My ex and i were both in recovery
And nothing was helping us. Him
AA me alanon. We both started
Much too late to help us.

Recovery is all about you and for
You not anyone else. Get Healthy
And strong for you whether you
stay Or leave.

Also no one can tell you what to
Do about your marriage that is a
Very personal decision.

In alanon they suggest waiting
Six months to a year before making
Any major decisions about your
Relationship. Sometimes things do
Improve and sometimes just your own
Changed behaviors will help the situation.

I know what you are saying i was married
For 30 years and you can get into bad habits
Especially when things are not going well.
Its hard to change the dance, HUGS

Hi C:

Yes you can recover while in a relationship, and it is far better to stay in the relationship because you can not fix the dysfunctions after you break up the relationship.

Plus there is not really any such thing as a codependent relationship because it is just people acting and reacting to each other, so if you correct your self then that will stop the codependent interaction with every other relationship.

When we are codependent then we are codependent with every one else, as like codependent with are Mom and Dad, with brothers and sisters, with our co-workers and with every friend or acquaintance or every stranger we meet, because the codependency is in our self alone.

You can not be just codependent with your husband but with no one else.

Your husband surely is codependent to some degree, so like if you stop your self from violating boundaries (and it is common for people to violate each others boundaries) then he will take notice quickly and he will respond to the improvements because the recovery process really does affect every one around us when we do it all by our self.

The true cure for codependency (and cure for virtually all social ills) is simply to have healthy boundaries, and everything else will fall into place after we start doing the boundaries.

There are two excellent books about boundaries written from a religious view, and religion has been the age-old source of boundaries for mankind for all of recorded history. The ten commandments were really just ten boundaries - and they work.

1) Link - Boundaries: by Cloud and Townsend = https://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Henry-Cloud/dp/0310241804

2) Link - Boundaries in Marriage = https://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Marriage-Henry-Cloud/dp/031022151X/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=
---

These books give real specifics and explanations and more.
These books can be had for free from any public library.

Welcome here to this group.

Thanks for the resources. I will check them out.

Hi again:

When I was much younger (20-25) then I was married to my High school sweetheart and we got a divorce after 5 years and having our one son at 4 years old, and at one point when we were separating she said some remark of what she had wanted during our marriage and I was surprised by her dream because I always wanted to make her happy, and so I asked her why she had never told that to me? and she replied that - "You never asked." That was a big moment in my life because in many ways my wife and I grew up together and it hit me hard that we did not really talk to each other. She and I made accusations against each other which were outrageous and yet I know now that most of the accusations were just a matter of perspective. As like we both thought the other did not love us when we were both just lost souls fighting over false beliefs.

Now 20-40 years later I think back and both she and I did not have healthy boundaries but instead we clung hard to our unhealthy boundaries, so we said "yes and no" to the wrong things, and we both failed to say our "yes and no" to the right things, and so we were doomed from the beginning.

We simply must learn to distinguish right from wrong, which is why religion is so dominant in humans because religion gives us a foundation.

What we say "yes or no" about is our boundary lines.
Yes I like this - No, I do not like that.
Boundary - boundary.

Most times all we need to do is to nicely speak it to the other person and just by speaking the words then that will work wonders. It is insane to think that the other person already knows - because we have got to speak our feelings and speak our likes and dislikes and by doing that we speak our boundaries.

If the words do not work wonders - then the words are wrong.

It is awful to live with life long regrets, but in fact we really can change the past wrongs by repenting or as the 12 Steps declare - by making amends, because by fixing the past conflicts we literally change the past wrongs by making them right.

Making amends means mending (heal) the past.

My unfortunate son was really hurt by having 2 really immature parents so he turned out wild and lost, and I did make some amends with him and the rest I have to leave to God to save that poor lost soul.

Codependency is the name we give to our unhealthy ways of living.
---
I just wanted to add this to this thread - so goes my ranting.

It's interesting that you mention religion as being important and I have red the steps and saw that importance of a higher power in the steps. For me I felt that my previous religious beliefs enabled me to be codependent. I thought that by being giving and loving, serving others that I was doing something good with my life. In the end all I was doing was making myself available to abusers.

Hi Cobalt:

I appreciate that you say that - and see how our words carry substance.

I too grew up with an ignorant form of religion where my parents used God as one of their weapon to control us kids and to scare and punish us (I was #6 of 12 siblings in an Irish Catholic family).

It took me 20 years to stop blaming that Church for what my parents did.

Now I reject all the churches and all the organized religions but I still embrace God, because without God then I would never had escaped the brainwashing of my past.

Religion is like government, so I do not like our government either but I do still want it to provide law and order, and as with religion we still need its foundation for knowing right from wrong.

There is no way to create healthy boundaries for our self and in our life unless we make the real decisions between right and wrong - because right from wrong are the real boundary lines.

You say that your = "previous religious beliefs enabled me to be codependent" - so yes those beliefs were wrong - but do those wrong beliefs throw out the right beliefs - no, as in it is still wrong to steal, to kill, to commit adultery, to covet, to have strange Gods, to bear false witness and etc.

Religions being wrong in so many ways - does not mean we throw away what is right in religions.

For myself and probably for most people - real religion and God were violated for us, as we were taught hateful ideologies and ignorant superstitions and by doing that it was another one of our boundaries as children which got violated.

As growing up we needed to be taught (needed to learn) right from wrong and our parents violated that (whether it was on purpose or not) and society violated us too just as does the churches continue violating people's knowledge of right from wrong - and so that is a high priority that we each must heal in our self.

We all had abusers so we must find and decide what was abuse from what was not abuse, and that can only be done accurately by having the basis of right from wrong.

My parents provided a home and 3 meals, clothing, medical, schooling, so that was all right and righteous, but at the same time it was wrong of them to give me their guilt or their shame or their self-righteousness or give me their dead religion which separated me from the true loving God.

An obscure Bible text that I always embrace is Psalm 68:4-6
Link = https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+68%3A4-6&version=KJV
God is "A father of the fatherless"
And that is what I was - I was a child without real parents - and so God becomes our parent.

It is important to recovery that we do not judge anything nor anyone as "good or as bad" because "good and bad" have a vastly different meaning than right or wrong. As like saying that my parents were bad parents - well no they were not bad because they did many things right. So we need to find out exactly what went wrong and heal that or repair that, and then move on.

My parents provided a home and 3 meals, clothing, medical, schooling - but that does not make it as "good".

The perspective of "good and bad" is judging quality, as in if we like that then it is good, and we do not like that so it is "bad" and that is a very unhealthy way to think or to live.

This is just my own opinion based on my own years of study and experience.

Please feel invited and welcome to disagree or to criticize or to get hostile with me, because real healing is hard work and this forum is to discuss such things.

Another followup for anyone interested;

My finding is that the first and foremost violation to virtually every child on the planet earth is done by alienating each child from our true identity of being a child of God.

The truth is that every baby is born as a Prince or a Princess to the King of Kings, and it is that identity which gets violated by the misguided parents who see the baby as their own property, and does not see their baby as a true child of God.

Perception is vitally important in this life.
When people are viewed as just insignificant flesh-and-bone then they miss our on our higher spiritual purpose.

This is where our unhealthy self esteem begins, because our true self identity gets violated.

After that the codependency is so much easier to create and to pass down to each generation.

Right and wrong do need to be taken into consideration as they are more objective (although what is right and wrong is subjective to some people). Whereas good and bad are more subjective.

We as individuals need to determine what is good and bad for ourselves and not let others decide that. One type of behavior that is "good" for one person might not be good for me. For example, I think being a person with an excessive personality is not good for me. But those that have that kind of personality do well for themselves in sales. So the behavior is good for them.

We also need to recognize that what others choose as good for themselves does not have to be judged as bad just because we wouldn't choose it for ourselves.

It is the same in religion or religious practices. The various religions and beliefs in the world are full of many practices. Some might feel fulfillment in engaging in as many practices as possible but another might feel overwhelmed.

