Compassion and Codependency make Strange Bedfellows
Indeed they do. Truly this combination is a one-sided marriage, and the two together effectively maintain an insecure balance. If you are acquainted with a compassionate codependent, your mindful patience can go a long way toward holding space for them. Simple common sense tells us that compassion and codependency are a bad mix in intimate relationship, yet some continue to play out codependent relationships of this sort even when they know it hurts them.
Charlese sees herself as being a giver. She continually over-gives to Donald knowing that it hurts her. Softly spoken with kindness in her eyes, “I really don’t expect him to reciprocate anymore. He can’t. And it feels right to be compassionate to him because I know what a hard life he’s had.” Charlese has been with Donald, cheated on for years now. Her partner drops hints that Charlese’s maturing face “could easily look younger with some work.” There are angry, emotionally abusive outbursts when Charlese doesn’t have frequent orgasms that are expected--and the proof Donald absolutely needs in order to be reassured of Charlese’s devoted love. She has to be careful not to invoke his out-of-control jealousy; they have had to replace several TV sets over the years after Donald throws his phone or a coffee cup at the screen. And Charlese repeatedly accepts this poor treatment by her partner. Sure, she protests sometimes, but Charlese does not deliver behavior-correcting consequences for non-negotiable behaviors and cutting assessments of her looks and character. Instead, Charlese has settled into a pattern of resignation from the steady diet of conscious undermining by her partner. Perhaps you are thinking that Charlese should just leave the relationship, or maybe grow some backbone? Do you know someone like Charlese?
No Clear Off Ramp on this Highway
The well-worn highways of Charlese’s codependent mindset have no obvious exit ramp that she can discern. She can barely connect with the misery of being stuck in a one-down relationship, so she makes the best of her day-to-day, minimizing her pain and idealizing her partner. Well before she met Donald, Charlese was thoroughly conditioned in her family of origin to depend on this kind of insecure attachment. Looking to Donald for cues on “how to be” in intimate relationship is a skill set that was fully developed by the time she became a young adult. The default setting is an intergenerational attachment pattern that gets played out for all of us, whether it be secure or otherwise. Charlese’s self-image of being a compassionate person was rewarded for her early on in life, so it stuck. She was also socialized from young childhood onward to ignore threat cues, to devalue and cut-off awareness of righteous anger, to put others’ needs (especially her parents’) before her own, and to substitute and root in shame in the place of healthy guilt (which is solely meant to correct poor behavior). What securely attached people don’t put up with for very long in a narcissistically oriented and/or abusive partner, Charlese recognizes as a challenge for her character to overcome. “I can change,” she thinks. She doesn’t allow herself to consider seriously that she deserves better treatment.
An empathic, compassionate “giver” is a perfect, neurotic partner for someone who has limited or no ability to recognize power and control within oneself as the true and appropriate measure of personal power. Similar lesson, different side of the coin for the other partner in the codependent relationship—instead of taking care of oneself to ensure mindful integrity, taking care of the partner’s needs, wants, desires are given primary focus to provide the “hope” of internal stability and self-integrity. Being continually downgraded as unequal in the partnership is passed over, unacknowledged as a legitimate gripe that necessitates clear consequences for the behavior of the other partner.
The Difficult Solution
How to begin to connect intimately, with mindful integrity, for the currently codependent partner? First, that prospect would be all about embracing the disillusionment that clarity offers, a disillusionment that requires a wider window of embodied emotional tolerance than was present before. Taking in and acting on new information about healthy interpersonal boundaries, self-integrity, and yes, saying no to the breach of these boundaries and anything that compromises integrity of oneself or one’s partner are essential skills. This kind of change can be very scary because when one person in a system changes, the system itself naturally changes. Codependent partners do often break up when one person in the intimate partnership starts thinking and behaving in ways that threaten the usual, unhealthy expression of power and control within the relationship. When unresolved abandonment issues are at play too, this is a powerful blockade against the expression of healthy mutual interdependence! In order to avoid the emergence of core abandonment issues, the codependent partner often would rather remain muted within the problematic relationship as the solution to avoid being abandoned. It’s a difficult situation to work with for sure, especially if the change agent (for us, Charlese) has little to no support for the healthier pattern to take hold. This is where mindful patience for the persons in this transformation process goes a long way.
If someone in a codependent relationship looking for change cannot afford it or does not want psychotherapy, becoming a healthy intimate partner is still a doable prospect. Educating oneself is a necessary first step. Having healthy emotional support is pivotal to kick start one’s progress, and surrounding oneself with positive influences is a great start. There are 12-step programs for addressing codependency. Google search Codependents Anonymous in your geographical area. I like to recommend to my psychotherapy clients two tried and true books to facilitate this process of change. The Mindful Path to Self-compassion, by Christopher Germer, Ph.D., includes a bevy of practices and activities at the end of each chapter, and the classic Codependent No More-How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, by Melody Beattie, has sold more than five million copies for a very good reason.
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Photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash