I think I see a lot of codie traits in my behavior still in all my relationships.
One of our kids -- the one who took the hardest beating from her AF, my ex -- is frankly hellishly difficult to deal with. Every time I exhale and think "she is finally on a stable path, taking responsibility" she does something so outrageously stupid that I can't understand it. A brilliant young woman, she self-sabotages in school (if she graduates from high school, I will cry tears of joy for a full week) and chooses friends who are abusive and manipulative.
But it's her choices. Her life. Seeing her abysmal choices, seeing how she is (deliberately?) throwing monkey wrenches into her opportunities... it makes it incredibly hard to detach. Mind you, I do on the surface. I tell her "not my circus, not my monkey" but inside I'm just totally attached and in pain for her. Not the glorious example of recovery I'd like to be. (She is in therapy weekly, and has a great school psych who really "gets her" so it's not like I'm leaving her without a support system -- she just needs to have a support system that is not her mother, one that she can gradually let go of.)
Same thing with my husband. When we have a disagreement, I'm not worried about whether I feel hurt -- I worry about what he is feeling.
And at work -- I have a couple of coworkers who are simply mean manipulative little buggers, and yet, I cannot keep myself from chatting and small-talking with them, even the ones who scheme to make me look bad in front of the boss. I simply don't know how to stand up for myself and stop being such a bloody people pleaser. I want to stand up for myself and not care about whether people like me or not. But I can't. I worry myself sick about what people think about me -- even while telling my kids that "what other people think about you is really none of your business."
I can probably be the poster child for why simply leaving an A doesn't fix everything.