cover

we acknowledge and meet our healthy, natural needs for people and love, yet we don't become overly or harmfully
dependent on them.

We may go back to school, get a job, or set other goals that will bring freedom. And we usually begin setting those goals
when we are sick enough of being trapped. Some codependents, however, plan destructive escapes. We may try to escape
our prison by using alcohol or drugs. We may become workaholics. We may seek escape by becoming emotionally
dependent on another person who is like the person we were attempting

page_100

Page 101

to escapeanother alcoholic, for example. Many codependents begin to contemplate suicide. For some, ending our lives
appears to be the only way out of this terribly painful situation.

Emotional dependency and feeling stuck can also cause problems in salvageable relationships. If we are in a relationship
that is still good, we may be too insecure to detach and start taking care of ourselves. We may stifle ourselves and
smother or drive away the other person. That much need becomes obvious to other people. It can be sensed, felt.

Ultimately, too much dependency on a person can kill love. Relationships based on emotional insecurity and need, rather
than on love, can become self-destructive. They don't work. Too much need drives people away and smothers love. It
scares people away. It attracts the wrong kind of people. And our real needs don't get met. Our real needs become greater
and so does our despair. We center our lives around this person, trying to protect our source of security and happiness.
We forfeit our lives to do this. And we become angry at this person. We are being controlled by him or her. We are
dependent on that person. We ultimately become angry and resentful at what we are dependent on and controlled by,
because we have given our personal power and rights to that person. 4

Feeling desperate or dependent can expose us to other risks too. If we let the desperate part of us make our choices, we
may unwittingly put ourselves in situations where we expose ourselves to sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes or
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). It is not safe to be that needy in intimate relationships.

Sometimes, we may play tricks on ourselves to disguise our dependency. Some of these tricks, according to Colette
Dowling, are making someone more than he or she is ("He's such a genius; that's why I stick with him."), making
someone less than he or she is ("Men are such babies; they can't take care of themselves."), andthe favorite trick of
codependentscaretaking. Dowling demonstrated these characteristics in The Cinderella Complex, where she cited the case
history of Madeleine, a woman who was extricating herself from a destructive relationship with Manny, her alcoholic
husband.

page_101

Page 102

That is the last trick of the dependent personalitybelieving that you're responsible for "taking care of" the other one.
Madeleine had always felt more responsible for Manny's survival than for her own. As long as she was concentrating on
Mannyhis passivity, his indecisiveness, his problems with alcoholshe focused all her energy on devising solutions for
him, or for "them," and never had to look inside herself. It was why it had taken twenty-two years for Madeleine to catch
on to the fact that if things continued as they had always been, she would end up shortchanged. She would end up never
having lived a life.

... From the time she was eighteen until she was fortyyears when people are supposed to reap, and grow, and experience
the worldMadeleine Boroff had been hanging on, pretending to herself that life was not what it was, that her husband
would get his bearings before long, and that she would one day spring free to live her own inner lifepeacefully,
creatively.

For twenty-two years she had not been able to cope with what it would mean to face down the lie, and so, without
intending any harm, but too frightened to live authentically, she turned her back on truth.

It may seem dramatic in its surface details, but in its fundamental dynamic Madeleine's story is not so unusual. The go-
along quality she exhibited, the seeming inability to extricate herself, or even think of extricating herself, from an utterly