One of the more prevalent ways Codependency shows up is within a romantic partnership. After the initial attraction and dating phase, we can start to lose who we are in the relationship. I know for myself; I have often made the decision to carve up little pieces of who I am to make sure the other person’s needs are met or to keep myself safe. Safety is a big motivator when we have grown up thinking that external love and validation are the only ways to get our needs met. We often will do things to reduce discomfort and avoid conflict. It might not be something overt but happens slowly over time. Our need to work things out can trigger our CoD even before we realize it. We will do things or not do things that are genuine to who we are to stay in something that isn’t good for us for far longer than is healthy.
When we meet someone new, we generally show the best part of ourselves. Rarely do we start new relationships laying out all our trauma and unhelpful coping on the table. It is not our first instinct to want to share the deepest and most vulnerable parts of ourselves when we meet someone new, especially when the goal is long term connection. When working with couples, I liked to talk about how they met and what drew them to one another. This helps to remind them what they found interesting about one another when things were new. It is also useful to help them recall who they were when they attracted their partner. We are attracted to people physically, emotionally and mentally. We are curious about who the other person is and what they are about. It is very much a job interview. The challenging part is the brain chemistry that comes with attraction. Endorphins and hormones can cloud our judgement. We are usually also on our best behavior. Hiding away our own trauma and damage.
What I know to be true is after the first part of a relationship and usually with time the shine and newness wares off. What we were attracted to can shift and change into things we might ignore as red flags. In my case, the helper and fixer in me is triggered to want to stick around and love potential avoiding the very challenging parts the person I am in relationship with. Because I am very loyal and have been trained to help, I can overlook things that aren’t necessarily good for me because I love someone. Growing up, love meant helping and supporting to get the love I needed. When someone needs that support, I will suspend my own needs to help with theirs. When we receive the payoff of validation and acceptance by helping and supporting, it is easy to disregard that we might not be getting that same support and help in return.
Things to pay attention to would be the time you are spending doing things with and for that other person. Is the time and attention mutual? There will often be times when things aren’t balanced or equal. I usually recommend spending a couple of seasons getting to know people before making a significant commitment like moving in or binding your life to someone. It is helpful to see how they are in different situation and circumstances. Look at how they treat other people, close and tangential. How someone is with you can look different when they are in other situations. See how they are with their friends and their family. We are all different around other people. I like to see how they talk to coworkers and service people. When learning about our new potential partners, it is a good idea to see how they manage stress and challenging situations. Are there things that trigger your anxiety and make you react differently? Do you feel safe and secure talking to your partner about those feelings.
The two long term relationships I was in both started in a relatively typical way with dating and spending lots of time with them. I was in different places in my life when I started each relationship. I was 24 in my first relationship. I was a single mom. I had been trying to finish my degree for several years at the time. I had been struggling financially. I was looking for a partner to help get basic needs met. I met and married my then husband within 6 months. I didn’t know very much about myself at the time because I was in a survival place. Consequently, I wasn’t really paying attention to who he was and what his needs were. The flags that showed up seemed like things I could manage if not help with. What I did recognize now is that I was willing to overlook certain things because I wanted to be in a relationship. I started to overlook my need for affection and a partner who wanted to do things with me. I became creative and getting my needs met in other ways. My relationship wasn’t bad by any means. It was functional. My partner wasn’t intentionally not meeting my needs. I had just stopped asking for them. We spend 18 years together just making it work. I conceded and compromised parts of myself out of the relationship. The last 5 years, I tried to be better at communicating my needs and watched as my partner tried to meet them but ultimately, he couldn’t do the things I wanted or needed. We both had resentment about the years of things we both did or didn’t do.
