A Man’s Guide To Ending Codependency

What is codependency? Why does it matter? How does it get formed? And maybe most importantly, how the hell do you get out of it? I have guys messaging me this question all the time. Guys that, you know, I've realized that they're nice guys or you know, guys that have gone to therapy and been told that they're in a codependent relationship or marriage or guys who have maybe just simply self identified, like I think I might be in a codependent relationship. How do I get out of this? So in today's episode and in what is going to be a new series format for the show, I'm going to be talking about A Man's Guide to Codependency. A man's guide specifically to help you as an individual end and move out of co dependency and codependent relationships. Now, before we do that, don't forget to subscribe and and maybe even most importantly, man it forward. Man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it and could benefit from it. A Man's Guide to Series is going to be an in depth dive where I talk about all the subjects that we as men need to understand and know about. Many of these subjects are going to be psychological in nature and many of them are going to have to do with how you as a man can improve as a father, as a husband, as a leader, maybe even as a business owner. But they're going to talk about things like codependency or anxiety or growth mindset or whatever it is. So if you want to learn something in specific, if you want me to cover A Man's guide to ending depression or get, you know, dealing with social anxiety, then message me, DM me man talks on Instagram and I will dive into your topics. So let's get started. What the heck is codependency? Well, the simple version of it is that codependency is an over reliance or a dependency on your partner or your spouse. But it's an over reliance on that person for a few specific things. Generally, it's an over reliance on that person for a sense of worth, internal worth, internal value, a sense of internal recognition or validation and a over reliance on that person for a sense of safety. Now there's one very big and important thing that I think needs to be said before we go any further. And that's the simple statement that codependency isn't a villain. It's not a bad guy. It's not something that you should look at or hear about and be like, ah, I'm such a piece of garbage. I'm in a codependent relationship. Or, you know, screw codependency. It's the. It's the evil devil, you know, in my life. What happens for a lot of guys when they hear this phrase codependency? Immediately, there's a tendency to want to shame, right? There's an immediate tendency for a lot of guys to be like, I'm in a codependent relationship. What's wrong with me? Or how do I kill that part off? Or how do I, you know, figure out, you know, how to destroy this part? And that's a very natural reaction for a lot of us guys. But the reality is that your codependency isn't a villain. It's not the enemy. And I say that because of what I'm going to talk about later on, of what causes codependency. Now, a quick look into this is that codependency is often a very important adaptive strategy, and it's a very important coping mechanism for. For something that was happening earlier on in your life. All right? So it's not a bad thing. It's a survival strategy. It's a coping mechanism that allowed you to get through probably some less than optimal circumstances in your childhood, in your family system, or in your upbringing. Now, there's something that I want to talk about that's very important when it comes to unraveling codependency and getting to know your part in the codependency so that you can step out of it. And that very important piece is the two roles of codependency. So the interesting part of codependency is that it puts people into two roles, all right? And for you, as an individual, you may have played both of these roles, depending on the relationship. You might oscillate back and forth depending on the other individual that you're dating, or. Or you might just occupy the territory of one of the roles. So those two roles are the giver and the taker. And I'm sure that there's a good sexual joke in there, but I'll leave that for you, because I'm not a comedian. But the giver and the taker are the two roles that emerge in a codependent relationship. And in a very simple form, the giver is the person who is trying to find, belonging to security, relational security, worth, value, confidence, connection, intimacy, by in some ways disregarding their own wants and needs and over prioritizing the other person. Right? So disregarding, deprioritizing their own Personal needs, their own personal wants, their own personal desires. And over prioritizing the. The other persons. And the taker is the person who is on the receiving end of that. They're the person that is receiving their needs being maybe overly prioritized. They're on the receiving end of the. Maybe the abundance of praise or affection, having things done for them, taking that in, maybe having a higher level of expectation of what the other person should be doing or bringing to the table. Now, very important, because this is something that shows up in every codependent relationship. And it's part of the unraveling process that I'm going to give you a clue into right now before we even talk about what causes codependency and how to identify it in a relationship. It is very common that when you are in a codependent relationship, one of the hallmark indicators is that you are upset or angry with the other person's role. So you have the other person's role as the villain, right? So if you're the giver and you're constantly deprioritizing your own needs, your own wants, your, you know, when your partner says, hey, do you wanna go out for pizza tonight? And you don't wanna do that, but you say yes anyways, you villainize them for always being selfish or always being that, right? Always being whatever it is that the story is. And the main piece to getting out of the codependent relationship is to realize that. That the giver and the taker are amoral. Meaning that they are neither good or bad. Right? The giver is not worse than the taker and the taker is not worse than the giver. It's not about one being more right or more wrong. It's not about one being more good or more bad. That is actually a part of what keeps couples in codependent dances. Because generally speaking, what happens is that the taker will take on a kind of entitled attitude that, you know, you should be doing this for me. You should be saying yes for me. You should be taking care of this for me. Why aren't you doing this? How come you're not meeting my expectations? And the giver will take on this.

