Codependency and Low Self Worth--the Most Insidious, Toxic Relationship-Ender There Is

PAST

"HOW can I say that?" you ask. "I thought a lot of other things were way, wayyy worse. Like cheating. Or beating. Or porn addiction. Or any other kind of addiction. Anger management issues? A controlling personality? At least codependents don't do any of those!"

No, they don't. (At least, not in any overt, in-your face kind of way.) BUT...

Most of the time, a person whose spouse is straying will find out. If your spouse is an angry or controlling person, you're gonna figure that out within a year of marriage, I promise you. Addictive behavior, you're gonna see evidence of as soon as it gets bad enough. And most people being hit have no problem recognizing the fact.

With just about any other relationship problem you can name, it's going to show up on both people's radar pretty soon. Both people will recognize there is a problem. They may not know what to do, and they may struggle with it for years and years, but both people know there's a problem.

With codependency and low self esteem (and I'm always going to use those terms together because all codependents feel horrible about themselves), only one person knows about any problems, and that person either:

A.) Isn't talking, or

B.) Gets knocked down every time they try to talk. Then they feel bad about themselves and just shut up again and pretend everything is fine.

       [Then you get, A.) Isn't talking.]

When this dynamic starts, the relationship can go on LOOKING AS IF everything is fine for years

and years

                           and YEARS

                                                         AND YEARS.

ONE person knows things aren't fine. The codependent.

And that person isn't talking. That person is ACTING.

The codependent is secretly miserable, so codependency is already ruining their life. That's how it starts. Then, codependency ruins everybody else's life.

Because acting is fine if you're doing it professionally, on the stage or in movies or TV. It's when you play a role all the time in your life that it isn't healthy. It hurts to be other than who you are. And nobody can do it forever.

Why do codependents not talk? Why do they act and pretend rather than be themselves?

Because they have such low self esteem and such, SUCH low self worth, codependents can be sort of mousy little people, absolutely SURE they aren't lovable and no one would want them. Because they've been treated like shit in childhood by drug addicted, personality disordered, or otherwise sick/neglectful/emotionally unavailable parents. Or maybe someone else was sick in the home and the parents just had their hands full. Either way, the codependent child/now physical (but not emotional) adult, feels horrible inside just about ALL the time and will do anything, ANYTHING for the love they needed growing up.

Sad to say, this kind of person is VERY attractive to anyone with a NEED TO CONTROL.

If Rory's horoscope is to be believed, her need to control came from a punishing childhood with an authoritarian mother, during which all her emotions went permanently into hiding and she determined to marry somebody who wouldn't treat her like that. So she was looking for somebody with a weak ego whom one glare, one snarl would knock nicely into submission. Maybe not even consciously, but it's the truth. Also, there's a lot there about a deep lack of confidence. If a person like this can get their hooks into someone smart who will be amazingly successful in the world, and then control everything this person does...well, that person has it made, right?

Wrong. Because no human being can be remade into the image another human being needs or wants. The truth is going to come out...and it does, in the mind of the codependent. Who isn't talking.

In my case, I had the same deep lack of confidence. The rest of my control problems came from a mother who portrayed to everyone around her that if only they would treat her just so, she could feel okay.

When that mother is a borderline who's flying into terrifying rages on an almost daily basis, scaring the minor children in the household to death, those kids grow up highly motivated to "do something" to change, to control, to comfort the people around them into feeling better and acting better.

Put me and Rory together and you have two very controlling women. The difference between us is, Rory had a high functioning mother (capable, held a job in the community) and herself turned out low functioning (barely aware of emotions in self, let alone her significant other), and I had a low functioning mother (couldn't drive or even handle a checkbook until her mid-thirties, anxious and fearful, could not hold down a job and tried to make ME do most of the household chores) and I turned out high functioning (extremely self aware, and brave enough to be this brutally honest about myself.)

What do the two of us have in common? Chi. The extreme codependent, who acts, pretends, and won't talk. What does he act and pretend? Whatever is necessary so that people around him approve of him.

BECAUSE CODEPENDENTS BELIEVE THAT APPROVAL AND LOVE ARE THE SAME THING.

