I'll never forget the day I realized my husband is codependent to me.
I was sitting in an AA meeting listening to a guy complain about his ex, for the millionth time. I said to him: maybe she was codependent to you? His scenario was that his ex-wife wanted to control him. My scenario was that my husband wants to fix everything, not control, just fix my mess.
My scenario matched what another recovered AA woman said: "I was the accident, my kids were the victims, my husband was the ambulance".
I then said, well, I think my husband is codependent. And, then, all the pieces fell into place. My husband has accepted more nutty behavior from me than most people would. Most men would have left me a long time ago. He is also codependent to my kids: "Don't get a job? Don't clean up the kitchen, don't do your laundry, don't do your homework? Don't join us for dinner but sit in your room in front of the computer?" My husbands response to that is to buy them the newest state of the art computer parts and retreat to his own computer to avoid contact with them.
Coyete wrote:
I find it "ironical" that WE can't fix/help them get better, but THEY can drag ALL (family/friends) of us down with them? Weird.
Nobody can fix us. If you had a hoarder or an animal collector as a brother or sister coyote, or a sex addict, or a compulsive eater or compulsive gambler as a sibling, do you think you could fix them? I doubt it: professional help is needed. We can't fix them.
I say "we" because I am a recovering alcoholic but I am and have been codependent to alcoholic parents and three alcoholic siblings. I can't do anything to "fix" my chronic, active alcoholic brothers.
But, they can only drag me down if I let them.
I could have given one of my brothers my credit card number and code for making "crisis" purchases recently, but I didn't. He used the circumstances of the death of his own brother to try and hijack my credit card number. I knew he would have gone crazy with the card number and racked up hundreds of dollars of expenses. I could have allowed him to swindle me for thousands of dollars with a bogus property deal he cooked up with an alcoholic real estate buddy about 18 months ago. I could have let that happen. I didn't.
They can't drag us down if we make boundaries and learn to say no...and, they don't drag ALL family members down with them. Another one of my alcoholic brother's ex-wife and daughter always refused to give him money, under any circumstances.