The 12 steps for codependency is full of mentions of engaging a higher power. Me personally, when I was really struggling in both of my heavy codependent relationships, my mother and my first husband, prayer did not help. In fact when I finally left my first husband I went through a spiritual malaise and for a couple years my beliefs leaned towards atheist.

I know that having a higher power for many is helpful in getting through the first stages of recognizing codependency and starting to work on boundary setting and understanding themselves. Ultimately all of our relationships in life are conditional, but the relationship with God is not.

I haven't given up on having a better spiritual relationship with God, my focus has just shifted. I am trying to be more objective in my thoughts, view the situations around me objectively, understanding my role in my relationships, determining if I am comfortable with that role, setting comfortable boundaries, and being more authentic. I am guiding my actions with ethics and defining what lifestyle practices are good for me.

There are things in psychology which we know works, and other things that are known that they do not work.

Anything subjective is never on that list of things that work.

It is the perspective of any abuser to see things as - it is good for me.
While the one(s) being abused never sees it as good for them.

So in my view what you (Cobalt) describe in your last past comment is dead wrong, and it dooms you to more and more disappointments.
I figure that you have never really hit your bottom so you are still competing to win which is never possible.

Of course you have no reason to believe my words, and so I hope that other people reading these discussions can gain some insights here.

Peace out.

I disagree that judging behaviors as good or bad is appropriate for recovery. In doing so we take actions and look at those actions objectively without emotion and determine if our own or somebody else's behaviors are good or bad for us.

If we can't do this, we'll never recover.

Also, viewing things as black or white only, right or wrong only goes against what is recommended for recovery. Social situations and relationships are rarely black and white unless there is outright abuse.

Codependents tend to assume too much to their own detriment. The solution is is to view the situation without emotion.

Also, we can't recover unless we pull our emotions out of judging everyone else, and focus on ourselves.

I appreciate that you keep discussing here - so please do not take my remarks too personal.

Judging "good or bad" is always subjective and always dysfunctional even when we do get it correctly, because it is playing like God - which we are not.

Judging "right from wrong" is very often if not usually black-n-white because people do know right from wrong and there is nothing subjective to it, and it becomes absurdity when people claim that right is wrong and that wrong is right.

People do violate "right from wrong" by claiming whatever they choose to be "good or bad" and thereby they are playing God by violating the laws.

In a Court-of-Law a Defendant will tell the Court that they did not know that they were doing wrong - then the Judge declares that they damn sure know it now - and then pronounce them as guilty.

Our enforcement of right and wrong is our own personal boundary lines, and only by us having healthy boundaries can we truly live as individuals in this world.

Recovery from codependency or any kind of abuse is done by enforcing healthy boundaries.

I agree with you that we must govern or control our emotions - and then we choose our emotional response according to our values and principles.

Pull our emotions out of our judgments - oh yes.

Some recovery places like 12 Step groups are nice and safe but they do very little for independent recovery, and many professional Therapist will agree with any distortion so long as they get their bills paid, and so we each must judge the type of recovery which suits others or a better choice for recovery which suits our self.

There is another point for codependency is that many people make the claim that we are not to judge, as do not judge other people and not to judge our self or to judge anything, and that is all nonsense. The human brain is a judging machine so all the brain does is constantly judge, judge and more judging because that is what our brains do. Some one says = "Do not judge" is not telling us the reality. And it is a misquote from the Bible taken out of context because Jesus said that if we do not judge then we too will miss out on the judgements, and only the guilty do not want rightful judgment. We judge the weather to see if we need a coat or to wear shorts, we judge our food if we like it or not, we judge people and things instantly - are they pretty, are they unpleasant, do we feel well, do we have plans ready, and our brains just keep judging constantly so what we do need to do is to learn how to judge correctly.

To focus on our self is called selfishness and narcissistic and unfriendly and it is usually just rude.

The great doctrines of humanity is that we focus on helping others and of being of service to others and of sacrificing our self to making a better world.

Like these examples:
Mother Teresa, Abe Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Elinor Roosevelt, Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, and so we are doing best to follow the lead of the great souls who have lived before us.

Just my opinion here - but I do really mean it.

