Codependency in Queer Relationships: Recognizing Patterns and Putting Yourself First

Codependency is a common hurdle for today’s queer relationships, and the support of a mental health professional and/or group therapy and twelve-step programs can make a huge difference in renovating a codependent bond.

Wondering if your relationship is codependent? Count how many of the following are true.

1. You often worry that you are selfish, needy, and unloveable. Doing things for other people, or giving up things you want for yourself, are the only ways you can make yourself feel better.
2. You minimize others’ flaws and emphasize where your failings led them to react poorly, rather than letting them share responsibility for a conflict.
3. You dislike talking about your feelings because you don’t trust others to understand or help you and you feel the need to seem perfect to others. 
4. You are always looking for ways to do more than your fair share and show your value through acts of service.
5. You routinely defer to other people when making any significant decisions about your life and struggle to feel confident in your own decisions when they aren’t motivated by someone else. 
6. You anticipate others’ needs and preemptively dismiss your own to accommodate them. You have become very emotionally intelligent and in tune with others’ motivations to accomplish this.
7. You don’t feel safe in a relationship unless you are repeatedly making sacrifices for the other person. You fear abandonment and use these sacrifices to make them stay.
8. Holding on to your romantic relationships is more important than anything, including your own mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
9. You feel empty, depressed, and without purpose when your partner isn’t with you.
10. You have been in multiple relationships that have left you feeling that you gave everything while the other person gave nothing, and you keep seeming to date the same kind of person to repeat this pattern.

All of these behaviors and attitudes can open the door to a codependent relationship dynamic. While it’s important to support others in your lives, that support should go both ways when we’re talking about fellow adults. When we take all the work of a relationship on ourselves, we rob the other person of the chance to show up for us, and set ourselves up for disappointment. Being the most functional and helpful person in the relationship on the surface doesn’t mean you aren’t still human underneath. It’s important to recognize and address codependent relationship patterns before they lead to bigger problems.

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What is codependency and why is it a problem?

Clinicians began discussing codependency in the 1980s in relation to addiction treatment. In their view, a partner who stayed with an addicted spouse was suffering from their own addiction to the person they loved. Why else would they subject themselves to the turmoil and abuse that arose from addicted or mentally ill spouses? This model portrayed people in codependent relationships as suffering from low self-esteem and gaining approval through mindless service and obedience. While addiction can be a helpful model for a codependent relationship, a new model called “prodependence” has taken precedence. Rather than blaming the codependent person for enabling the person they’re helping to feed their own addiction, this model takes into consideration that it is not a bad thing to empathize with someone in pain and try to help them. Instead, it guides the codependent person to establish healthy boundaries while giving them permission to perform some type of care for the person they want to help.

We now understand codependency as a relationship dynamic that can manifest in nearly any relationship where certain factors are at play. Codependency emerges when one partner becomes partially or totally dependent on the other for emotional, financial, and/or physical support. The partner providing the support routinely puts their needs second and neglects self care and other responsibilities to focus on the partner. This dynamic can appear in relationships with parents, children, friends, and anyone else we might feel compelled to help no matter how serious or prolonged their needs are, or how unqualified we may be to offer the right care.

The person receiving support from the codependent person may or may not be aware of the dynamic, and may or may not choose to exploit it. Some people seek out others with codependent traits specifically to benefit from their instinct to support them without question. Some codependent people are subconsciously attracted to those in need to fulfill a role that brings them purpose and identity. Codependent behavior can arise in response to a partner’s addiction or mental illness, or just from the demands of day to day life. The codependent person may fear abandonment, or may be unable to trust the other person to put up their part of the relationship, so they default to taking on all responsibility themselves. They may feel that the other person can’t criticize or disappoint them in this state of affairs. However, when tensions inevitably arise from this imbalance, rather than facing what’s not working, the codependent person may retreat deeper into a quasi fantasy, telling themselves they just have to work harder, be smarter, and do better. This cycle leads to exhaustion, resentment, and depression.

Codependent relationships aren’t inherently bad, but they can become toxic when one or both partners lose their personal boundaries and/or violate the other’s. Pathologizing codependency can be detrimental to treatment, because the underlying drives of community building, empathy, and selflessness are essential aspects of the human experience. It’s normal for us to want to rescue our loved ones when they are in trouble, and criticizing this too much removes responsibility from the person benefiting from the codependent behavior. 

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Here are some common issues that arise from codependent relationship dynamics:

• Increased risk of the codependent person picking up their own addiction or exacerbating their own mental illness by neglecting self care in favor of caring for others. Poor health, low self-esteem, depression, and other mental and physical consequences for the codependent person.
• Neglect of bonds outside the codependent relationship leading to loss of support networks. Increased financial instability due to inability to keep up with responsibilities outside the codependent relationship.
• Loss of honesty, intimacy, and satisfaction in the relationship as the codependent person avoids their feelings of discomfort and resentment by shutting out the person they are supporting.
• Increased risk of adverse outcomes for the person the codependent person is helping. In some cases a codependent person can create an environment free of consequences where an addicted person can continue using, or a mentally ill person can continue refusing help. In other cases a codependent person may refuse to let others help their loved ones entirely, feeling threatened even by someone more qualified to intervene successfully. 

