Are You A Co-dependent?
The 2 biggest traps codependents get themselves into are:
- Codependents depend on another’s acceptance
- Codependents forgive before rehab is completed
Co-dependency is a way of avoiding one’s own life by taking on the problems of another. Codependents tend to avoid their own lives by trying to solve the problems of other people.
A codependent person would feel trapped or obligated to stay in a relationship no matter what damage was committed to themselves or others by an abusive partner. Abuse means financial, emotional, physical or sexual abuse.
The easiest place to observe codependency is in relationships where one or both members are abusing drugs, sex or money. One of the partners will feel compelled to remain in the relationship and support the other.
1. Why Do They Depend On Abusers?
A co-dependent’s emotional need to help and gain acceptance from an abusive relationship seems illogical at first. An easier way to see why a person would tolerate all the damage and disturbance a loved one creates has to do with survival.
Codependency is about insuring another lives no matter what. It’s like a codependent took on another’s life and is trying to continue their lives. Ex: person gets into financial trouble due to cocaine abuse, reckless living etc and the co-dependent pays the mortgage, car payments or worse the drug dealers at the door.
Love or obligation to the abusive person is the major justification. Sometimes the abusive person uses coercion, threats and extortion to demand support. If support isn’t given, emotional pleas, upsets and threats of leaving the relationship are used. Ex: making the supportive person feel guilty if they don’t comply with demands for money or support.
Often sympathy for the abuser is used to plead for forgiveness of wrong doings. Apologies and pleadings for forgiveness will be made. Often these pleas are made until the abuser gets what they want. Then they lay off. Promises will be made that won’t be kept.
2. Co-dependents Forgive Instead of Rehabilitate
Although the damage has happened before, a codependent will eventually forgive the abuser. Love, emotional outpourings, sex or other ‘payoffs’ are given by the abuser as a reward or payment for receiving forgiveness.Learn about how Narconon Rehab ends the need for co-dependency at www.detox-narconon.org and subscribe to Families Facing Addiction Membership.
A codependent needs the acceptance of the abuser; the promises and emotions are craved by a codependent. A codependent will sometimes use these forgiveness times as opportunities to gain a false upper hand and control over the relationship.
The Codependent needs the abuser or addict to be helpless, in jeopardy, victimized, in trouble, needing help, vulnerable, for the codependent to feel valued or important! Often a codependent will only help enough to keep a person alive but not enough to change their course of destruction.
Ex: pay off the person’s debts with only a promise of the abuser to go to an effective rehab. The drug abuser promises but doesn’t fulfill their promise. The codependent uses this bad experience to justify them continuing to pay off debts etc but never get the addict true help. Doesn’t make sense? Exactly.
Admit you’ve been drawn into a destructive cycle of support, enable and disappointment and you’ll begin to see the hook. Just because it looks like they have the problem, doesn’t mean you aren’t also wearing the problem for them, feeding fuel to their downward drive.
Codependency is a trap. The best way to end codependency is to employ a professional interventionist who will help you break your dependency on another to feel right.
Become a Survival Guide Member and watch the video on intervention.
Contact a rehab / intervention consultant to get you the help you need to break free of codependency.
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What you said here is true indeed. Codependent relation will not last long if one of them cannot stand it anymore. The more heavy the codependency symptom of one person could have a very heavy negative impact to the other. It is just the way things are with codependency cases.