Sort of victim mentality of how come I have to take care of everything for you? Why won't you take care of me? Why won't you prioritize my needs? How come I always have to sacrifice? And so the giver takes on this sort of sacrificial lamb, martyr attitude that shows up in the relationship and sees the taker as the oppressor. Almost like there's this oppressor and oppressed dynamic. Now this is important because that might have something to do likely probably has something to do with what created and formed the foundation of the behavioral patterns that, that make up your codependent relationship. And those, those behavioral patterns were formed earlier on in life. So let's segue into very important conversation of what causes co dependency and then we're going to talk about how does it show up in your intimate relationships? I'm going to give you some specific examples and we will wrap up with how do you get out of it? Because that's what we all want to know. So if you don't want to know what causes it and how to identify it in your relationship, you can skip forward. But what I will is that sometimes and often what I've learned is that this psychoeducation, this psychological education of what causes codependency, what creates it, and being able to identify how it shows up are actually two very important stepping stones to letting go of the codependency. So if you are thinking of skipping ahead, I would just say maybe stick with me for a little bit. So let's get into it. What causes codependency? Well, in large part, it is a byproduct of your childhood. Now, I know maybe you didn't want to hear that. I know for a lot of guys it's like, oh, why does it always come back to my childhood? Why do I always have to talk about my past? Why does it always, why do I always have to talk about my family? You know, my family system? It's like, well, in this case, your family system is the base on operating system for the program of how you do relationships. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Your family system is the base operating system. It is the foundation for the, the programs that you run, AKA the behaviors that you run, the choices that you make, the identity that you show up as in your relationships. So if you think about an operating system, generally there's a baseball part of the operating system, right? Like if on your iPhone, on this little thing here on your phone, whether you have an iPhone or an Android, those are built off of, right? IOS 17 or whatever the hell version we're on are all built off of the original operating system. The foundation of the original operating system. So you can think of your current relationship with your girlfriend or your wife or whomever, your partner, whoever you're dating. That is an iteration of the primary relationships that you had with your caregivers and codependency, like I said before, is adaptive strategies and coping mechanisms and behaviors that you learned not in the relationship that you're in, but in your primary relationship in your family system, whether that was with the caregivers of your parents, a mom, a dad, a stepfather, a stepmother, or grandparents, uncles and aunts, et cetera. Whoever raised you could be a foster parent, an adopted parent, et cetera. So with all that said, here are the primary causes of codependency. Okay, number one, you played the role of the peacekeeper in your family system, in your system of origin, right, Whatever that looked like. So the peacekeeper plays a very important role, right? Maybe you grew up in a household where there was a lot of volatility, your parents were always fighting, or maybe you had a sibling who was just constantly in trouble, you didn't know what was going on with them, but they were constantly in trouble. And you were trying to create peace and harmony in the household. So you were trying to translate for your sibling. You were trying to protect mom or de escalate dad or de escalate mom and protect dad or whatever it was, but you were trying to keep the peace. Now what happens with peacekeepers, that's very important to understand is that peacekeepers do the one thing that all givers will replicate for the, for the rest of their life until they start to break the pattern. And that's deprioritize their own needs and wants for the over prioritization of what others need. And generally peacekeepers will prioritize what the system needs, not necessarily individuals, but, but generally what they think the system itself needs. And so it's very common. If you were a young man or a boy who played the role of peacekeeping in your family system, you're always trying to create order in your system, you know, between mom and dad or whatever it was, siblings, et cetera. It's probably the case that when you are in a relationship with somebody that you really care about, you are very conscientious of putting the, the needs of the relationship itself above the needs of you, not necessarily the needs of the other person. That might be the case. But generally speaking, what I've seen, and working with a lot of guys, especially nice guys, because oftentimes peacekeepers turn into nice guys. A lot of guys will put the needs of the relationship first over themselves. So that's the peacekeeper deprioritizing needs for the security, the harmony, et cetera, of the system that they inhabit. Next is you were abused in some way. So if you were a young boy or a young man who was in an abusive environment, whether that's verbal abuse or emotional abuse or physical or sexual abuse, you will have adopted an over prioritization of trying to stay very, very close to other people's needs and wants and a hyper vigilance to catering to other people as a means of a protective strategy. So that's maybe a little bit heavy on the jargon, so I'll break that down into something more specific and simple. Let's say that you grew up in an environment where when you talk back to your dad, you got hit. Let's say that you grew up in an environment where your mom was emotionally abusive and was, you know, would go off that fly off the handle when you were a young boy and call you names, et cetera, et cetera, you will have, as a very young child, responded to that by trying to figure out what's going to keep me safe and out of trouble and what's going to put me in harm's way. And generally speaking, children that have been abused, children that have grown up in abusive environments will try and conform their identity, their behaviors and their choices to match what they think is going to keep them out of abuse, out of harm's way, out of being yelled at or verbally demolished and shamed, or physically assaulted or sexually abused, et cetera. So for a lot of people that have grown up in an abuse abusive household, where codependency comes into play is that it can produce you behaviors in you as an adult, as a man, in relationships that are very hypervigilant into. What does she need? What is she thinking? What is she wanting right now? What is she expecting from me? How can I cater to her needs? How can I make sure that she's okay above and beyond me so that I'm safe? And for men in this situation, and it's, I think in some ways for a lot of guys, this is the sort of like hidden killer. For a lot of men that have experienced trauma, have experienced abuse growing up, and have never really talked about it, this will be the sort of the skeleton in the closet that is actually fueling the codependency in the relationship. And so if you are somebody, I'm just going to create this little caveat here. If you are somebody that has come to realize that you're in a codependent relationship, but you've never really actually dealt with some of the abuse or trauma that you experienced growing up, the codependency is very unlikely. Almost, I don't want to say impossible, but it's very unlikely that you will be able to shift out of that codependent behavior until you address the abuse and maybe the trauma that you experienced. Because those two things are interconnected. They are unequivocally interconnected. And so we have to actually deal with the abuse that we experienced in order to start to let go of and unwind some of the codependent behaviors that are showing up because of that abuse. Because again, if you were abused as a boy, as a young man.

A couple things happen. Number one, for many young boys, depending on how old you were when some of the abuse started, it's very common for it to get personalized. Meaning you as a young boy, while it may not have been conscious, will likely have felt or thought at some point that the abuse was happening because there was something inherently wrong with you. Now, why this is important is because at some point in your relationships, later on in life, it is very common for that same individual. So if you were a young boy that experienced those things, to become a man who feels like all of the problems that unfold in the relationship are your fault. And this puts you in the role of constantly being in the wrong. And maybe you find yourself even doing things, actively sabotaging self destructing in the relationship to be in the wrong position, to be the person who is constantly.

Wrecking the intimacy or, you know, damaging the communication or creating disconnection. You find yourself in the position of I'm always the one that is creating problems in the relationship or marriage or it can feel like you're in that position. So those are, those things are very, very important to understand as we move into identifying the codependency in your relationship and then finally ending it. Next is, you had an emotionally unavailable parent.

This is a very interesting one. And some people would say that this is trauma. I don't really, I'm not really going to get into labeling it as such or not living it as such. What I will say is that when you've had an emotionally unavailable parent, what I have seen almost always, almost always with men who have had, who have grown up with an emotionally unavailable parent, is that they at some point took it to mean that there was something fundamentally flawed within them. So there's a personalization because again, when you are a child, when you're five, six, seven years old, and you're wanting your father's attention, you're wanting him to spend time with you, you're wanting him to teach you things, you're wanting your mom to, you know, nurture you and take care of you and you've hurt yourself or whatever it is, and that doesn't happen. And they don't seem to want to do those things or even seem to care about what's happening with you. What's, what begins to bubble up internally is, well, they must not be giving me attention because there's something wrong with me. They must not be spending time with me because there's something that they don't like about me. So it's very, very, very, very common for men who have grown up with emotionally absent parents or just absent parents altogether to chase their partners, right? To chase their partners to find is very common. I see a lot of men who had emotionally avoidant parents or emotionally absent parents who end up in this chasing, pursuing dynamic. So they're constantly chasing women that are like unavailable or hot and cold or leave them on red. And there's like this, sometimes there's even a sexual charge that can come along with it, right? For a lot of guys. Because in psychology there's this great turn of phrase which I have seen to be true many, many times, which is that we sexualize our pain, we sexualize our trauma, we sexualize our hurt. And so for a lot of men and the guys that are out there watching this right now, what can happen when we've had an emotionally unavailable parent, whether it was mom or dad, is that that can show up in our relationships where we are trying to prove inadvertently to the women that we are pursuing that we are worthy of their attention, that we are worthy of their affection. And if I can just get you, it'll disprove the pain that I've been carrying around within me since childhood. So an emotionally unavailable parent is a bad big one. This is the area of neglect, of avoidance, of abandonment, right? So this is very common. You know, if adoption