As human beings, it is normal for us to depend on other people, as long as it is still reasonable.
But what will happen if we become so dependent on them as they keep creating situations where we have no options but to depend on them?
Do you think that’s a healthy relationship? Let’s find out more.
Have you ever heard the word co-dependent relationship? Yes, it is indeed a relationship where one party completely relies on the partner’s approval for every decision made.
Maybe it sounds normal; because most of the time we enjoy having discussions with our partners before making decisions.
But, how is it going to be then if we only rely on the partners’ situations in all the decision-making? Ok, now, let’s get a bit deeper.
1. People pleaser
Many of us who are imprisoned in co-dependent relationships are usually the people-pleaser-kind ones.
We love making the partners feel good about themselves.
In the relationship, we feel that it is our obligation to make the partners happy. We even tend to feel like our lives are worthless if we don’t please our partners.
2. Know no boundaries
Yes, sometimes we blindly put ourselves in situations where we can not decide for ourselves.
We let people step into our lives with no boundaries.
We just can not make the appropriate limitations, where we are supposed to be able to make decisions for ourselves, without any interference from anybody, including our own partners; sometimes even without considering the partners’ side of the story.
3. Family issue
This situation can also be encouraged by past or childhood experiences where we did not get enough attention from the parents or the family.
This parenting style, which has a tendency to be ignored, is what makes some of us grow up longing for recognition from others.
We feel less valuable without the ‘presence’ of other people in our lives.
4. Low self esteem
The experience of having parents with a tendency to ignore their children, somehow eventually makes some of us grow up with low self-confidence.
As a result, we will do anything to get recognized. This situation contributes to us being in co-dependent relationships.
5. Seeking validation from others
Last but not least, this always happens in co-dependent relationships.
We seek validation from other people.
When we feel recognized, we slowly become dependent to the partners’ response.
Unconsciously, we keep expecting them to always be ‘present’ in our lives, emotionally or even physically.
Now that we know a bit deeper, we can move on to discussing the impacts of these super-addictive relationships.
Yes, there are some negative impacts. Some are:
a. Denying the responsibility
Always relying on others is naturally not so good, especially when this situation is exploited to make us weak and unable to decide even for our lives.
In other words, we become very dependent to the existence of other people.
As a result, it is likely that we tend to deny taking responsibility for our own actions.
There is fear of deciding on something important.
We are ‘pushed’ to get into situations where we must depend our lives on others.
b. Being too afraid to be ourselves
Wow, this is the most negative thing that can possibly happen because of co-dependent relationships.
Having been dictated all the time, we become too afraid to reveal ourselves.
We are too afraid to speak our opinions, to speak up for ourselves.
In the end, we lack out of our true identity, for we always ‘rely’ on others.
We are too afraid that if we show our true ‘color’, we will lose the people around us.
c. Acute fatigue
As we live our lives by relying everything on other people, it eliminates the take-and-give process.
What we have is constant ‘give’ situations where we must always make others happy.
Unintentionally, these situations ‘drain’ our life battery at some point.
Of course, humans do not need literally real battery to live their lives; we are not robots after all.
But being humans consume so much energy sometimes that we can also run out of it.
We become so exhausted and drained, just like batteries losing their power.
Even so, please believe that, though some of us somehow are unintentionally trapped in co-dependent relationships, we still can get some interesting lessons from it.
We need to be aware that our super-addicted dependency on someone may lead us to a point where we will feel worthless as a whole.
We will only feel mattered when others are around and ‘approve’ us. This is not supposed to happen, actually.
Hope anybody living in co-dependent relationships can eventually get to that point—learning the lessons.
Is it really mentally healthy for you, or is it not?
