I have been having conversations with different Women about their friends or acquaintances who are in bad relationships. We talk about the extremes these women go to in order to keep their men: paying all the bills in their household even though the man works; paying all of his bills and doing without what they need; buying their own engagement rings among other things. We also talk about the physical consequences that come with the maintaining of these co-dependent relationships: depression, cancer, muscular and nerve damage; fibroids.


I spend a lot of time shaking my head and trying to halt the nausea that wells up in my body during these discussions. My reaction has little to do with passing judgment. I have been where these women are. So, when I hear their stories, I shake my head because I know that nothing these women do will change the men in their lives. When I become nauseous it’s because I know that the women will give away so much of themselves that eventually there will be nothing left. And when the well is dry, the women will either self-destruct or parish under the weight of the shame that is always present in these types of relationships.

I was married to a man for ten years who spent most of his time ignoring me. Throughout the marriage I gave and gave (money, time, my body, my self-worth), but it was never enough. Nothing I did made him a better husband. Nothing I did made him love me as much as I believed I loved him. I thought what I carried for him was love because the way I was practicing love was the way I saw it played out in my parents relationship. And while I understand that maintaining a relationship involves hard work, love should never be as hard as it was for me during my second marriage.

But I couldn’t see that until after I stopped giving everything I had. When I took myself away (my money, my time, my body, my love), the marriage I had been fighting so hard to keep collapsed. It became crystal clear that all of the effort in keeping the marriage together had been one-sided. There was a time in my life when I believed all I deserved was whatever I could get from a man. I no longer believe that. Once I began to embrace the fact that I am worthy of real love, I was able to let go of a relationship that kept me depressed and anxious, constantly angry, and breeding fibroids for more than half of the marriage.

Even though I gave to my detriment, there were always some things that I kept for myself. And this is where the anger towards the women starring in my conversations comes into play. I have been writing since I was in the sixth or seventh grade. Now at the age of 39, I know that having this outlet kept me from going completely insane while I was married to a man who would do something wrong in my direct line of sight one minute and in the next have me feeling as if I never saw what happened or that maybe I was the one who’d messed up. And while I spent a lot of money on my second husband, I did learn from my experiences in my first marriage that I should keep my money separate. There were no joint accounts the second time around, so when I decided to stop giving that was it.

My education is probably what truly saved me from a long term stay at a residential mental health facility or jail; or both. I accumulated two master’s degrees and started on a third (which I completed after the divorce) during my second marriage partly because I knew I needed more education to earn a better living, but also because focusing on school allowed me a break from obsessing over the disaster that was my marriage. My education is the reason I was able to finally pull myself out of the cycle of bad relationships. It is the reason I was able to secure a better paying job shortly after I asked my husband to leave. It is the reason I can look back and dissect the events in my childhood that lead me to be co-dependent.

Women give so much of themselves even in normal, healthy relationships that it is imperative that we keep something just for us; no matter if our partners or children or families believe it to be insignificant. Even if it is just a sliver of time alone, a few minutes to meditate, a class one night a week, or a savings account with a few dollars in it that no one else has access to. A woman needs something that is just hers. This allows her to remain a separate entity and to have pride in being who she is without the desire or the need of approval from anyone else.-MBL


CO-DEPENDENCY RESOURCES:

Mental Health America (MHA): Factsheet: Co-dependency

WebMD: Signs of a Codependent Relationship

PsychCentral: Co-dependent Relationships