has happened or you've, you know, been put through the foster care system or your parents got divorced and one of your parents, you know, moved cross country or whatever it was. This is a very common thing because the child will almost always over index the parents needs and be constantly trying to figure out what do you need so that I can get some type of attention and some type of affection from you. And then that boy becomes an adult, becomes a man in relationships who's doing the exact same thing. And so these men are usually hyper vigilant and very problem oriented. And so if you're a man who grew up with that type of parent or caregiver, how that probably looks in your relationship today is you're probably like, what does she need? What is she thinking? What is she feeling right now? And you might be peppering your partner constantly with those types of questions, like, are you okay? Are you? And you find yourself asking her that, you know, two or three times a day. Are you okay? What are you thinking right now? What are you feeling right now? Like, is everything all right? Those types of things are the boy in you who was constantly trying to figure out, why won't this parent give me some attention or pay attention to my needs and my wants? Next. You were the caretaker. All right, so again, this is one of the main causes of codependency. You were the caretaker. Maybe one of your parents was sick. Maybe they were incapable of taking care of certain things. But you, at a young age, identified that your parent was incapable in some way of taking care of themselves, and as a consequence of that, incapable of really taking care of you. And maybe for very legitimate reasons, maybe they were legitimately sick. Maybe they, you know, had cancer or some type of leukemia, or they had some physical disability that emerged, or there was an accident, whatever it is. But you were thrust into the role of parenting that parent, caretaking that parent. And what that does is it immediately takes your needs as a child and sets them aside. It takes your needs as an individual and says, these need to be deprioritized. These need to be deprioritized for the sake of this other individual, their illness, the challenges that they're facing, the struggles that they're facing, et cetera. And it's very, very common. And again, I've worked with a number of men who have become the man of the house at a very young age for one circumstance or another. And that can do a toll on that young boy. It can feel good at first, but what can happen depending on your age, right? If you're 10 years old and you're helping mom file taxes, or, you know, you're taking care of everything around the house, that can teach you as a boy that your needs need to be set aside. And that will then show up in the relationship in a way where you think that in order for the relationship to survive, in order for it to be okay, in order for the other person to feel loved, you need to set your needs and wants aside. You actually need to deprioritize those things. And so it's very common that if you are or were, as a. As a boy, as a child, in the role of the parent or in the role of the caretaker, that you not only deprioritize yourself, but there's kind of this heroic attitude that shows up, right? It's like I'm doing a noble thing by constantly caretaking this other person. And the interesting thing about the caretaker is, and I'm just going to give these two pieces because I've. I've found this to be very helpful for a lot of the men that I've worked with, is that most of the time, guys that were boys, that were caretakers take two paths. They take the path of repetition where they continue to. They seem to attract partners, right? They seem to attract women who need caretaking or expect care caretaking. And in that way, they are repeating what felt safe for them as a child. They're repeating the dynamic of if I take care of you enough, maybe eventually my needs will have a place. Or they're repeating the pattern of my needs aren't important and so I'm just going to take care of you 100% and that's my role as a man. Or they go down the path of opposition. And what can start to happen is that when a woman that they're dating starts to have, you know, larger needs, or they're struggling in some way emotionally, or they're struggling at work, or they're struggling financially, or they have insecurities about their body and they bring those problems to the man that they're dating, if that man grew up with the caretaker, he can meet that with a kind of like, disgust and revolt. It's like, I am not dealing with your shit. I am not taking care of you. You. And so a lot of guys that were boys who were put in the role of the parent and the caretaker, when their partner, female or male, brings them their challenges and says, I could use help with this, I don't know what to do with this. I'm struggling with whatever my relationship with my mom or this thing that's going on at work or something with my finances. It can be very. It can cause a lot of reactivity within that man because it feels like a threat. It feels like he's going to be put back into that position of having to be that person's parent or that person's caretaker. And that can cause a lot of men to push relationships away. These. Generally speaking, if you're in that position, it's likely that you are the taker. All right? And again, these are amoral roles. It's neither good or bad. Sometimes people get caught up of like, oh, I don't want to be the Taker, like, that's such an asshole move. I don't want to be the giver that's so weak and blah, blah, blah. It's like those things don't matter. The sooner that you can set aside your story about whether you're the giver or the taker, the faster you'll be able to move through it. Because almost always it's either the unwillingness to admit which role you're occupying or it's the shame that you have about which role that you're occupying that's keeping you in that role. More on that to come soon. Before I talk to you about the signs of codependency. Oh, there's two more I'm just going to give