Codependents: Husband-controller, Wife-pleaser

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

Codependents have the belief that through the control of others they can ensure their safety and peace of mind. But everything happens exactly the opposite. Control becomes an overvalued idea that brings a lot of anxiety, tension and conflict. The codependent is filled with distrust of the world, and control is mistakenly chosen as the way through which trust will be achieved.

Mistrust among codependents is formed as a result of a traumatic situation in the past: childhood in a family of alcoholics, psychopaths, experience of betrayal, betrayal.

The codependent wants to make sure every time that the partner will not betray him, and control is chosen as the means. However, it is impossible to control everything and spread straws for yourself from any deception, mistakes and imperfections of others.

It is customary to classify women as codependents, but men can also be codependent. At the same time, it is not at all necessary that they live with an alcoholic, a patient.

A codependent, even in a relationship with an independent person, seeks to subordinate him to his control, to induce, explicitly or indirectly, to act and even think, feel himself the way he needs.

Most often, control is carried out through causing the partner to feel guilty.

Here are some recent situations from my life with my husband-controller. The wife leaves for a business meeting with a client. The husband knows about this meeting, his mind is already drawing scenes of his wife's criminal infidelity with a client. To somehow cope with the feeling of anxiety, he begins to call his wife at the moment when she has a business conversation. With the help of a call, the husband wants to make sure that the wife is not doing anything reprehensible.

Nevertheless, such a gross violation of boundaries, mistrust, control makes the wife indignant. She brings up the issue of control and boundaries for discussion with her husband, in response she receives a large portion of condemnation, grimaces of resentment, silence. By such behavior, the husband avoids admitting his responsibility in the incident, plus everything, makes the wife feel that she really did something wrong, to the point that the wife begins to doubt whether their communication with the client was only business. ?

In this way, the victim will always find a way to introject guilt and badness into another person.

Control can also be expressed through double bindings.

A recent example from life. The self-isolation regime has not yet been canceled, but the wife tells her husband that she plans to go to work. The husband says to her: "Go, but remember that you are an adult girl, and if that …". At the same time, the wife reads discontent and resentment on the husband's face. She begins to feel guilty again, picking up the accusation of irresponsibility and the promise of consequences in her husband's intonations.

The husband can exercise control with the help of obsessive care, do what he was not asked to do, be offended by refusal, etc.

As a result, his own life is spiraling out of control from being overly attached to the life of his spouse.

Wife-pleaser - this is the one who is ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of preserving peace and visible well-being in the family.

There are many such examples in life. Here is one of them. The woman got married without education, plans for professional and spiritual realization, and devoted herself entirely to her family. Her husband received an education, eventually became a manager at the plant, earned good money, provided for his family, built a country house, got all the children to work, bought them a car and an apartment. But there was one nuance: he was a despotic man, he loved to drink and then command, dispose of his wife as a servant, his connections on the side were innumerable, and his husband did not particularly try to hide them, he could even compare sex with his wife and mistress when visiting.

Despite such humiliation, the wife endured everything. Status and material well-being were more important to her than mental comfort. She endured everything, hiding her hatred for her husband.

Result: alexithymia, psychosomatics, early fading of youth and health.

There are still many such models of co-dependence. The main thing is to realize your codependency, and with the help of a specialist, outline the path to spiritual liberation.

* Artist: Claude Verlind.