Anatomy Of A Codependent Relationship Or "Merlin Monroe Syndrome"

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

Have you tried all your life to get married, but no matter how hard you tried, the person who would suit you in all respects did not appear on the horizon?

Aren't you stuck in a relationship with a man that makes you unhappy, and you can't break up with him, doesn't it work?

Don't you think that in life you are attracted only by, so to speak, not quite ordinary partners, such bastards, while normal men do not touch your heart at all?

Do you look in the mirror with fear every day, although many talk about your attractiveness?

Do you abuse alcohol or drugs, food or sex; are you spending more money than you can afford?

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, then you tend to build not healthy, but pathological - co-dependent relationships with the prospective partner.

In the broadest sense of the word, codependency is the emotional dependence of one person on the Other that is significant to him

Based on the latter definition, we can conclude that any significant relationship gives rise to a certain amount of emotional codependency, since, letting in close people into our lives, we necessarily react to their emotional state, one way or another, we adapt to their lifestyle, tastes, habits, needs. And indeed it is. However, in the so-called "healthy" or mature relationships, there is always a large enough space to satisfy their own needs, to achieve their own goals and individual growth of the personality, which, as you know, maintains health and vitality exclusively in the process of development.

In the relationship, which we call codependent, there is practically no space for the free development of the personality. A person's life is completely absorbed by a significant Other. And in such cases he lives not his own, but His life. A codependent person ceases to distinguish between his own needs and goals from the goals and needs of a loved one. He does not have his own development: his thoughts, feelings, actions, methods of interaction and solutions move in a closed circle, cyclically and inevitably returning a person to repeating the same mistakes, problems and failures.

LEGEND OF OUR TIME

There lived a small and very beautiful girl in one country. Her parents were not scheduled. The girl's father went on the run immediately after her birth. The mother suffered from a mental disorder and could not raise her daughter: therefore, she sent her to her sister, who in turn sent her first to a child's home, and then to an orphanage. The little girl grew up and turned into the most beautiful and desirable girl, and many noble people of that country sought her hands.

But, despite the fact that she became famous and in life she was everywhere successful, she did not believe either that she was beautiful or that she was desired. When she was little, she was offended, rejected and humiliated so many times that now she devoted all her time only to making as many people as possible love her.

Constantly unhappy, depressed, she began to drink, try drugs to drown out the desperate pain in her soul. She got married three times, and all three times she came across husbands who did not love her and did not respect her as a person. And whenever her marriage fell apart, fell apart, she felt even more unhappy.

The stream of applicants for her hand did not stop, but she did not understand people well and rejected worthy admirers; and, on the contrary, she was carried away only by those men who only used her for their own purposes, or were married, or were unable to love her and put her below themselves, pushed her around and rejected her as a person. In all this she considered herself to be the only one to blame. She fell into a vicious circle from which she could not get out, she was afraid of loneliness, was jealous to madness, she was constantly consumed by inexplicable anxieties, oppressed by chronic depression - and now she became addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she experienced only hatred and disgust.

It seemed to her that she was ugly, that she was a complete failure, that she was a person who was not worthy of love.

She had twelve or thirteen abortions, more than twenty operations, she tried seven times to commit suicide. She died at the age of thirty-six.

Her name was Marilyn Monroe. She built destructive codependent relationships with men. She was adored by millions, and she chose men who were NOT ABLE TO LOVE HER!

If Marilyn's story is so similar to yours …

You were born into an unhealthy family. This means that your parents could not, were not able to give you unconditional, unconditional love, whatever their reasons. From them you never received that attitude towards yourself that could be expressed by the words: “I love you the way you are,” on the contrary, their attitude could rather be expressed as follows: “Something in you is not what Then you are not like all normal people "," So you will take an example from your sister, maybe I will love you "," You will obey, you will do everything in my way … "- and so on.