you real quick. Number one is trauma. If you had any kind of trauma growing up in your family system, that can lead to codependency for a number of reasons. And then secondly, if you had a parent who is an addict, very, very often when that child addict dynamic happens, you will get into a relationship later on in life where you are in a very similar dynamic. So it just. Because it just creates dependency. Addicts create dependencies. Okay, so those are the main things that cause codependency, right? Those are all the main things that cause codependency. Before we give you. Before I give you the signs of codependency in your relationship and then talk about how to actually move through it, I'm going to give you a little quick story because I found this to be very helpful. And it's a story that is an amalgamation of a lot of the men that I've worked with. And I think it'll just give you some insight into what codependency can look like, how it forms, et cetera. So Little Johnny Nice Guy, Little Johnny Nice Guy grew up in a relatively normal family. And his father was nice, he was kind, but he wasn't really around a lot. He was kind of absent. He was definitely emotionally absent. Didn't really seem to take a lot of time with Little Johnny Nice Guy. And they never really talked about anything meaningful. And they never really spent time together in a way where Little Johnny Nice Guy would learn things from his father. And Little Johnny was desperate to get his father's attention. He wanted his dad's praise. He wanted his dad to tell him that he was good enough, that he was. Was proud of him. He wanted his father to teach him how to do simple things like shave or chop wood or drive a car. But Little Johnny Nice Guy's father didn't seem interested in doing those things for him. However, saving grace, Little Johnny's mom was always, always there for him. She would talk to him about her day. She would ask little Johnny Nice Guy, how he's doing, how things are going at school, school, you know, if there's any relationships that are budding, etc. She took a very keen interest in little Johnny's life and she was very, very interested in what was going on inside of him. All good things. However, she started to need him more and more and more. As Little Johnny Nice Guy's siblings took up more time and attention in his family, what he found was that his mom started to need more from him. She started to talk to Little Johnny Nice Guy about the problems that she was having with his father and how his father didn't take her on dates or treat her well. And Little Johnny Nice Guy found himself trying to do everything that he could to take care of his mother's problems. Now, eventually one day, Little Johnny Nice Guy's parents sat him down and told him the unfortunate news that they were going to get divorced. And little Johnny would see his father less and less and less. His dad stopped showing up for his sporting events and didn't teach him the things that he wanted to learn. And slowly but surely, he lost a real connection with his father because he was spending even less time with him. Now, at home with his mother, Little Johnny found that his mom needed more and more from him. She was constantly complaining about his father. She was asking him to call his father and ask for the child support, which, you know, was late. And little Johnny found that his mom needed him to help with all sorts of stuff that he had no idea what to do, including taking care of his siblings. Now, little Johnny did the best that he could, and he got through that time. And he grew up, got a career, you know, went to college, all that kind of stuff, and found himself 20 years later in a relationship with a woman where she was constantly running away. She wasn't able to commit to the relationship. He found himself head over heels with this woman, absolutely obsessed. He loved her. She was so beautiful, she was so smart. All of the things that little Johnny had hoped for. But he found himself unable to say no to her. He found himself constantly chasing her, and he found himself unable to really emotionally connect with her. Why? Because little Johnny was in a codependent relationship. Now, this is a story that shows the arc of. And it's a very simple story, it's a very short story, but it shows the arc of how codependency can start, start in your childhood and how it can show up in your relationship. So maybe you only had one of those parts, maybe you had none of those parts in your childhood. But that's a basic arc. Okay, signs of codependency. Let's talk about this. A couple things that you probably have read about. Things like low self esteem, things like over people pleasing, right? That's the constant giver. There's the poor boundaries, and then there's something that doesn't get talked about enough, which is reactivity. If you are either the giver or the taker, overreactivity can be a very big sign that you are in a codependent relationship. And that's because there's a very high tendency of both the taker and the giver to over personalize things, to over personalize people's choices, people's opinions, right? Their partner's decisions, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of other things that we've talked about, like caretaking and overly controlling, maybe sort of being a little bit obsessive, right? Obsessing about your partner, obsessing about what they're doing or what they're choosing or, you know, anything that might relate to you. And then finally, denial, right? Denying that there are certain points, problems in the relationship, denying that your partner is maybe not treating you so well. Denial is a very big identifier and a sign that you might be in a codependent relationship. So let's talk about how this actually looks in your relationship. I have a couple of pieces that I think are very, very important that a lot of people don't talk about. Number one is a sign that you're in a codependent relationship is that you are investing a lot of energy and time into the relationship and sacrificing your own needs, wants and relationships, and also