Codependency As A Power Struggle Without Responsibility

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Codependent relationships are age-old power struggles. Each of the partners in such a pair does not represent himself as separate due to his infantilism - not adulthood. An adult, internally grown person usually builds more or less healthy equal relationships

Codependency is primarily an indicator of non-adulthood. I can't survive without you. This is felt by the child next to the parent. In parent-child relationships, such dependence is organic in terms of the age of the child. However, already stuck in this position, an over-aged, non-separated adult feels the ever-increasing demands of the environment, on the one hand, as inevitable and natural, on the other hand, those that he cannot cope with on his own.

This conflict from an internal and poorly realized situation of discomfort periodically breaks through into relationships and into life in general. Moreover, a person may feel out of place, not at ease, have many claims and grievances not only to their other half, but also to any partner. Colleagues, boss, aging parents, own children, old friends and new acquaintances. In some cases, even the Motherland and the Government serve as an ideal object for claims, become to blame for all troubles and failures.

So the words - "You ruined my whole life" can be successfully paraphrased in: - "This country has deprived me of the future", or in - "My boss does not allow me to earn more."

The meaning here is the same - "I am not independent enough to take what I want, and someone big, evil and bad does not give it to me just like that, for beautiful eyes."

What does power have to do with it? Despite the fact that a child who is not able to serve himself has tremendous power over the parent, who MUST feed, clothe, protect, take care of. The parent's role is as follows. It is enough for a baby to whimper for the mother to start guessing what the baby wants: to eat, to change a diaper, to use pens, or teeth are being cut. You don't need to do anything on purpose. Just howl loudly. At this age, this is the only way available to him to communicate his need. The older the child is, the less this infant power he has. With harmonious development, a person learns to use this energy of need in a different way, independently looking in the environment for ways to satisfy his needs. Here, the power and grandiose omnipotence over the mother are gradually transformed into power over their own life and responsibility for it in front of oneself. An adult understands that if the refrigerator runs out of food, it is because he did not buy it on time, and not because his wife is a fool, does not care about him. And if she really is globally stupid and does not care, then his responsibility is that he continues to live with her like that.

Codependent partners are two children, each of whom sees a more adult and powerful person in his “half”, and demands from him, as from his parent, the fulfillment of his own desires. Almost always with the help of manipulation, blackmail, and other tricks from a wide passive-aggressive arsenal. Almost never directly declaring what he wants. And even if one of them for some time turns out to be able to more soberly and maturely manifest itself in a relationship, it turns out to be very unprofitable for him, since the second at this moment usually does not choose an adult position, but begins to parasitize his matured with a vengeance, which means - an even more parent-like partner. Such a competition for the title of the most infantile, helpless and endowed with tremendous power of the baby.

In a family consultation, such a couple begins to actively adopt from a therapist. When they do not find support for their infantile patterns there, but they also don’t receive double messages and manipulations familiar to such a pair, the partners have a real opportunity to disengage a little, at least for a short while become separate from each other and try to make their own honest efforts to each other on meeting. The main difficulty here, as in any relationship, is in an inevitable collision with reality: you can meet and notice each other only if both partners want it and are ready to work on the relationship. One is never a warrior in the field of family life.

And in therapy, it is clearly visible - when one partner or both simply declare this willingness in words, and when, indeed, they make efforts.

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As always, when describing the mechanisms of codependency, I avoid in the texts an excessive display of sympathy, which in the course of therapy for each client story appears a lot. Such relationships are always exhausting, often very painful and sometimes simply unbearable. Behind every addiction story is rage, pain, fear, despair, powerlessness. However, codependents, more often than other clients, masterfully know how to displace their sufferings, distance themselves from them and shift the responsibility for their experiences and actions onto their partner. And these are dead-end strategies. Codependent partners, like no one else, want to be comforted and warmed, but then, that they also take it on hand, and preferably forever.

Growing up, the path separately, undoubtedly lies through support, but globally - on a different plane. And like a bitter but useful mixture, a meeting with a difficult reality that your partner is not your mother, that you are an adult and that only you yourself owe you in your life, and your partner is a pleasant warm bonus that might not exist: here is the only effective remedy.