I was mad at my husband all the time. I knew he was a kind person, and he meant well, but it felt like he was, at best, my bumbling assistant, freeloading off my hard work.
I felt like I was parenting my partner and he was incapable or uninterested in changing. I was sick of being miserable and never getting what I wanted. I felt like I carried the world alone. I gave and gave, yet it was never appreciated and never enough. After almost twenty years and two kids, a business, a few cross-country moves, and a pandemic, I was ready to find a way out.
In my mind, the only way I had a chance of happiness is if he changed or I left. One day in therapy, my counselor mentioned that she thought I might have some codependent qualities.
Oh, great! The more I read, the more I realized that what we had was a two-sided unhealthy codependency going on, and it was going to take a lot of work to get out of it. As a result, we learn to cope with the environment around us, often in ways that are ultimately unhealthy and follow us from childhood into adulthood. That does not mean this dynamic is fulfilling. Codependent people often report being resentful of the imbalance in the relationship.
They want to love and be loved. It is exhausting and demoralizing. It has an impact on mental health, relational health, and ultimately physical health as the stress of these relationships causes physical health issues as well. Who has the tendency to become codependent? Codependency was first described for those with loved ones who had addictions. Often, they would end up enabling or working to mitigate the negative consequences of the addiction, to the detriment of themselves and their loved ones.