investing a lot of time and energy into caring for your partner's dysfunction. Okay? And that dysfunction could be a work, you know, a work addiction, workaholic. It could be somebody who has an alcohol addiction or, you know, smoking, smoking too much weed or some type of drug. It could be a number of things, but you're spending a lot of time trying to make up for or deal with or care for a partner who has a very real dysfunction. Next is making excuses for that other person's bad behaviors, right? So if you are in a relationship and, you know, your partner's just constantly disrespecting you, they're mistreating you, they're talking down to you and you find yourself making excuses for their behavior. That's another sign that you can see that codependency is showing up in your relationship. Next is not allowing your partner to take responsibility for their own lives. So you might, you know, they might bring you a problem and it's in their work or whatever, and you are, you immediately try and take over solving that problem for them, and you get really frustrated when they won't let you help them get really frustrated when, you know they, they don't want your help. Right? They want to try and figure it out on their own. That can cause a lot of tension. So not allowing your partner to actually take responsibility for their lives and then not allowing your partner to maintain their independence. So, and, and the inverse is true, right? Maybe you're in a relationship where your partner doesn't let you maintain your independence. So an example of this is, and this is very true, if you're the giver, right? If you're the giver, it's likely that your partner doesn't, like when you make plans with friends or want to go camping for the weekend or, you know, are going to go out and watch the sports game with your, your buddies, and all of a sudden they're upset and making a big deal about how you don't prioritize them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So anytime that you time try and like, maintain your independence, that's when they, they get all disrupted. So those are very, very clear signs. And that codependency is probably pretty active in your relationship. And again, there are levels to this, right? You don't, you might not be in like a stage five clinger. Codependency. You might just have some codependency in your relationship, right? There's not every relationship. Well, first off, not every relationship is codependent, but not every codependent relationship is like a code red or a stage five, right? So just starting to identify which ones of these show up, what's the severity with which they show up. That's also very important to start to identify because not all of those will have landed, but some of those will have landed, and some of those will probably have landed pretty heavily. All right, finally, here's some questions that you can ask, just a couple questions that you can write down and you can ask yourself. And then we're going to move into how do you actually end and move out of codependency? So a couple questions that you can ask that I've given to a lot of men that can really help you start to identify codependence in your relationship is the following. So, number one, do I feel obligated or compelled to help my partner above myself? Do I feel obligated or compelled to help my partner above myself? Number two, do I tend to over prioritize my partner's needs and wants? Right. What they want above my own needs and wants? Number three, do I let my partner over prioritize my needs and wants above my own on a regular basis? Probably see where I'm going there. Number four, do I on a regular basis feel ashamed of who I am? Do I on a regular basis feel ashamed of who I am, the decisions I'm making, the choices I'm making, et cetera? Number five, do I consistently or regularly try to control the outcomes of other people when I feel helpless or guilty? Do I try and control the outcomes of other people when I feel helpless or guilty? Number six, do I have a hard time asking for help? Do I have a hard time asking for help? And number seven, do I often avoid talking about my problems in an open and honest way? Do I have a hard time opening up about my problems in an open and honest way? So spend some time with those questions. You can always go back and pull them out. Maybe we'll put them in the show notes below if you're watching this on YouTube. And lastly, let's close out with how do you actually move out of codependency? And this is one that I've, I've found to be very challenging. For some people, moving out of codependency can be very hard. But the actions that I'm going to give you, if you implement these, you will see a tremendous amount of progress in a very short period of time. So, number one, most important is, do not villainize your codependent behaviors. Okay? Do not villainize your codependent behaviors. It's very, very common. I see a lot of men do this when they start to realize that they're in the codependent relationship. They villainize it. And it's like when you put your fingers into that Chinese finger trap and you start to try and pull out, right? That's. You're like, I want to get out of this codependency. It tightens the trap. Shaming your behaviors is the exact same thing. It tightens and enforces the codependency. So instead, I'm going to give you a question that you can ask yourself to help contextualize the behavior. Because remember, your codependent behaviors are there because they are an adaptive Survival strategy. Your codependent behaviors are. Are adaptive survival strategies. They are not a bad thing. They are behaviors that you developed to stay safe, to belong, to not get hurt, to not get abused, to try and get attention and affection. Okay, so they're not bad things. So the question that you should ask yourself is, how did these behaviors, how did this adapted survival strategy help me stay safe, help me get attention, help me feel connected, and help me feel valued? Okay, how did they keep me safe, connected, valued, and how did they help me get attention? So ask yourself that question, because the big piece of shifting out of codependency is seeing how these maybe needy behaviors or sort of selfish behaviors sometimes are allowing. We're there to help you stay safe. They were there in order to help you try and get your needs met in an unwelcome environment. Next is what we're going to call little acts of selfishness. So it's very common, again, in codependency. Part of codependency is I need you to fill my needs. I need you to meet my needs. I need you to figure out what my needs are, and you're responsible for what I need. And what this does for a lot of people in codependent relationships is they stop prioritizing, taking care of and prioritizing and tending to their own needs. So the little acts of selfishness are the things that, you know, you need to do in order to feel fulfilled, in order to feel independent, in order to feel sovereign and competent and confident. So what you're going to do is I want you to write down a list of acts of selfishness, and you can call it Acts of Selfishness. That's the title up top, Acts of Selfishness. And if you're in a codependent relationship and you and your partner have identified, we are definitely codependent, we are working to get out of this. Or you as an individual, have identified that you're in a codependent relationship and. And you're working to get out of it. It can be very helpful to sit down with your partner and go through everything that I'm going to outline here. Okay. You might want to even send them this video and tell them to watch the whole thing and take notes and answer these questions and do this homework with you. So write out a list of little acts of selfishness that you know, you need to do on a daily or weekly basis to maintain your own sovereignty and independence. That might be a daily workout. Meditations, breathwork, cold plunges, hanging out with friends, going to, you know, A certain sporting event, signing up for a certain hobby like photography or woodworking, it might be, you know, learning about your finances. I'm not sure what it is for you, but start to make a list of little acts of selfishness that are going to empower you to feel more sovereign and to have a more robust quality of independence. And that is the really important thing. And I say that because a secure, healthy relationship are two independent sovereign beings choosing one another, actively choosing to respect their own sovereign and independent choices, right? Here's what fulfills me. Here's what fulfills me. And choosing to support one another in that development, Right? And continuing to come together in that process, right? So it's not, I'm responsible for you and you're responsible for me. It's I'm responsible for me, you're responsible for you, and we choose to do that together with one another. So that's number two. Next is. And this. This one most guys dislike. But that's okay. We're gonna put it out there anyway. Expose yourself to disappointment. Expose yourself to disappointment. This is a little bit of exposure therapy. The reason why this is so important is that people in codependent relationships have an extremely, extremely low threshold for disappointment. Okay? The giver has a very low threshold for disappointing the other, and the taker has a very low threshold for. For being disappointed by the other person. Right? How come you didn't do that for me? Why didn't you think of me? You should, you know that. I like that. You should have got that for me. And the. The giver is, oh, my God, how could I not have done that for you? You know, or they get upset and defensive, et cetera. So each have a very low tolerance and threshold for disappointing the other or being disappointed by the other. And it's both people's responsibility to start to elevate and expand that level of disappointment. Because again, in a very healthy, stable, secure relationship, it's okay for you to be disappointed, right? Like, I've been married for a number of years. It's okay if I disappoint my wife. I'm okay when she's disappointed. That's all. Right. I know it's going to happen sometimes, right? Whether it's her wanting something for dinner and I'm just not feeling it, and I say no to that, or her wanting to go somewhere or see, you know, watch a certain show I've been making. I've made this joke before that my wife has tried to get me to watch the Bachelor for seven years straight. And I said no for seven years straight and she's been disappointed and like, that's okay. Right. So we have to start to elevate and expand our tolerance for disappointment. So start to. And this can be helpful for you to talk about with your partner to say, listen, I'm not good at feeling disappointed by you. I'm going to work on this. And here are some very specific ways that in the past when I've been disappointed, I've been very reactive. Or here's some very specific things that I've avoided disappointing you on. Right. I've said yes, I'll go out with you and your friends to that bar when really it was a no. I wanted to go watch the game with my buddies. Right. So really start to get clear on what are some of the things that you willing to disappoint your partner on in the relationship and that will inform what you really want to say yes to and what you really want to say no to. Okay, so what are you willing to disappoint your partner on and then start to expose yourself to that. And you and your partner in an ideal world are doing this to together. You're doing this in tandem and that's going to help you heal very, very, very, very quickly. Next is go on a journey of discovery, AKA what the hell are your needs? If you are a giver and you're in a codependent relationship, it's very common that you don't actually know what your needs are. And it's very confronting when you start to go through this process and you realize, I don't actually know what I want or need. Do I need more time with friends? Do I need more of a social life? Do I need more solitude and more reflection and more journaling? Do I need some solo trips? Do I need some hobbies? I don't actually know what I like or want. So go on