December 31, 2024
Jewish Matchmaker Journal: Are You the Codependent?
Relationships flourish when there is mutual trust, respect, and emotional support. It’s crucial to show love, care, and concern for your partner, but there is a fine line between healthy interdependence and unhealthy codependence. Codependency creates an imbalanced reliance on your partner for your own self-worth and value, as well as an excessive need for validation.
I’ve heard people defend codependent behaviors as if they are signs of great empathy and should be praised. As a Jewish matchmaker, I don’t agree. Codependence is a destructive behavior pattern that leads to one partner feeling used, unappreciated, and undervalued - feelings that are not beneficial for a happy partnership. With this post, I hope to highlight some signs of codependency so that you can recognize if perhaps you are the codependent in your relationships, and how to grow into a healthier and more secure partner.
What Is Codependency?
Codependency is a relationship dynamic where one person is focused on the needs and emotions of their partner, at the expense of their own. It often involves that partner neglecting their own personal boundaries and seeking their personal worth and validation through the relationship. On the surface, it may feel like a desire to be helpful or show how much you care, but in actuality, it’s an unhealthy dynamic where you become overly dependent on your partner and create an imbalance of power and responsibility in the relationship.
Are you Codependent?
Your Needs Are Less Important: Suppressing your own desires, needs, wants, feelings, dreams, or goals to please or accommodate your partner, is a codependent behavior. Yes, compromise is essential in all relationships, but the compromise should be mutual and balanced. Continually putting your partner’s needs ahead of your own is a breeding ground for burnout and resentment.
You Can’t Say “No”: Codependents fear disappointing or upsetting their partner and/or looking like a “bad” person. When you’re afraid of disappointing someone, you overextend yourself to fulfill requests that you don’t have time to do and don’t really want to do. Some of the requests might even make you uncomfortable. The inability of a codependent to set boundaries will lead to feeling exhausted, overextended, undervalued, and unappreciated. Ultimately, you will end up feeling “alone” in the relationship.
Your Self-Worth Depends on the Relationship: When your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth are dependent upon the approval of your partner, you are likely codependent. Your intrinsic value as a human being doesn’t depend on what anyone else thinks of you. Relying on the good feelings that someone else has for you in order for you to feel secure in yourself will lead to the exact opposite; you will always feel insecure.
You are Conflict Avoidant: Fear of conflict often stems from fear of rejection. When you are afraid of offending your partner for fear that they will leave you, you are very careful in what you say because you don’t want to create a conflict that might cause your partner to go. You suppress your opinions and feelings and simply agree with your partner - even when you disagree. This avoidant behavior not only stifles the value of your perspective, it also prevents real communication and problem resolution.
You Take Responsibility for Your Partner’s Emotions: Codependents are the “fixers” in relationships and often feel driven to fix their partner’s problems and manage their feelings and emotions. This is not your responsibility. Eventually, the codependent becomes more like a caretaker for their partner, while the partner can become overly dependent on their support - again creating an unhealthy dynamic and relationship imbalance.
You Want to Spend All Your Time Together: Spending time apart is healthy for a relationship. Having outside interests or “alone time”, allows you to bring fresh ideas and energy to the relationship. Do you feel anxious or insecure when you’re not with your partner? Do you worry they are doing something you don’t “approve of”? Are you hurt by that they are having fun “without you”? If you stop spending time with your friends and family in order to always be with your partner, you create an over-dependence that stifles your own self-growth and leads to a stagnancy in the relationship.
You Have Abandonment Fear: If you have a fear of being alone, you likely show codependent behaviour in a relationship. Similar to conflict avoidance, you are afraid of creating a reason for your partner to leave you. Fear of abandonment leads to many codependent behaviors including excessive people-pleasing, clinging, irrational jealousy, and sacrificing yourself to keep the relationship intact.
Why is Codependency Harmful?
Many people think that codependent behaviors are positive traits that indicate devotion and deep love. Unfortunately, it isn’t deep love that creates these behaviors, it’s an unhealthy dependence upon another person for one’s own self worth and self esteem.
Loss of Personal Identity: When you consistently prioritize the needs of another, you lose your own identity, dreams, interests, and goals. This leads to feelings of loneliness, emptiness, and lack of fulfillment.
Relationship Imbalance: Taking on all of the emotional responsibilities of your partner and the relationship, is a heavy load to bear. Eventually, the codependent partner feels they have no emotional support because their partner is always taking - never giving. This leads to feelings of frustration and resentment, that only increase over time.
You Feel Drained: Prioritizing your partner’s emotions and needs over your own is draining and ultimately, unsustainable. The codependent will experience burn-out and exhaustion, which may lead to feelings of anxiety or depression.
Stifles Personal Growth: Being 100% focused on the needs of someone else leads you to neglect your own dreams, desires, and goals. You become less self-reliance and more dependent upon the feedback from your partner. Ultimately, both partners suffer a lack of personal growth in this dynamic.
Avoidance of Real Issues: When you continually suppress your perspectives and opinions or avoid having difficult conversations for fear of conflict or abandonment, you create an unstable base for the relationship. Instead of strengthening the union, you undermine it. When a relationship is built on such a fragile structure, it may take a very small disruption to completely bring the relationship down.
Can You Break Free from Codependency?
If many of the above descriptions fit your behavior in relationships, there are some strategies that can help you break free of your codependency.
Self-Awareness: Be honest with yourself about your role in the relationship. Look objectively at your behavior and determine the motivations and reasons for your behaviors. Many, if not all, codependent tendencies stem from our upbringing. Seeking the answers deep within yourself and being willing to face difficult memories and heal, are key for developing self-awareness and self-confidence as an adult. Journaling, confiding in a trusted friend, or seeking an objective therapist can also be helpful in the journey.
Create Personal Boundaries: Practice saying “no” when you really don’t want to do something or don’t have time to do it. Communicate honestly and openly about your feelings and needs and start communicating those needs to others. Decide what you are comfortable doing for others and when a request has crossed that line, decline.
Practice Independence: Focus on some of your own interests and pursue hobbies and friendships outside of your relationship. This doesn’t mean you neglect your partner or stop sharing activities, but include time that you each spend independently. Engage in interests that strengthen your talents and self worth so that you are not dependent upon your partner for validation.
Professional Input: Don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional and seek therapy in order to understand the root causes of your codependency. A skilled therapist will not tell you what to do, but instead will listen and offer a different perspective to consider. No matter what is going on in life, an objective ear can be tremendously helpful for navigating challenges.
Strive for Mutual Growth: Build a relationship that allows both of you to grow and thrive - independently and together. Strive for open communication and mutual support. The key to recognizing a codependent relationship dynamic is in the mutuality of the caring, support, compromise, and communication. There is a healthy balance of these factors in a healthy relationship, and it is this healthy balance that creates satisfaction and stability in the relationship.