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Why does codependency come up often in LGBTQIA+ relationships?

Many stereotypes about queer relationships arose as clumsy descriptions of issues that have historically affected the LGBTQIA+ community. For example, a common assumption of promiscuity aligns with the clandestine nature of many queer relationships before it was legal to engage in them publicly. Despite this correlation there is no evidence that dysfunctional relationship dynamics are caused by queerness or are unique to the queer community, and there are plenty of queer people happily joined in healthy relationships. 

Evidence does suggest that queer relationships may be more vulnerable to developing a codependent dynamic because queer people are more frequently subjected to emotional, physical, and religious abuse from their families of origin and early romantic partners. Here are some examples.

1. No matter how advanced we become as a society in matters of gender and sexuality, our families may remain embedded in the intolerance of the past. This can be rooted in misguided desires to protect you from others’ judgment, or from the punishment of their higher power. If you can’t pass as cis and straight, an intolerant family will likely try to police your behavior into conformity with cis-het norms, which is its own type of abuse, since it conditions you to disbelieve your own feelings and routinely put others’ perceptions first. Growing up like this can lead you to lose touch with yourself and rely excessively on others to direct your feelings and actions.
2. If you did pass growing up but were outed or decided to come out when you got older, you may enter a phase of subconscious negotiation with your family; to “make up” for the transgression of being queer, you find yourself doing more than your fair share of house chores and emotional labor for your family. Over time you may accept the dynamic as normal, and wonder why you feel so tired all the time around them.
3. If your queerness led important people in your life to distance themselves from you or withhold support, predatory people may have been attracted to your isolation. In the absence of supportive friends and family, you may have come to rely heavily on this person, excusing their bad behavior and finding every possible way to keep the relationship. Even after it’s over, and even if that person treated you horribly, you might wonder what you did wrong and how you could have done more to keep them in your life. When another person who resembles them comes along, you could be drawn to them and try to recreate the original relationship in an attempt to retroactively fix it with this new person.

To avoid trauma and marginalization queer people can become skilled at hiding parts of themselves and dismissing their needs to seem “acceptable,” or at least invisible, to others. It is normal and healthy to want connection and support in our relationships, but codependency distorts these admirable traits into self destructive, controlling, and passive aggressive behavior. In turn, early experiences of rejection often create greater empathy for others who are suffering, and could increase a queer person’s resolve to stay with someone through all kinds of storms.

Even when you meet someone great who doesn’t expect an imbalanced relationship dynamic, you may find yourself engaging in codependent behavior as a defense mechanism. In the past you used this to feel safe from criticism from your family, friends, and partners, and now you don’t feel safe unless you are consistently giving more than the other person. 

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How can I fight codependency in my relationship?

Since codependency involves both partners, the support of a couple’s therapist or other dedicated professional can be extremely helpful in navigating a healthier dynamic between you and your partner. Involving your partner can also help you both develop awareness of the issue and adapt better coping mechanisms together. While working collaboratively is an important part of this process, one of the core issues for a codependent person to face is their relationship with themselves. When you invest too much of your life into another person, you neglect most if not all of your most important relationships, including the one with yourself. Fix that relationship first.

A big part of the work ahead involves developing awareness of your codependent triggers and giving yourself the choice not to respond to them, or to respond to them differently. Getting in touch with your values and needs will guide you in this process. Many codependent people lose touch with both as they relinquish control of their lives to their relationship. Understanding who you are outside of your relationship and what kind of support you need to be your favorite self is a great first step.These journal prompts can help you get started.

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1. Values or Fears?
Some codependent impulses come from a good place - we value caring for one another, and people need help when they’re in trouble. However, when codependent impulses come from fear - of abandonment, of reprisals, of unspecified disaster - we don’t tend to use our best judgment. We may make unnecessary and destructive sacrifices, or create grandiose plans to throw all our time and resources into. No relationship dynamic should be motivated by fear. Fear is stress, and stress is debilitating over time. It’s time to notice when your actions are motivated by your values, and when your actions are motivated by fear. 

• Review the events of the past week. When did you put yourself second? Did you want to do something but let someone else do what they wanted instead? Did you accept consequences for something that wasn’t your fault? Big or small, it doesn’t matter - just find one to start.
• What made you decide to do that? How did you feel before, during, and after? Which values were you acting on? Which fears were you reacting to? 
• What were the consequences of your choice? 
• If you could make the choice over again, would you do it the same way? Would you hope for a different outcome?

This exercise can help you become more aware of what motivates your codependent impulses, and demonstrate where you actually have the agency to make a different choice. Big emotions can cloud our judgment and make us reactive rather than responsive. Becoming more aware each time this happens cues our brain to recognize what’s happening and give us more time to choose our behavior thoughtfully.

2. I’m doing it for a friend.
For codependent people it can be easier to intervene on behalf of someone else than to do anything for yourself. This exercise puts you in the shoes of someone else and gives you permission to help that person as faithfully as you help your partner. 

• Imagine yourself as a younger person (a photo might help) ideally ten or more years ago. What was this person like? What did they enjoy doing? What did they want to be when they grew up? 
• Imagine yourself now meeting this young person and spending an afternoon with them. Are they hungry? Do they need rest? Is there something they would enjoy doing that you could do together? Identify three things you would do for this person who needs you today. 
• Now, make a commitment to do those things for yourself today. If doing this interferes with your plans or responsibilities, and especially if those plans and responsibilities involve non-essential (meaning non-life sustaining) activities with your partner, excuse yourself and say that a friend is experiencing an emergency and needs your help.
• Important: We are not advocating lying to your partner. Ideally you will be able to openly express your needs to your partner without this little ruse. However, at the very beginning when it’s especially difficult to break out of old patterns, you deserve space and privacy to work on this new skill.
  
  

3. Boundaries start with me.
Being in a codependent state leads us to focus excessively on our partner’s moods and behavior. When they do or say things that cross our boundaries, we agonize over how to change their behavior, or put ourselves through hell repressing the way we feel about it. Unfortunately neither of those things will remedy the tension of this situation. One thing you may not have tried yet is checking how your own behavior could prevent your partner from violating your boundaries in the first place.

To be fair, you might have made your boundaries clear at the outset, and may even have repeatedly defended them verbally. Over time though, you might have made allowances here and there that extended into a pattern of putting your boundaries second and your partner’s needs and preferences first. When you’re totally focused on the other person in your relationship, you lose sight of your own agency. A helpful metaphor for this state is a horse tied to a plastic chair: the horse is powerful enough to walk away and take the chair with it, but because it’s used to being tied up it never tries to get loose. It’s time to tug on the chair a little bit.

• Think about a time your partner crossed a boundary and made you uncomfortable. Write down what happened as clearly as possible from your perspective.
• Draw a line down a new piece of paper, writing your name on one side and your partner’s on the other. Looking back on what you wrote, organize the play by play based on who did or said what. 
• Review your column. Did you express that your partner’s behavior violated your boundaries? If so, how? Was it verbal, or did you use facial cues or body language?
• How did your partner respond when you communicated your boundary? Did they notice and ignore it? Were they oblivious to it? 
• Once the boundary was crossed, how did you react? Did you stay in an uncomfortable situation? Did you bring up the boundary again the next time they crossed it? Did you act like nothing happened?

The point of this exercise is not to find fault with yourself, but to take stock of how you might be participating in the violation of your own boundaries. For example, if you don’t want people to talk to you in a certain way, it’s great to speak up and let them know. However, if they don’t respect that boundary, you have a few choices, especially if you’re outside a professional or academic setting. You can leave the conversation, or you can continue voicing your opinion so that the conversation can’t continue until your needs are met. If you choose to stay in the conversation and not say anything else, and if you find yourself in the same conversation with the same people over and over, voicing your boundary once means nothing. By putting yourself in a position where your boundaries will be reliably violated without consequences for the people who violated them, you are participating in your own discomfort and lack of safety.

There are, of course, situations where it’s not safe, or even possible, to assert your boundaries. Your romantic relationship should never be one. A reasonable partner will understand when you need to work on boundaries, and will hold space for you to voice them as often as possible. That doesn’t mean your partner isn’t accountable for violating your boundaries, but it does mean that you are accountable for voicing and defending them. Recognizing where you might have the opportunity to do so will make you more aware of when you might take advantage of that opportunity in future.

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In Conclusion

For queer people romantic relationships can constitute a strong, and sometimes the only, support in a world that can be judgmental and unforgiving to the LGBTQIA+ community. Our society has become more tolerant over time, but we can’t take it for granted that all the necessary healing has already happened. It can be difficult to trust new networks of support outside the ones that are familiar to you, but taking pressure off your relationship, and by extension yourself, is key to disrupting a codependent dynamic. Once you start letting other people in to help you and your partner, you might find more light and ease at home, and more healing and rest for both of you. Another useful metaphor: sometimes being codependent is like trying to hold water in your hand. The tighter you squeeze, the more water runs out. It’s only when you relax your grip that you can cup the water in your palm. Reacting to your codependent impulses is like squeezing the water - you’re more likely to hold onto your relationship if you hold it gently rather than restraining it.By all means be close to your partner and help them through any challenges you like, but if their problems grow too large or complex to handle alone, welcome others to help you. It might feel threatening at first, but in a healthy relationship you bring plenty of value as a partner who can listen, empathize, and offer the occasional act of service as a sign of affection. There’s no need to add personal chef, housekeeping, taxi service, counselor and doctor to the mix. Our wish for you is to find more value in your being than in your actions, and to have a partner who supports you in that.