

(Some of you may recall that one of the criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a difficulty in delegating. That’s present in codependence, it’s just camouflaged under the more subtle control exercised in people pleasing. You may not trust the other person to take care of you so you become manipulative with pleasing and being needy.)

The Worker/Doer/Workaholic type would primarily use work or productivity to assure themselves that they are needed and loved.

Grant will crank out the family budget and taxes, crank up the lawnmower, and crank down uncertainty when things look shaky to his wife. He can also get very cranky since he is denying his own desires. But he needs to see himself as a modern-day Hercules and he couldn’t do it without a family that needed him to do it.

The Thinker/Planner/Procrastinator may live in a world of fantasy about their connection with someone else, wondering how they will please them and what could go wrong.

Grant’s wife, Willow, is a worrier. Her mind is like a NASCAR racetrack, with thoughts zooming by at remarkable speeds. If anything could go wrong, she can imagine it. She’s very dependent on Grant to keep things running smoothly since she’s always reluctant to take action for fear that she wouldn’t get things perfect.

The typical strategies of people with obsessive-compulsive personality, perfectionists, and Type A’s can magnify the maladaptive aspects of codependence. And codependence can magnify the maladaptive aspects of the obsessive-compulsive personality. The two can fit together. Quite badly.

Why Do People Become Codependent?

Early Relationships Lead to Certain Attachment Styles

We can’t discuss dependence without discussing attachment styles. Attachment theory tells us that as a result of our earliest relationships we develop certain long-lasting patterns of relating to others. Here are the three main attachment styles:

1. Secure Attachment provides a stable emotional foundation that allows us to get close to others without distress. People with secure attachment rarely become codependent.

 

2. Anxious Attachment is characterized by a heightened fear of rejection, chronic worry about closeness, and strong proximity-seeking. Anxious attachment makes you use your muscles to cling to others for dear life. Those who have anxious attachment often become codependent.

 

3. Avoidant Attachment makes you keep your emotional distance from others out of fear of being left or hurt. But this doesn’t prevent you from staying in a relationship in which the other person’s needs are most obvious, often someone with insecure attachment. People with avoidant attachment may find it convenient to have someone else live out their attachment needs for them.

 

So, for example, Alex, who has avoidant attachment, is leery of getting close to a partner, but he’s “happy” to have Andrea, who has anxious attachment, live out all that messy dependent stuff for him, while he sits around chill as a Reykjavik park in winter. He wouldn’t be so chill if she left. That’s codependence going both ways.

The Ancient Myth of Romance Seduces Us into Codependence

The compulsion of codependency is driven by a myth, a story. By medieval times “romance” meant, “story,” in this case the myth that romantic love is predestined, exclusive, and irreversible.

It was our fate to be together and only you can make me whole. I need you and will do anything to keep you! Not only would I die for you, I’d also die without you.

Desperation, to some, is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval signifying true love. If I suffer with this love, that must mean it’s the real thing.

Singing our Way into Romantic Codependence

While codependence can be painful and emotionally destructive, our culture is just fine with it, thank you.

Take, for example, certain singer-songwriters. They’ve gone to the bank with the proceeds of hawking the codependent story of romantic love, while encouraging you to empty your emotional accounts in order pay for the elusive experience.

If you believe the story that fate has brought you together, you have no choice but to sacrifice yourself for the relationship when it’s not going according to plan. You’ve lost agency and your only option is continuing in cozy codependence. The other person is everything to you.

Here’s how singer Barry White put it:

You’re first, my last, my everything
and the answer to all my dreams
You’re my sun, my moon, my guiding star
My kind of wonderful, that’s what you are
I know there’s only, only one like you
There’s no way, they could have made two
Girl you’re all I’m living for
Your love I’ll keep forever more
You’re the first, you’re the last, my everything

White later sings in the song, “But I’m lost in a dream.” Damn right. I’m not sure who he was singing this to, but whoever it was, they did not turn out to his “everything” forever. Despite what White sings, it’s asking too much of anyone to be their “everything.” And it sells you short.

How Do I Live, by LeAnn Rimes, is also built around the idea of not being able to live without someone, though with a less celebratory tone.

How do I get through one night without you?

If I had to live without you

What kind of life would that be?

Oh, I, I need you in my arms, need you to hold

You’re my world, my heart, my soul

And if you ever leave

Baby, you would take away everything good in my life

How do I live without you? I want to know

How do I breathe without you if you ever go?

How do I ever, ever survive?

How do I, how do I, oh, how do I live?

And, finally, Without You, originally written by members of the band Badfinger, went to Number One for four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 charts when Harry Nilsson moaned its message of unmitigated codependence:

I can’t live, if livin’ is without you
I can’t live, I can’t give anymore
I can’t live, if livin’ is without you
I can’t live, I can’t give anymore

AHHHHHH! God save me!

We could go on with examples like this till the cows come home but suffice it to say our culture is happy to cultivate the unhappiness of depending on someone else for emotional security.