By the time you’re five years old, you’ve learned well that there’s something wrong with you. You have always been with your parents a bad, spoiled girl, unworthy of their love, and therefore unworthy of love in general. By the time you were five, you had learned to hate yourself …

And already becoming an adult, you have retained this conviction that you are not worthy of true love; you have doomed yourself to be in touch only with those partners who cannot respond to you with love, who constantly reject your love and yourself as a person, who seem to be at an unattainable height in relation to you; if you fall in love, then the object of your passion is a person inaccessible to you or clearly inappropriate. You are unable to enter into a normal, healthy relationship with a man, be it your lover, just a friend or workmate. Instead of love, normal love, you feel passion bordering on obsession and insanity, as well as an unconscious desire to be always rejected, humiliated, desire, accompanied by continuous pain.

You never learned to love yourself, to love the way you are, but you learned to hate yourself for not being like this or that, like this or that.

Unconditional love is what parents give their child - “I love you simply because you were born, just because you are mine. You are the best child in the world for me."

Unconditional love is constant; nothing can shake her. It comes from parents who are capable of this, and themselves have received a sufficient amount of unconditional love, who also love themselves, and therefore are able to allow their children to be who they want to become themselves, no matter that this may not coincide with parental wishes …

The unconditional love of parents gives rise to the child's ability to love himself, self-respect.

WHAT IS A DESTRUCTIVE FAMILY?

A destructive family is a family where parents are unable to give their children their unconditional love, unable to raise them in a healthy atmosphere of love. Such parents themselves were brought up in destructive families and in childhood never felt unconditional love on themselves. And when they themselves became parents, their inner gaze did not have a model by which they could learn to love: themselves, their spouse or their children, and to love with healthy love. They simply cannot give what they do not see the need for, what they themselves have never received.

They have no idea how to allow their children to freely develop their individuality; they are intimidated by any deviation from their own behavioral stereotypes.

The following characteristics of one or both parents are also signs of a destructive family: alcoholism, drug addiction, mental or physical illness, mental or physical defects, inability to control oneself in food or work; a painful desire for purity in everything, which takes the form of a mental illness; addiction to gambling, extravagance; they tend to resort to physical methods of influence on a partner or on a child;

Other signs of an unhealthy atmosphere and parental behavior: constant abuse, chronic tension in relationships, inability or unwillingness to relieve it; extreme harshness with regard to money, sex, or religious matters; constant rivalry in relationships with each other or with children; the presence of pets in the family; cultivating a competitive spirit among children; excessively strict discipline in a family living by strict rules; the atmosphere of a family living without rules at all, where everything or almost everything is allowed; a stifling atmosphere in families, whose members are too close to each other, preventing them from making friends and acquaintances outside the family; the presence in the family of parents, one of whom dominates in everything, and the other is self-deprecating in front of him; cultural matriarchy, when the role of both parents is played by one mother; early death of one of the parents; reunification with a parent who had previously rejected the family; divorce in all its variants; a situation where the life of the parents is in danger, or when in some way this life becomes worse and worse simply due to the very fact of their parenting.

Anatomy of a Codependent Relationship or Merlin Monroe Syndrome

NO, IT'S NOT ABOUT ME

You may not agree with what you just read. Of course, you came from a healthy family, a non-destructive family. Your family was perfect. You deeply sympathize with everyone who was brought up in a family affected by this syndrome. They were very unlucky. But believe me, the truth is this: the more ardently you defend your family, the more likely it is that your family was indeed destructive.

For many parents, in a destructive family, raising a child becomes a game based on the desire to dominate and subjugate. Children are obliged to do only what their parents want them to do, and not only to do, but also to think, feel, speak, and in general be in everything what their parents want them to be. In other cases, on the contrary, children are neglected, as if they are not noticed, no matter how hard they try to please, gain approval, win attention or love.

But in any case, whether the child is subject to vigilant control, or is not paid attention to, the dysfunctional rules of the game give rise to a disease called PAINFUL LOVE (codependency).

WHAT IS PAINFUL LOVE?