How could we ever believe otherwise? Because the only thing we ever got (and really, all three of us are codependent) was approval from our abusive parents, whenever they weren't on a rollercoaster borderline wave of intense negative emotion, stuck on a drinking binge, or otherwise able to notice us, and we did something that reflected well on them.

So, the codependent acts and pretends, acts and pretends, acts and pretends that everything's fine (because that's what gets approval from the people around him) for DECADES. Even though he himself knows that he isn't happy and that something is wrong.

During those decades, an awful lot of badness happens.

1.) Outsiders judge the home, the relationship, and the happiness of the people by what the codependent displays.

2.) Problems fester and fester, growing worse and worse, because the other person doesn't know what's wrong--doesn't even know that ANYTHING is wrong--so doesn't get a chance to understand anything or to correct anything. Even worse, the codependent, trying to make everyone else happy, lies to himself: We'll do it her way. I'm fine with it. Really! And displays specifically to the partner that something that's making the codependent feel bad is perfectly OK. So the partner innocently acts on what the codependent has displayed. Now a painful situation has been set up. And worse, the codependent may even blame the PARTNER later, when the codependent specifically told the partner it was OK!

3.) The codependent does ANYTHING to try to handle the upset feelings, B-U-T talk about them to anyone who can actually help. Chi used to clean compulsively, lose himself in reading or hobbies, and misuse Zen meditation in an effort to be "not unhappy." They're most honest with people they aren't close to, and most dishonest with people they're close to! And relationships are SUPPOSED to go the other way round.

I mean, look at this. Chi is more honest with me than he's ever been with anyone, and we haven't even seen each other's FACES in over two and a half years. What do you suppose a person like this is going to do if we were ever together? Shut down to me, trying to keep me in the room, and go be honest with someone peripheral again.

That's how affairs happen. Sure is how ours started.

4.) Because the codependent has architected so very, very well this beautiful (untrue) façade of "Everything's perfect!" and is able to do this so very skillfully for so very very long, if and when the codependent finally breaks the wall of silence and reaches out to someone close to the situation to share truthfully...often that person is shocked. People tend to believe what THEY saw, rather than what a person actually involved tells them is the truth. This is the reason so many incest victims come forward to a family member and aren't believed. "But your dad is a GREAT guy! I've known him for years! He would never do that! Why are you lying to me?"

People get so attached to what they SAW and what they BELIEVED that they NEED to believe it, and giving up the belief is too shocking, too terrifying. What if that little girl really IS being sexually abused? How will things change? Or maybe it's as simple as, "Chi and Rory, we love them. Such a lovely couple, such a lovely family. MY marriage is shit, but theirs is wonderful. *Sigh*"

So the codependent comes forward, finally, trembling and filled with trepidation, and gets greeted with SHOCK! "OMG, this can't be true!" Or they get pelted with the DUTY they OWE the other person. When it may be that that other person has been abusive or neglectful or hurtful for years, in ways the codependent can't even bring themselves to say because it's too personal. But...

5.) Codependents don't like or trust themselves. So they value the advice and opinions they get from others over their own feelings.

Go back up to A. up there and start all over again.

Because of these dynamics, codependency has absolutely GOT to be the WORST emotional problem that can operate in a marriage. Here I'm witness to a marriage that's been rotting from the inside for nearly FORTY YEARS.

When something like that is going on, two people can waste most of their lives before even getting properly introduced to what's actually been happening. Now the bad habits of controlling and not speaking up are severely ingrained, and lots and lots and lots of unspoken hurts have poisoned the well. And the same bad habits are working in overtime to keep all the problems going. AND the external pressure from people who don't understand (because things LOOKED so good for so long) is doing the same thing.

If it really is unsalvageable, now the people are old. They're in their late forties, their late fifties, their sixties...even their seventies. And their entire LIVES have been lost to a bad relationship.

Worse, should they ever find a better one, they're probably going to conduct themselves according to the SAME BAD HABITS they've practiced since childhood. "I'm no good. No one will ever love me. I'd better put my head down, play along, not talk, not upset anyone, and never make waves."

Codependency is a LIFE DESTROYER--quite possibly the worst one there is.

Because it always has such a pretty, pretty face on it.