Yes, yes, I’ve skewed the sample. I could also have cited “I Will Survive,” but even that highlights how difficult it can be to separate from someone you’ve been dependent on.

But before you accuse me of being a romance buzzkill, I’m going to describe a better, more lasting and more fulfilling way to think about romantic love that doesn’t lead to codependence.

A Better Model of Romantic Love

The typical refrain of Romantic Love goes, “Isn’t it wonderful we found each other and have this soulmate relationship!” That sentiment rarely endures. It’s based on magical thinking and leaves you powerless when either of you isn’t feeling it. Which is inevitable.

Instead, think of romance this way: “Isn’t it wonderful that we’re both committed to making this relationship work, that we’ve gotten through so much together, and that despite all our differences we still love each other!” That’s real romance! It wasn’t something that happened to us, but something we made happen. This way of thinking doesn’t leave you hopelessly dependent on the other person.

Original Intentions of Romance and Dependence: Expanding

I often encourage people to recall the original intention underlying their obsessive and compulsive behavior. In this case I believe that when we become codependent, our original intention was to be able to rely on someone or something beyond ourselves, and to expand psychologically and spiritually beyond our individual ego.

This motivation may be of particular interest to those of you with a tendency to be a little too controlling. Codependence may be a skewed attempt to allow ourselves to give up control.

This is sometimes the motivation for the high-powered person who goes in for dominators or dominatrixes. I understand that pain can be extremely sexual for some people. What I’m referring to here is when sex becomes a substitute for a psychological experience, such as letting go of control.

Ideally when we love and allow someone to be important to us we are enriched by their strengths and perspectives. It’s a fertilizing infusion. And don’t take that salaciously!

The attempt to enrich ourselves backfires if we don’t eventually integrate what the other person offers as part of ourselves. If that infusion becomes an addiction, we begin to live off of their fuel in order to reassure ourselves we are worthy, and we don’t make our own fuel.

Healthy Dependence: Allowing Importance

Being deeply, madly, in love doesn’t mean being hopelessly dependent. It’s more about allowing that person to be profoundly important to us. When they leave, we feel it. But we don’t fall apart.

Psychotherapy: Codependence or Allowing Importance?

While psychotherapy doesn’t fit into today’s subject of romantic codependent relationships, it can serve as another lens to view codependence.

People sometimes wonder if they (or their friend or partner who is in therapy) have become dependent on their therapist. I think what they mean by this is whether they’re leaning too much on their therapist for support, validation or direction, and are not curating their own life, strength and direction. It also means they fear they would be dysfunctional without the therapist.

These are good questions. If either patient or therapist is too dependent on the opinion of the other, they will not be able to be authentic, and the efficacy of the therapy is compromised. While it does sometimes happen, codependency usually doesn’t hijack therapeutic relationships.

There is a related, but more important question here that determines how effective the therapy is.

A healthy and effective therapeutic relationship evolves when each person allows the other person to be important to them. They allow themselves to take in what the other person thinks, says and feels. They allow these things to matter. There is receptivity that allows for circulation between the two.

This is not dependence.

If the client remains distrustful and distant from the therapist even after initially getting to know them, there isn’t enough connection between the two to convey deeper material. It’s too big a gap for much to cross over from one to the other other than a few words of advice.

The same for the therapist. He or she needs to allow the client to be important as well. The real “magic” happens when there is genuine connection. I was always taught, “It’s the relationship that heals.” We can go too far with that mantra, but there is some truth to it.

To allow someone to be important to you is not the same thing as being dependent or codependent.

A Circulating Love: Interdependence.

Let’s get back to our exploration of another way of thinking about romantic love.

It’s hard to put the words “dependence” and “romance” in the same room together without them having a terribly disturbing fight. Dependence carries so much baggage there’s no room for romance. We need a new conveyance.

Let’s try interdependence.

The term describes a relationship in which both people rely on each other in a healthy way:

• They mutually support each other without losing independence.
• They care for each other reciprocally.
• They maintain healthy boundaries yet allow each other to be profoundly important to them.
• They can lean on each other emotionally and make decisions together.
• They learn and grow through their relationship.

And that’s pretty romantic.

As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet:

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.….Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up…

Alchemy Illustrates the Way to Interdependence

The alchemists were on to this. These images are from a February 4, 1667 blog post by the alchemist Josiah DeFermentatio. They illustrate something important about personal transformation. These flasks, or vases as they were called, held the materials the alchemists would mix together and heat up with the hope that, wowsa, they’d have gold on their hands.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. Alchemists didn’t succeed in turning lead into gold physically, but they did succeed in creating images of how we transform our psychological lead into gold. In this case, how to use the heavy chemistry and hot challenges of relationships to refine character.

The first image illustrates dependence. The smaller vas just drinks up everything the bigger vas has cooked up.

