Five Questions Every Couple Should Ask Themselves
Not all connection is good connection. Sometimes the wires run too deep – become too entangled – for the connection to be truly stable.
Consider this couple: John and Rebecca have been together for two years. Outside of work, they are rarely apart.
John used to see his friends weekly. He’d meet coworkers for happy hour and say yes to invitations without thinking twice. But each time he did, he noticed Rebecca felt hurt. She missed him. She distanced herself from him, unconsciously punishing him for choosing someone other than her.
So, not wanting to cause her pain, John adjusted. At first, he skipped plans occasionally. But that only seemed to intensify the reaction when he would spend time with other people. Rebecca would cry, send him texts that made him feel guilty, and he would have to spend days trying to repair the relationship. Eventually, he just stopped making plans with other people altogether. It felt easier to tell his friends no than to watch Rebecca be sad.
Is John simply being considerate, attentive to Rebecca’s needs, and eager to please her? Or is he driven by a quiet fear that her sadness is something he must always prevent, no matter the cost?
Is Rebecca’s desire for closeness the fruit of passionate love? Or is it fueled by anxiety at the thought of being alone or apart from John?
This is where codependent patterns begin to take root and quickly grow.
Codependent relationships form when partners lack any sense of identity outside of their relationship, and when their sense of comfort, security, and well-being comes solely from their partner. This leads to wonderful days when things are good, and horrible days when things become shaky.
Many of us can struggle with navigating healthy boundaries in our relationships. So how can you tell when your relationship has crossed into codependency?
Do You Struggle to Know Who You Are Apart from Your Partner?
Oftentimes, codependents root their entire identity in their relationship. This tends to happen unintentionally: they begin to spend all their free time with their partner, and soon their relationship is the only thing they have in their life apart from work. Time once spent on developing hobbies or building friendships is now spent on their partner. All of the movies and TV shows they watch are now with them, and soon, all of their interests will become the same. They have ceased to maintain anything of their own.
Although some of this is normal and organic for all relationships, it can become problematic if it extends too far. For example, if you feel completely clueless and frustrated about what to do when your partner is unavailable, then perhaps you have become too dependent on them for your identity. Even if your interests, hobbies, or friendships have changed since your relationship began – which is completely normal – you should still have a sense of who you are without your partner around.
Do You Feel Like You’re Responsible for Managing Your Partner, or Do You Feel Managed by Them?
Maybe your partner struggles with saving money, so you feel the need to monitor every purchase he makes whenever you go out.
Or maybe you struggle with consistently being late, so your partner is always reminding you to be on time – even to events he’s not attending.
Regardless of the exact dynamic, it’s common for codependents to be overtly involved in their partners’ lives. They often have the best of intentions, but it doesn’t change that it is not their responsibility to control or manage their partners’ behaviors.
Instead, we can encourage them from afar, while also allowing them to make their own decisions – even when we disagree with them.
Is Your Peace Contingent on Your Partner’s Feelings?
If your partner is having a bad day, then you will be having one too. I don’t just mean everyday compassion, but feeling entirely robbed of your peace and sense of security. Your anxiety begins to skyrocket, or your mind floods with fearful thoughts – as if you cannot function knowing your partner isn’t okay.
You won’t be able to focus on anything else, except for how to solve your partner’s bad mood. And you will go to great lengths to fix it.
This emotional involvement has crossed the line from empathy to unhealthy attachment.
Do You Constantly Feel Like “It’s Us Against the World”?
Codependents tend to isolate themselves. They rarely make the time to build and deepen relationships outside of this one. They may become defensive of the world, a world that often threatens the time and connection they could be sharing. They may feel like no one understands them besides their partner, so the world becomes their common enemy.
Although it seems like this enemy brings them closer – since they are opposing it together – it actually leads the relationship closer to implosion. By becoming so inward-focused, the relationship begins to suffocate each partner. And once the outside world has been eliminated, their partner remains the only one left to blame.
Is Conflict Resolved Through Appeasement or Demand Rather Than Free, Mutual Choice?
When issues arise in the relationship, you may feel the need to dismiss your partner’s feelings for your own. For example, you feel like you aren’t spending enough time together, but your partner feels like you spend enough or maybe even too much time together. So how do you solve this?
You trump their thoughts and desires with your own. That’s it. Game over. Everything is settled now.
Or maybe you feel your partner does this to you. So instead of deepening the argument or insisting on your own desires, you acquiesce. You go silent. You give up. And you find this cycle repeating over and over and over.
Nobody really wins at the end of it. This same underlying conflict will occur next week, hidden by a different situation.
And that’s because both partners fear having their feelings put out on the table and then dismissed. They respond in different ways to this fear – one through loud domination, the other through silent submission – but the fear is in both nonetheless. They don’t know how to communicate it, but it’s controlling their decisions.
The Root of All Codependents
At the very core of codependency, we always find it: fear.
You fear you aren’t good enough as you are, so you never make an identity of your own.
You fear no one will be able to meet your needs, so you learn to control others.
You fear that when someone’s in a bad mood, they’ll leave you, so you do anything to prevent these moods.
You fear that if someone has allies, you’ll become their enemy, so you make the world their enemy first.
You fear your needs don’t matter, so you forcefully assert or quietly ignore them.
In all of these fears, we find something beautiful hidden: the desire to be loved, chosen, and cherished. If only you could step back, you’d see the way to fulfill this desire is not through fear, but in freedom.
Only in freedom can true healing and love take place. These fears we learned in relationship can also be healed through relationship. The first step towards that is recognizing any patterns in ourselves that need this love and healing.
“We” was never meant to erase “me.” Instead, relationships are meant to grow and sanctify our unique selves, equipping us to pour out to others. Only through this giving of ourselves can we find true peace and happiness in the world, and in relationship with one another.
If this article opened something within you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team to schedule a free Mentorship consultation to see how daily accompaniment can help you untangle codependent patterns in your relationship.