Bound By Dependency, We Blind Ourselves To Our True Needs

Codependency Is Not Love

Codependency is one of those words people use when they want to sound clinical without admitting how ugly things feel at home. It gets described as being too caring, too loyal, too invested, as if the problem is that you love too much. That is not what it looks like when addiction is in the room. When addiction is in the room, codependency becomes a system. One person keeps using. The other person keeps managing. Both keep the cycle alive, and both slowly lose themselves.

The most brutal truth is this. The addicted person is not the only one stuck in an addiction shaped pattern. The partner, parent, or sibling can become addicted to fixing, monitoring, rescuing, and controlling outcomes. They do not call it addiction because it is socially acceptable to be the responsible one. But if you cannot sleep, cannot relax, cannot stop scanning their mood, and cannot stop trying to prevent the next disaster, you are not simply being loving. You are trapped in a relationship structure that will keep hurting you until it changes.

The Difference Between Love, Loyalty, and Codependency

Real love supports truth, even when truth is uncomfortable. It does not cover up, it does not lie, and it does not protect someone from the consequences of their own behaviour. Loyalty can be beautiful, but loyalty without boundaries becomes self destruction. Codependency is not love that is too strong. It is love that has turned into control, fear, and self abandonment.

Codependency thrives when you start believing your job is to keep the addict stable, to keep the family calm, and to keep everyone from finding out. You start carrying their emotions, their responsibilities, their lies, and their mess. You tell yourself you are doing it to help them. Over time you realise you are doing it to survive, because the alternative feels unbearable, which is to let the truth land and let consequences happen.

The South African Scripts That Keep People Stuck

In South Africa, codependency often hides behind cultural scripts that sound like morality. Stand by your partner. Keep the family together. Do not embarrass us. Pray harder. You do not leave when things get tough. These scripts are not always wrong, but they can be weaponised by addiction, because addiction loves secrecy and loyalty that has no limits.

Families also fear judgement. They fear neighbours. They fear school communities. They fear employers. They fear being seen as the family that has problems. That fear pushes people into silence. Silence turns into cover ups. Cover ups turn into enabling. Enabling turns into resentment. Then resentment turns into shouting matches, ultimatums, and emotional exhaustion, and the addiction keeps walking through the middle of it like it owns the place.

What Codependency Looks Like

Most codependent people do not look needy or weak. Many look competent, organised, and in control. They are the ones who keep things running. They pay the bills. They manage the kids. They keep up appearances. They smooth over conflict. They speak politely to outsiders while their stomach is in knots every day.

The respectable partner holds it together while secretly paying off debts, explaining missed workdays, and making excuses for behaviour they would never accept from anyone else. The parent keeps rescuing a grown child because the thought of losing them feels like dying. The sibling becomes both fixer and punisher, helping one day and exploding the next. The partner monitors phones, money, and friends, then calls it love, when it is actually a trauma response built out of fear.

If your relationship has turned into surveillance, crisis management, and constant emotional negotiation, you are not in a healthy partnership. You are in a system built around addiction.

How the Relationship Becomes a Machine

The cycle is predictable. The person uses or drinks. Chaos follows. Consequences show up, money disappears, trust collapses, a fight happens, a car is damaged, a job is threatened, a child gets frightened. Then the codependent steps in. They rescue, they cover, they pay, they clean, they apologise, they explain. Then comes the emotional storm, tears, promises, maybe even a short burst of sincerity that feels like intimacy. Then there is a calm period, and everyone pretends it is over.

The calm never lasts because the system never changed. Tension builds again. The addict returns to using. The codependent returns to managing. The loop repeats, and both people get addicted to the rhythm. The addict gets addicted to the relief. The codependent gets addicted to the role. Crisis becomes the glue that keeps them together.

Codependency Is Control

This is where people get defensive because nobody wants to hear they are controlling. They want to believe they are the good one. But a lot of codependent behaviour is control, and it is understandable. You are trying to control outcomes so you can feel safe. You are trying to control their drinking so you can have peace. You are trying to control their phone, their money, their friends, their schedule, their mood, because every time you do not control it, something breaks.

Control fails because addiction does not respond to policing. It responds by hiding better. It responds by lying more convincingly. It responds by turning you into the enemy so it can justify using. Control also makes you sick. It turns your life into a constant state of alert, and living like that will break your nervous system over time.

Kindness is not control. Kindness is honesty, boundaries, and refusal to participate in the lie.

How Codependency Forms

For many people, codependency did not start in adult relationships. It started in childhood. If you grew up in a home with addiction, unpredictability, violence, emotional absence, or constant conflict, you learned to scan moods for safety. You learned to manage other people’s feelings to keep the peace. You learned that love means caretaking and self abandonment. You learned that your needs are dangerous because they create conflict.

That wiring feels normal later. You choose partners who need fixing because fixing feels like love. You tolerate behaviour that should be a deal breaker because chaos feels familiar. You confuse intensity with intimacy, and you confuse sacrifice with loyalty. None of this makes you stupid. It makes you human, shaped by experience, and it makes you vulnerable to addiction driven relationship dynamics.

Weak and Rigid Boundaries

People often hear boundaries and imagine two extremes. Weak boundaries look like endless forgiveness without change. It looks like giving money, believing promises, lying for them, and cleaning up consequences. Weak boundaries feel loving but they protect the addiction.

Rigid boundaries look like sudden cut offs, harsh ultimatums, and punishment cycles that collapse the moment fear kicks in. Rigid boundaries can also be used as revenge, which keeps the relationship locked in conflict.

Healthy boundaries are clear and consistent. They are not emotional theatre. They are decisions about what you will and will not participate in. They are followed through, even when the addict is angry. They are not meant to control the addict. They are meant to protect you, the children, and the basic functioning of the home.

If I Leave or Set Limits They Will Die

This fear is real. It is also the lie that keeps many people trapped. Rescue rarely prevents collapse. It usually delays it. When you keep cushioning consequences, the addict has less reason to change. They might still change eventually, but they often change later and after more damage, because the system made it possible to keep going.

Setting limits is not cruelty. It is reality. It is refusing to fund, cover, or participate in behaviour that is destroying everyone. Responsible care looks like supporting treatment, supporting honesty, supporting accountability, and refusing chaos. It looks like calling for professional help rather than trying to be the therapist, the detective, and the nurse all at once.

What Progress Looks Like In a Codependent System

Progress looks like less secrecy and more truth. It looks like fewer rescues and more consequences landing where they should. It looks like calmer communication and less crisis drama. It looks like the codependent sleeping better and reclaiming parts of their life. It looks like the addict taking responsibility without being chased, which means they show up for treatment, they speak honestly, and they accept boundaries without turning them into war.

Progress also looks like the household becoming less obsessed with the addict. That sounds harsh, but it is healthy. The addict should not be the sun that everyone orbits. A healthy home has routines, values, and stability that do not collapse every time one person is unstable.

You Cannot Love Someone Into Sobriety By Destroying Yourself

If your life is shrinking around someone else’s addiction, you need help too. That is not betrayal. It is the first honest move that changes the whole system. Boundaries are not punishment. They are protection. Truth is not cruelty. It is the ground where recovery can grow.

The addict might still choose to use. You cannot control that. But you can stop being the person who makes it easier. You can stop being the person who carries the consequences. You can reclaim your identity, your health, and your stability. That is not selfish. That is how families stop becoming collateral damage, and it is often the moment the addict finally realises the game is over.