Painful love is an emotional illness. This is an acquired style of self-destructive self-destructive behavior, it is a special belief system that contributes to the self-destruction of the subject; a state of consciousness in which the subject rejects his true "I", suppresses in himself everything that he really is, replacing it with false content, that is, what he really is not; in this case, the immediate feeling is replaced by prejudice; rejection of your inner self and your inner needs; replacing them with an external rating system; it is a trap that you fall into when you begin to live and relate to others not from the standpoint of your own personality and your own desires and needs, but from the standpoint of what you think the other person wants from you or thinks of you. This is a perverted way of thinking, this is a whole system of false beliefs, the essence of which boils down to the fact that love can be won only without being what you really are, and, conversely, if you always remain yourself, you will inevitably lose it.

This illness imposes on you a false model of behavior: as a child, you developed a need to earn the approval of your parents who condemn you; now it has been replaced by the need to win the approval of the rejecting partner.

You give a turn from the gate to anyone, if it's a decent person or just a good guy. You're allergic to those. You are not dragged away from them, as you are dragged from scoundrels and scoundrels. On the contrary, they make you desperate; there is something in them that brings out the worst in you: they annoy you; you are mortally bored with them. They make you angry simply because they exist on earth and smoke the sky. You do not give such a person a single chance, and there can be no question of a date at all. You become amazingly inventive, you find thousands of excuses, thousands of reasons to find fault, thousands of tricks, just to get rid of him: "He is not sexy", "He does not know how to dress", "He will not achieve anything in this life," not handsome enough "," He is from a not very decent family."

You see only shortcomings or you invent them yourself, you find fault with the external and inessential, with such things that you would immediately justify or even not notice, had he guessed to treat you at least with a slight disdain. But if he makes a tragic mistake and tries to please you or, horror, falls in love and expresses a desire to both emotionally and sexually share his feelings with you, you are ready to tear him to shreds. You make him pay dearly for his own stupidity, humiliating and insulting him in every possible way; you are looking for any reason for a quarrel; whatever he says, you immediately enter into an argument with him. You are amazingly skillful at turning his love and admiration into your own contempt and hatred, so that as a result, he leaves you alone, and all the blame for this falls only on him.

It's easier for you to die than to be in bed with him. Your cunning is unparalleled: every time you come up with new excuses, just to avoid meeting him, starting with the old, like the world, they say, "I have a headache" and numerous options: "Sorry, I just have my period … "," Something is unhealthy for me, probably I ate something wrong … ".

But when some villain, into whom you have a crush on the ears, asks you to spend a couple of weeks with him in some miserable shack, in a remote village, without hot water, and even offers to pay your share for the road and food, you are right you can't wait to leave. And you don’t care that you’re a city to the core and afraid of snakes. You love him and you are ready for anything.

The very minute you saw him, he becomes the object of your secret desires; you are attracted to “him” with such force that it takes your breath away, so a butterfly flies into the light of a lamp; you have the feeling that a chemical reaction is going on in your blood - this is an attraction that cannot be resisted, a truly fatal attraction. He is simply irresistible. If he is not yours, your life is over.

Without realizing it, you see in him a person who in body, soul or mind is in some way similar to your father, who suffered, like you, with the same ailment. Your unconscious feeling chooses it unmistakably: it’s better not to find it to wipe your feet on you.

And the stronger the attraction, the brighter the reminder of the parent who also wiped his feet on you; the greater the likelihood of repeating the same relationship, the deeper your future suffering.

A moment - and at first sight you fell in love with a person who will never want to truly possess you, who will never love you.

The very reason that awakens your attraction is that subconsciously you feel: nothing will come of yours, there is another one in front of you who is not able to give you what you want. You snatched him out of the crowd with unerring precision. Yes, this is exactly the one with whom cheerful days await you, but you ignore all the alarming signals - you are blind and deaf to them. All your girlfriends are vying with each other: "Yes, this is a bastard, stay away from him." But you are sure that your Love is capable of working miracles, under your beneficial influence it will certainly change. All your deeds, all your thoughts and plans revolve around him alone. With such fury and passion, you pour your attention and love on him that you do not notice anyone or anything else, and even more so you waved your hand at yourself. As a person, you simply ceased to exist. You are part of it, you are its continuation. You dissolve in it without a trace.

And so a relationship begins …

And a certain sense of responsibility for him awakens in you. Yes, he has some shortcomings, some bad habits, he needs to be developed, something to make to change, he needs to be guided, he needs so much care!

