In her groundbreaking book Codependent No More (first published in 1986), Melodie Beattie quotes Robert Subby (Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue) who defines codependency as “an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules – rules which prevent the open expression of feeling as well as the direct discussion of personal and interpersonal problems.” (Italics mine.)
Beattie goes on to attempt the brave effort of defining codependency in one sentence: “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.” (Codependent No More, p. 34)
Beattie claims that the heart of the definition and recovery lies not in the other person, no matter how much we want to believe it does. She says it lies in the ways we allow the behavior of other people “to affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the obsessing, the controlling, the obsessive helping, caretaking, low self-worth bordering on self-hatred, self-repression, abundance of anger and guilt, peculiar dependency on peculiar people, attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, other-centeredness that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process.” (p. 34)
If you are married to a man with Asperger Syndrome/Autism Spectrum, do you see yourself in this definition?
My hunch is that you do. My hunch is also that tears began to form in your eyes as you read this, and thought yes! yes! yes! that’s me.
Much of the work in the field of codependency comes out of the field of addictions and substance abuse. However, I believe that the marriage of a neurotypical woman to a man with AS is the perfect breeding ground for the development of codependency in women for whom the word would not have applied prior to their marriages. If you go back to Subby’s definition, and understand the oppressive rules to be the outline of the structure of your marriage as defined by your husbands’s AS, you may be able to see your marriage in a new light.
Think about it. How much of your daily life is consumed with matters related to your husband’s AS? You work to explain yourself, you work to run interference between him and others and between him and the world at large, you work to fill gaps where his capabilities do not extend. Gradually, perhaps even imperceptibly, you fade into the background of your own life. Your efforts to take care of the marriage, to direct your husband’s behaviors into socially appropriate or emotionally appropriate directions take all your energy. Constant criticism and judgments push you forward in an effort to improve your approach, to do better, to be more effective in helping and taking care of others.
This is not simply that you are trying to micromanage people in your life in an effort, conscious or not, to reduce your own anxiety, as it might be under other circumstances that lead to codependent behavior. Instead, you are spurred to action by of issues that stem from your husband’s repeated inability to manage social interactions, or to gauge the emotions of other people accurately, or to intuit the difference between telling the truth and speaking inappropriately and hurting, sometimes devastating, another person. He may not mean to do this, but his intentions and the results of his behaviors on others may seldom align. It seems that it falls to you to patch things up. These are the oppressive rules you live by, as Melodie Beattie would say. You did not choose them, and then did not originate with you.
One morning, you look into the mirror and instead of seeing the reflection you recognize, you see nothing at all. You have disappeared. And what begins to emerge instead in that mirror is a vision of a nagging, overbearing, controlling, angry, exhausted woman who has replaced every part of yourself that you once recognized as a loving and kind person.
Are you tired? Yes. Who do you blame? Yourself.
But please! Be gentle with yourself. You are acting under duress. Your efforts have likely been meant to help, not control.
Looking at these changes in terms of codependency can liberate you from the cycle of self-recrimination. It can help you to stop taking care of everyone else around you in your efforts to make sense of the world. It can, eventually, give you the space you need in order to heal.
What will healing look like in this case? In my clinical experience with women married to men with AS, it looks like a return to self: a return to comfort of being the woman you once were, and a return to being independent of the responsibilities for the welfare of others, which includes independence of the judgments and condemnations of others that follow on the heels of what you once viewed as your best efforts to take care of them. This does not mean you no longer feel concern. It means you no longer feel responsible for the choices that others need rightfully be making for themselves. You can step back. You are responsible only for yourself. You are the only person you can change anyway.
After all these years, Melody Beattie’s book still stands out in the field of now expansive literature on the topic of codependency. I recommend it to clients all the time.
If you have the time to take a look at it, I recommend it to you, too. You can download it from Amazon.com and read it on the go from any device. Or, you can purchase the hard copy and make margin notes to bring with you to your counseling sessions, if you have made the decision to seek help.
You can also begin a journal of self-exploration on this topic, which can help you identify the things you have been doing that are counter to your own best interests, and, ultimately, counter to what you want in your life: the love and respect of those in your life whom you have worked so hard to help.
Because this is the irony of codependency: you risk losing exactly what you seek by your codependent behavior. You can lose the respect of others. You may also lose their love.
That’s a dreadful price to pay when all along you thought you were being helpful.
Let the beauty of the swan in the photo above inspire you to set out on your path of rediscovery. You can uncover and dismiss your codependent patterns and become your beautiful self again.