So Im struggling to understand: how can we know if we have a healthy indicator of unmet needs in a relationship VS we’re being unreasonably needy and totally codependent?

Hi Faber

My understanding with regards to codependent behavior is that at some levels it is always present in relationships. At its best each person inspires the other towards their betters self’s. A loving relationship with health boundaries a safe place to heal and grow.

Negative codependency stifles growth enabling people to remain stuck in unhealth behaviors.  The challenge is that we bring our best and our worst with us into relationship, the relationship the crucible in which everything is mixed together and the task is to sort out the wheat “from the chaff”.  Like attracts like but also repels and some of our “ghosts”  fears and hurts picked up from our past will sometimes feed off each other and create a negative codependency.

Reading your post the thought that came to mind is that each of you may be speaking a different “language” of love. How you experienced being loved and how you expect others to “hear” you as you express your love.  The book ‘The five languages of Love’ may be a interesting read. The intention is to become conscious of ones language and their partners and work together to become bilingual.

Dear faber castell:

Welcome back, faber castell! I read your past threads so to be better able to respond to your most recent thread. First I will summarize what you shared before, including quotes, and then I will respond to your new thread.

In November 2013, at 26 or 27, you shared that you met a guy who told you that “he thought that a combination of my brains and personality with *somegirl’s*face would be just the perfect & ideal woman”, “I’ve felt like he told me something I’ve felt my whole life: that guys don’t really find me that attractive… We live in such shallow world”.

A year later, in September- October 2014, you shared that you were in an on and off relationship with a guy for nine months. You initiated four breakups, but he was “the one who actually followed through every single time”,  “he said he wanted to marry me every single time we got back together”.

You shared: “I’m normally very explosive and while I’ve made a big effort to be calm.. he says my anger is horrible and my temper is out of proportion”. He broke up with you for the  last time right after the two of you had sex in the shower. You were hurt and upset by the timing, and he told you: “well, sorry about that, it was a mistake because I still wanted to break up with you”. The experience affected you this way: “I wake up everyday with a horrible pain in my stomach and I think I’m angry and frustrated but can’t really connect to those emotions. I feel like I have no strength at all and I need to hold him accountable… I think I’m starting to get depressed, my sleep patterns are off”.

In March 2015, at 28, you shared that you attended a party where a guy approached you and told you that you had “nice energy”, that you were “a normal girl.. cool and.. a little ugly”. You kept asking him: “What?”. He apologized and told you that he was drunk. Another guy you knew from college told you that you were “attractive in a non-mainstream way”, and yet another guy told you regarding his interest in you: “It’s not because you’re pretty, hell, if it were for that, there are much prettier girls out there”.

In January 2016, at 29, you shared that you were recently ghosted by the first woman you ever dated. You found out that she had business cards of a person she was perhaps interested in romantically. Regarding those business cards, you “asked why she had them (no snapping, just asking) and she gave me almost 5 contradicting answers. I asked again, why? what?… I got mad, naturally.. I was tired of fighting”.

Three years later, in March 2019, at 32, you shared: “I feel apathy after my last relationship ended. It’s as if I lost my sexual energy… I say what I think, I get sad, I get angry but feel powerless, impotent with what I’ve seen in humanity in recent years”.

In September 2019, you shared that recently you had a match with a guy on tinder. The guy was very conflicted about dating you, taking a very long time to ask you out, telling you before the first date: “if we weren’t attracted to each other ‘at least’ we knew it would be fun to meet”, and during the two dates you had,  “he didn’t try much”. On the second date, “he spoke on and on about him.. he didn’t ask too much questions”, and later, he “stated again, awkwardly: ‘… I don’t know if I think you’re cool, of if I’m physically attracted to you”. He then asked you if you “would be interested in hanging out again knowing he’s not ‘necessarily’ interested in something romantic”, but then, he was gone.

On October 2019, you shared that you “feel uneasy almost all of the time” when you are with guys, and that you rationalize yourself a lot, that “there are two types of uncomfortable: sometimes you need to get out of your shell to meet people and have fun and share with others.. and sometimes you’re just with the wrong people”. You asked: “How do you differentiate your own feelings of insecurity from toxic people who can harm you?”

On January 2021, at 34, you shared about ending a recent six months relationship because you feel unimportant to him, and you feel “a lack of intimacy, or closeness.. a huge lack of romantic gestures”. You shared: “Every time I express that I feel he’s cold he just complains that he receives all criticism while I don’t talk about myself enough. He says I only see the bad, that I focus too much on stuff, that nothing was wrong and I’m just creating fights or whatever… we end up fighting”, and he blamed you of being cold (“he blames it on ‘my coldness'”). You also shared that you met his family and friends, but that he did not meet your family and friends. You asked: “how can we know if we have a healthy indicator on unmet needs in a relationship VS we’re being unreasonably needy and totally codependent?”

My input/ questions today: I don’t have any thoughts or suggestions for you at this time. I may have thoughts and suggestions if you choose to answer any of the following three questions (please feel free to answer or not, I am okay with whatever your choice may be):

1) You wrote regarding this most recent man in your life: “he has mentioned that maybe he was stressed or whatever, but I still feel the varying closeness and it kills me, because I react somewhat similar than him and so he blames it on ‘my coldness'”- can you give me three concrete examples (no commentary about your thoughts and intentions/ no rationalizing) of him behaving toward you a certain way, and you reacting to him with coldness?

2) Regarding the same man, you wrote: “we end up fighting”- can you give me a concrete description (no commentary about your thoughts and intentions) of two fights you had: what you said/ did, what he said/ did?

3) Can you share about your childhood experience, your relationships with your parents/ siblings?

anita

Hi Faber

Relationships can be complicated yet maybe also simple, the key perhaps is paying attention and taking a breathe when we feel ourselves panicking.

I recently completed a Book by Fredrik Backman ‘Anxious People’. A complex simple story about a lot of things but maybe mostly about how we are all need and rely (co-depend) on others, even if we don’t always know how. Being co-dependent can be the most beautiful of experiences someone ever has and also the most painful.

I think here of fathers and sons… my father recently passing… In memory I wonder about the times I was dependent and times I was depended on, sometimes failing yet I trust most times… good enough, doing the best we could. The bitter and the sweet giving life its flavor, maybe the error we make, if their is a error, is in the way we measure.

I like the way the book begins.. I wonder if it might not be a good way to start our stories.

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you’re trying to be a reasonably good human being for. ”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Peter.