co-dependency

Is it normal for one person’s happiness to be dependent on another person? Isn’t that co-dependent?

In my last two blog posts I addressed co-dependency. I explained that a key to understanding co-dependency is that while one person does something destructive, the other person benefits in some way.

Another key point is that the other person may be acting out of fear rather than love, and I gave some examples of what it would look like to cater to another person out of love or even patience. In these latter cases, I wouldn’t call the situation one of co-dependency.

In my last post, I defined co-dependency. The key ingredient in it is that the supposed “victim” gets something out of the spouse’s bad behavior. Today I want to look at it from a different angle.

It’s always bad to put labels on people—especially yourself—just by looking at the outer behavior. For example, a person with a tremor could have a brain dysfunction, a motor problem, delirium from a life of drinking, or plain old fear. How can you know which it is by just looking at his hands shaking?

Labeling oneself as “co-dependent” could be the same mistake.

Let’s take a case and see how it plays out: