A short talk by Connor Beaton defining codependency as an over-reliance on a partner for internal worth, validation, and safety. He reframes codependency as an adaptive survival strategy from childhood rather than a moral failing, describes two recurring roles in codependent relationships (giver and taker), and explains how these roles create reciprocal blame and a cycle that maintains codependent dynamics.
What the heck is co dependency? 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, ah, 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, 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 other person's. And. 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 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 you, 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 make up your codependent relationship. And those, those behavioral patterns were formed earlier on in.
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