a journey of discovery and start to write out and you can make a little list that you start to add to and it can just be called relational needs. Relational needs. And it can be a page in your journal that you just return to constantly. And you start to write down things as you discover them. Right? It's like, oh, I've discovered that I need some more physical touch in the relationship. Or I've discovered that I really like to go travel with my partner. I want to do that more. Or I've discovered that I really love going with my buddies and working out Mondays and Fridays, first thing in the morning. So I'm going to find A way to prioritize that. So really start to go on this journey of discovery of what the heck do I actually need next? Screw perfection. Okay, this is just a general rule. Perfection is really the fuel for codependency because both people get caught in a couple things. Number one, they get caught expecting perfection. So the taker will expect perfection from the giver, the giver will expect perfection from themselves because that's how they get their needs met, right? I need to be perfect. I need to get this right because. Because that's how I'm gonna get my needs met. The taker, on the other hand, will expect perfection constantly. It's like you need to. Otherwise, it's a sign that I'm not important to you. Or if you're not getting this right with me, if you're not perfect at understanding what I need, understanding what I want, then it's a sign and a signal that I don't matter to you. And that's very, very common for takers. So notice where perfection is showing up with each of you individually, because perfection is where punishment happens. And if you're not sure where perfectionism is showing up, very simple way to identify it. And you'll be able to find it real quick after this. Start to look at where you and your partner feel like you're competing or keeping tabs or keeping a tally in the relationship. Anytime that there's a battle of fairness in the relationship, anytime it feels like there's a scoreboard in the relationship, perfection is right there. Perfectionism is right there. And that fairness, competition, that scoreboard and that tally mentality is what reinforces the codependent behavior because it gives something for the two of you to actually argue about and fight about and lock horns and stay in this giver taker mentality. So instead of saying, this feels unfair, like, you never do this. You always, blah, blah, blah, check when you're using what I call universal language or absolute language. So anytime that one of you is using always, never, etc, like those types of words that are universals, that's a good sign that you're in perfectionism and that you're in a game of scorekeeping. Instead, move to relational language. And relational language is, how do we want to approach this? Not it's my fault only and not you did this and you never do that. But how do we as a couple want to approach this? Right? So if you're dealing with driving the kids to school or you're dealing with a rent, you know who's paying rent or doesn't feel fair. Whatever. How do we want to approach this problem as a team, as a couple, as a unit, versus this doesn't feel fair. Lastly, and this is, I'm going to give you two last ones that are very quick. Number one is get to know the signs of what I call backsliding. So anytime that you as a couple or you as an individual are working on codependency, there's going to be a bunch of progress as you start to realize and see the codependent behaviors and the arguments and how it shows up and, and you'll make a bunch of progress and you'll get usually like two, three, maybe five months into it and it'll feel like you've, you know, hopefully if you're doing everything that we've outlined, you'll make a good amount of progress and then come a time where those old behaviors will start to creep back in and you start to deprioritize your needs, you start to deprioritize your wants, you start to run the story and the script again that the other person doesn't care about what you want to need and you're going to start to backslide. So get very clear as a unit, ideally of what are the signs that you as a couple are backsliding into codependency? Because one of you will likely be able to catch it. One of you will say, you know what? I've noticed that both of us have not been prioritizing the little acts of selfishness, that we actually haven't been prioritizing our own needs. Have you noticed that too? I've noticed that. I've been saying and catch yourself, call yourself out on it. I noticed that I've been saying yes to things that have actually been a no for me. I think we need to have a conversation about that. Lastly is enlist someone outside of the relationship. Enlist somebody outside of the relationship, whether it's a men's group that you're in, whether it's a buddy of yours, but enlist somebody outside of the relationship to support you in letting go of this codependency. So that's what I got for you today. This was a very long in depth episode. I hope that you enjoyed A Man's Guide to Codependency. Everything that you need to know. I'm going to be doing more, more in depth dives like this. I'm very curious to hear what you thought about this and what topics you would like me to go into in this way because I really want to unpack psychological concepts and support you as a man to really do the work, to really have yourself work in your life and on your life, to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better father. And I find that these types of deep dives can be incredibly rewarding when it comes to unpacking some of these things because there's a lot of, like, flash in the pan content out there that's like, here's the three things you need to do to end codependency, and it's like one slide and you don't implement any of it. So do the work. Send this to your partner, send this to a friend that you know could use it, talk about it, have some discourse, and let me know what topics you would like me to cover in future episodes. Until next time, this is Connor Beaton signing off.