It only needs to be directed and it will change; in your hands it will certainly become - perfection itself. And how did he live all these years without you? How lucky he is that you found him, and just in time, because all is not yet lost.

All your time is now filled with the device of your partner's daily routine, and indeed of his whole life. You replace love with self-giving; by your excessive participation in his life, you are trying to become irreplaceable for him. For him, you do what you could never afford to yourself. Just think what you can get in return: eternal gratitude and endless interest payments - after all, he will love you forever.

Is he in trouble? Nothing, he has a nanny who will take care of him, heal all his wounds. He's just now getting divorced from his wife - how painful it must be. And what a fortune for you - you can become for him a servant, a cook, a personal secretary who, in addition, runs around the shops and buys him all the most delicious.

But … little by little, a real angel turns into a real devil. He gets out of submission and begins to act, and does everything in his own way. He criticizes you on every occasion, he forgets that he promised to call, for several days he does not show his nose at all. Goodbye, warm hugs and kisses and sleepless nights of love: now you are close only when he wants, if he wants to at all. At first you do not believe that everything went to pieces, that your beautiful love is over, that it is over forever, that the "love boat" has run aground. You think it's all about you, and you redouble your efforts to please him.

Your relationship is like a dark one-sided game, but you stubbornly continue to place new bets, knowing for sure that you will lose anyway. You cut off the phone, looking for it all over the city and suspecting the worst. Jealousy and paranoia nullify all your sanity. Of course, he is now doing "this" with the other, well, yes, he found himself another. You follow him on his heels when he walks through the city, you follow where he goes, you rush through the whole city to where, according to him, he was supposed to be, you need to see with your own eyes that his car is really standing there … And you see that she is not there. You call him at work ten times a day to know for sure that he is there and has not gone anywhere. He begins to avoid you, he speaks to you through clenched teeth and is even rude; he often breaks down and just hangs up. To somehow please him, you set up a gorgeous dinner party, and instead of gratitude, he begins to flirt recklessly with all your friends, and tries to drag the best of them into bed. He no longer makes love to you. And you're afraid to ask why.

What happened was what should have happened: you fell in love with a fickle person, with a person who keeps you in eternal fear of being left alone; you do not have a moment of peace, there is no confidence in yourself and in the future, as, indeed, in it. You yourself become different. The cooing of doves turns into a pig squeal and endless squabbling. In conversations with him, you learn a sarcastic tone and do not believe a single word of his. And at the same time you are desperately trying to suppress all these feelings in yourself; because now your behavior is ruled by fear. One and the same thought gnaws at you all the time: "It would be better for me to be kind to him, otherwise he will take and leave me." Now, in conversations with him, you carefully hide your slightest problems, you are afraid to admit that you are unhappy, that you feel bad, that a state of depression does not leave you. After all, if you admit it to him, he will turn and leave.

You call him again, write him long, meaningless SMS, you circle around him, and your anxiety grows, you return to him and leave again, you change your mind again and again. And in the end, one way or another, whether as a result of your next offense in front of him, or simply at his whim, a bitter end comes. And, ultimately, you still remain guilty, because in this situation you were not up to par, and there was nothing to love you for.

Yes, life is suffering, and love is suffering too. And it hurts to be alone. And the two also hurt. Love does not mean being loved, and you never were. Are you capable of this? And then one day, you see another - and everything starts all over again. You find yourself in a vicious circle, from which you seem to have no way out….

Exit? Group or individual psychotherapy is the only opportunity to recognize your unconscious motives, in accordance with which you build deliberately destructive, sick relationships, bypassing the bastion of your own psychological defenses. Expanding the zone of awareness, in the process of psychotherapy, we have a CHOICE, which we are deprived of in the process of unconsciously acting out our childhood traumas.

If you really want, you can change your life and change yourself. You can break the back of this vicious circle!

The healing process is like the steps of a child learning to walk: slowly, step by step, step by step.

You can win.

You can overcome your syndrome.

You can find health.

There is no doubt you can do it!