- No matter how hard you try, people around you don't change their bad habits.
- If someone near you feels bad, you rush in to make them feel better because you think it's your fault that they're upset.
- You have secrets that you keep from another person.
- You criticize or get criticized frequently.
- You spend a lot of energy trying to make other people feel a certain way.
- You have the same arguments over and over. Conflicts end (temporarily) by one person apologizing and promising to do better.
- You spend a lot of energy trying to find whose fault it is in arguments, with each person struggling to prove that they are right or that the other person is wrong.
- You often find yourself convincing others why you're the victim, or telling them why a problem is your fault.
- You agree to do things you don't want to do, feel bad about it, but say nothing.
- People seem to not keep agreements with you.
If these statements describe your life, you may be in a codependent relationship. But what does that mean?
Essentially, codependence is when your behavior is determined by someone else's behavior, when others rely on you to maintain their own destructive behaviors and/or addictions, and when you are subordinate to others and, as a result, not true to your own feelings.
It is often easier to spot codependence in others and their relationships than it is to look inward at our own relationships and behaviors. No one likes to admit that their relationship with their spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend, parent, child, sibling, or friend is a codependent one.
You may feel like you have to act this way because this is what it means to be in this relationship. Perhaps your own parents had a codependent relationship and you are simply modeling patterns of behavior that you've seen repeated over generations.
Regardless of where your codependent habits started, the first step to moving beyond them is being honest with yourself. You owe it to yourself to take a clear look at your relationships with others and with yourself. When you break free from codependence, you can begin your journey to create healthy, functional relationships with the important people in your life.