In my second relationship, I was newly single. I was looking for some of the things I didn’t get in my first relationship. The challenge was that I did the same thing. I saw potential where there was little evidence backing it up. I was listening to what he was saying not looking at what he was or wasn’t doing. I stayed waiting for the guy on the advertisement to show up and it turned out he was too. He has learned to say things that he thought I wanted to hear. In that relationship, I started to avoid doing or saying things that would trigger unhealthy reactions from him. I started not having opinions that didn’t match with his or I would shut down to avoid an argument. I was triggered to old coping skills of making myself small and compromising to keep the relationship going. I was building resentment up over time. I stayed hoping it would get better. There are so many reasons people stay in unhelpful relationships. What I did learn was how to love myself and meet my own needs again in creative ways. I had already been good at doing things by myself. I was travelling alone. I was taking myself on dates. I was making plans with friends and doing things with other people. I eventually left the relationship when it felt better to be alone than in that situation.
There were lots of parts of these two examples I won’t go into detail about. The general idea is that when we first start a relationship, we are looking at the best in people. We can start to see the challenges as things to be worked on. That’s a loving way of seeing the potential in a relationship and working through the more difficult parts, which is totally acceptable. The difficulty comes when we are sacrificing pieces of ourselves in the process. It becomes unhealthy when we are letting go of who we are to avoid a negative consequence. We don’t always see it at first. We do small things to make sure the other person has their needs met because we love them. Something as simple as not going to your favorite restaurant because they don’t like the food or the wait staff. Seems simple enough and we can find a compromise. It might be they don’t like the show we like or the music we choose. An easy fix is to just listen to it on your own or watch something when they are watching their own thing. The more insidious behavior is when it causes conflict or anxiety. When we start avoiding our friends or family because there is something challenging about those relationships and we want to side step a potential argument. It will be more obvious when we make excuses for our partner and do things to keep from having to deal with unpleasant parts of the relationship like how they can be aggressive or using their own unhealthy coping skills. By avoiding the challenge, we are also avoiding an opportunity to work through it. If by doing things like only doing what they want or spending time with their friends or family, we are teaching them that their needs are more important than yours. We are contributing to how they interact with us.
When we start to react from anger or resentment we are adding to the unhelpful behavior. If in our family of origin there wasn’t an example of healthy conflict, we might be continuing the tradition of avoidance or fighting. We may think relationships are just hard and this is what people in them do. We might spend a lot of time complaining to our friends or family about our partners. I do not recommend using these people close to you as the only sounding boards for relationship issues. What it does is paint your relationship from the perspective of negativity and challenge and if you choose to stay in it, that might be all your close people see. What I do recommend is getting a neutral party to work with you both to find ways to learning about healthy communication and conflict resolution. It is easy to lose yourself in a relationship and over time, you don’t recognize what you lost. There are solutions that don’t mean you have to end the relationship. Part of that is talking about the challenges and working through them. Doing things like having regular check ins to give feedback on how you are feeling about the relationship. Setting goals about what you both want to do, to see and what experiences you want to share. Having your own time to continue your growth and healing. Increasing your awareness about patterns you have seen in your relationship that you want to change. We all get into to routines and stop talking about things especially when things are not “really bad” compared to extreme examples like serious addiction or domestic violence.
We must keep in mind that we change as individuals over time. The things we once liked or accepted might not be what we like or want to accept as time passes. Our partners will change too. With experiences and exposure to new information, we can shift our perspective. It is possible to change and grow together. We can learn new things about ourselves and really like the things our partner likes. Our relationships with other people can shift and change to when we are in romantic relationships. Sometimes our partners can see things we don’t see or have accepted as “normal” because we come from that perspective. That kind of growth is helpful. We also get to define what we like and who we are in a relationship. What we used to like or who we used to be may not serve who we are growing into. If our partner supports that growth and change, that’s wonderful. It is when they become critical, and you don’t feel safe sharing those parts of yourself that can be unhelpful. The health dependency style in interdependent where two secure individuals come together and build a life highlighting their unique strengths and find compromise rather than just acquiescing to the needs or expectations of the other person specifically to avoid reactions or behaviors that don’t make us feel safe or secure.
Things to consider:
What has been your experience with romantic relationships in the past?
Do you get your needs me and feel seen and heard in your current relationship?
Are your true values, beliefs and feelings represented in your relationship?
Do you avoid certain situations, topics or activities to sidestep conflict or unhelpful reactions?
Are you more interested in the potential of your partner and not seeing who they actually are?