Co-dependency isn’t always a bad thing
Assuming that it is is ableist, anti-multiculturalism, and anti-woman
Sort of on a similar theme to my previous post about passive-aggressive behavior, except that this is something that I’m personally really angry about. Like, really. Especially in pop psychology but even in professional circles, co-dependency is a concept that is seriously misunderstood. To me, the weirdest part is the fact that the name SAYS exactly what it is. But wow, it has accumulated all kinds of weird, emotionally loaded interpretations while circulating out there in the world.
Co-dependency
[Def. 1] Having an addiction to someone else’s addiction.
[Def. 2] Having a dependency (usually primarily emotional) on someone else’s dependency on you (usually primarily functional).
According to my dad (Hi, Dad), the history of treatment of addiction went through several distinct phases of thinking on partnerships. I guess the first phase probably involved not thinking about it much at all. And the current phase would fall under the term “co-dependency” however you happen to understand it. But in between there were a couple of phases that he calls “You’d be like that too if you were married to a woman like that”, and “You’d be like that too if you were married to a man like that.”
In other words, the first wave of thinking about how alcohol addiction was impacted by marriage was that overly demanding wives were driving their husbands to drink. (I leave you to guess - or research - whether female and unmarried alcoholics were invisible or merely not covered by the hypothesis.) Then that advanced to a second wave of thinking that the wives were, let’s call it “shrewish” to follow the idiom of that time, in response to their husband’s alcohol addiction.
Co-dependency follows up on that by capturing the idea that… really, it’s kind of both. These days, alcoholics aren’t just married men, and co-dependency applies to anyone who is personally close to the alcoholic, not just opposite-sex partners. (Yes, that goes without saying, and yes, I feel like I need to say it anyway.) And the concept of co-dependency reflects, or should reflect, the fact that there’s a lot of variability in how it plays out for different people.
I have developed my own way of thinking about co-dependency as follows:
Co-dependency
[Def. 3] Allowing someone to have a state of dependency on you that is unacknowledged because you and your dependent share a state of denial about their underlying functional problems.
[Def. 4] The state of disastrously poor personal boundaries that typically results from the situation described in definition 3.
Regardless of how I got there, hopefully by the time we get to definition 4, you are starting to recognize co-dependency as you understand it. Note: if you don’t understand that co-dependency is essentially about poor boundaries… well, it is. It just is. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’m worried about them.
So far, so good, at least as far as I’m concerned. This is co-dependency as I understand it, and it’s a huge ole problem that I try to puncture holes in whenever I happen across it.
But there are times when I switch sides. When I am not only a co-dependency apologist, but an actual fan. That happens when people start to get too specific about what “disasterously poor personal boundaries” means. Which is to say, almost always, when people on the internet start talking about what they think co-dependency is. It isn’t necessarily co-dependency to make choices for someone else, to make them do things that they don’t want to do, to take care of basic tasks for them that they should be able to do themselves. Actually, a lot of people also call that “parenting”.
Field research: search the internet for “co-dependency”. Pick a promising link (or two or three). Read what they say. If you replaced the word “co-dependency” with the word “motherhood”, how obvious is it what you’re looking at? If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that the best sources about half of what they’re saying about co-dependency could be a discussion of motherhood instead, and the worst sources it’s closer to 100%. And the worst sources are angry - just absolutely furious about… motherhood.
That’s why I’m throwing around terms like “anti-woman”, “ableist”, and yes, “anti-multicultural”. The answer to co-dependency is to negotiate good boundaries. The word “negotiate” is as important as the word “boundaries” in that sentence. The word “good”, however, is redundant. Negotiation is the process by which good boundaries happen. If the people involved agree that the boundaries are good, then… they are. That can include things like the partner who is a mechanic always picks the next new car - oh my God, NO, not making DECISIONS for someone else! That’s so co-dependent! …It’s not though. Not if the people involved are clear on the underlying issue - one of them understands cars and the other doesn’t - and agree on the solution.