The second image depicts interdependence; the two vessels nourish each other. The alchemists called it the Double Pelican because it circulates the materials between them and makes the transformation more powerful.

Relationships always cook up intense circumstances that require us to grow and be open to new ways of living and relating–if the relationship is to survive. That’s the gold. This is particularly important for people who are obsessive and compulsive, because otherwise they can become very rigid.

In interdependence, psychological material circulates freely between two people. Each one nourishes the other with support, emotion and ideas. Compounding growth results. Each person remains whole in themselves. There are two mature adults in the room, rather than a parent and a child.

But if the material only moves one way, you don’t get the gold.

If either of them was to die or leave, the other would grieve deeply but continue to function. They each want each other more than need each other.

If either of them was to die or leave, the other would grieve deeply but continue to function. They each want each other more than need each other. When their partner is gone, they miss them terribly. But they are not devastated.

Solutions—How to Get Out of Dependence and Into Love

If you are in a codependent relationship there’s a reason for it. It has served an emotional purpose for you, so I won’t pretend changing would be easy. But I can say that the benefits for both of you would be immense. And the muscles you engaged to grasp codependently can also be engaged to fashion a better relationship and a more authentic you.

Here are some suggestions, by no means exhaustive, but good starting points.

Expand Your World

For best results in a relationship, expand your world. Having a broad foundation of security, meaning and satisfaction for your own life is essential to recovery from codependence and the health of the relationship. This includes people, activities, and self-care—both practical and emotional. Otherwise, you are completely dependent on the other person, and that makes for a shaky foundation.

Would you sit on a stool with one leg?

Get Group Support

One way to expand your world is to participate in a support group.  Others who also have codependent tendencies get together to support each other so they can grow out of other-reliance and into self-reliance.

At least two twelve-step programs focus on the issue: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) and Codependents Anonymous (CoDA).

SLAA focuses on the interrelation of sex and dependency, when sex and “love” become addictions. Sex becomes a proxy for feeling worthwhile and loved, either in compulsive, promiscuous sex, or long-term affairs. Group members aim to stop looking for love in all the wrong places.

CoDA is probably the most directly relevant 12-step program for codependency. It focuses on unhealthy caretaking, control, people-pleasing, poor boundaries, low self-worth tied to others, and difficulty identifying one’s own needs. They seek relationships based on mutuality rather than rescue or enmeshment.

Don’t let the Higher Power stuff put you off. Find a meeting where you feel comfortable and get what you can out of it.

Cultivate Self-Respect

You’ve heard this song a thousand times but the subject calls for an encore. Really! Are you listening? You need to respect yourself enough that you don’t have to betray yourself to get security or reassurance from just one particular person. This means you need to stop putting yourself down and assuming you are worthless without the validation of someone else.

Connections are important, but if you focus on just one, you put all your eggs in one casket. That saying is particularly apt here because eggs represent your potential for new growth, and if they aren’t well-nourished, they will die.  Codependence does not nourish all your possibilities.

What parts of you are neglected when you’re codependent? What are you missing out on, or not giving to the world, if you have to focus so much on what you think your partner wants from you?

Use Imaginal Exposure to Overcome Fears of Being Alone

My observation is that people who live as if they have to keep pleasing their partner often have far more capital with their partner than they thought, and that they can afford to be more independent without losing them.

But my saying that is a type of reassurance–which is Not a Good Strategy. The Best Strategy is to come to terms with your lack of control and your capacity for independence.

There is no way around anxiety. Only through it.

So, do a thought experiment. What if you do disappoint your partner? Could you handle it? You may think you couldn’t, and so you strategize to avoid a disaster, planning to please your partner so they won’t leave you. But we usually handle disaster much better than we imagine we will.

As you do your thought experiment, is there a part of you that digs its feet in, begging, “Please Don’t!”? Who is that, and what do they really need from you?

I’m not suggesting you leave your partner. That is an option, but until you decide to leave, know that you could survive in the relationship without pleasing them all the time.

Besides, has depending on them for security really made you secure? Watch out!  It’s that one-legged stool again!

Take Small Independent Steps

As you get stronger in your mind, practice independence in small practical ways. Take care of small tasks you might have tried to get your partner to do for you in the past. Go out alone occasionally. You may find you have more strength than you had imagined. Monitor your fears as you take these steps.

Share with your partner your concerns about being dependent, and your plans to try to be more independent. Be aware that these might not go over well with them. And that’s okay.

Recall Your Original Intentions

What were your original intentions for being in a relationship? Are you honoring those, or have they been displaced by needs for security?

What are the greater things you seek in relationship? How might a relationship enrich you?

What might you learn, and how might you grow in a more balanced relationship? Remember the value of circulation.

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Codependence is not a disease but a stage in a relationship. Met consciously, and with courage and strength, it can be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

For more on the underlying relational dynamics of the obsessive-compulsive personality, check out my series on the roles of Rescuer, Victim and Persecutor.

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