There are indeed situations where the right/wrong judgement does not apply (unless this is purely a semantic disagreement). Those situations would be social in nature. There is no right/wrong way to act in social situations as our social engagements revolve around what is comfortable for us and for those we interact with.

For example: I participate in a monthly book club that has about 12-16 women that attend regularly. I walked in one month and found all the women were discussing subjects and personal situations of which I was not familiar and it seemed like they were continuing conversations that they had held throughout the month of which I was not privy. In fact I was the only one not privy. The conversations were stoked by one woman in particular. As you can imagine I felt left out. As I listened to the conversations I noticed that this one woman had made an effort to contact all these women throughout the month but did not contact me.

I needed to view the situation objectively. Did I feel left out? Sure. Could I have those same types if relationships with these women if I made my own independent efforts to do so. Of course! But did I want to? No. I barely have time to handle my own life, maintain a relationship with my husband and kids, maintain a relationship with the friends I have, and maintain my own needs, let alone make sure that I conversed with all these other women several times throughout the month. Knowing this about myself it was easy to let it go.

Now, there is no wrong/right judgements that can be made about her behavior or this situation. She likes to be heavily engaged in with others. I can't handle that level of engagement with so many people. She doesn't particularly care for me and she has the tight to choose with whomever issue spends her time.
What is "good" for her is not good for me and if I chose to engage at the level she does just to avoid being left out it would be bad for me.

On the subject of right vs. wrong, we live in a society that has many religious beliefs and includes those who choose not to be religious. To say that all must conform to one overall religious right/wrong way of thinking would actually be invading others' boundaries.

Hi C:

Mine is not semantics, but I do view semantics as very important.

My finding is that right-and-wrong judgements always apply everywhere, and I say the more they apply the better.

The reality of right and wrong gives us (gives me) our foundation.

Social situations and social engagements are NOT about comfort or enjoyment and there are rules of right-from-wrong in society which we call them as courtesy and politeness and respect and manners.

People who go to most any social events anywhere and they just go to have their own fun then they will very often be thrown out or asked to leave or else told to behave their self.

Society has long-established rules of right from wrong (etiquette) and they are indeed wonderful rules to live by.

The example you give above is complicated but that is because you make it complicated.

I too go to a book club of 8-10 participants, and I am the President of a local Seniors singles group of 23 members, and went to a Camera club last night, and we have all sorts of dynamics of people who see their self as better than others and people who are argumentative and some have charisma who everyone likes them.

You say = "there is no wrong/right judgements that can be made about her behavior or this situation"
- but of course there is a judgement in that she did nothing wrong.

You are making your judgements based on the wrong view of "good-n-bad" and that is always flippant and unstable and it changes at the drop of a dime.

With right-n-wrong we have control our our self and of the world around us, but with "good-n-bad" we become out of control.

In your last paragraph you connect right-n-wrong to religion as if you judge religion as "bad", but right and wrong is a human reality which we can not escape (thank God).

I do not say that everyone must conform to any religious right from wrong, but to reach recovery from childhood abuse and brainwashing then we each must come to terms with the rules of life correctly or else we can not get to recovery and you will just stay lost and confused trying to figure out stuff without any foundation.

You can test out these principles in your real life and see that they really do work, and real life testing is not semantics.

Peace out.

I'm tired at the moment and am not going to read through these other posts, so here is what I have to say off the cuff: We each walk our own paths, and I recommend reading what people have to say here, including me, and finding what rings true for you. After decades of seeking healing and forgiveness from the aftermath of growing up in a double-alcoholic/codependent family, meaning that both of my parents were alcoholics, I have come to find out that there is no "set" way anything works. What is generally true, however when it comes to codependency, enabling, and the alcoholic in whatever combination, is that it is extremely difficult to change behaviors when you are still immersed in the same dysfunctional environment. What is most often recommended for the alcoholic (and holds true for the enabler/codependent as well) is a period of separation in order to be able to make the basic foundational changes that need to be made in order to be successful at making overall change happen. That means, no contact except perhaps for a true emergency, but even that can easily lead right back to the same old thing, as an emergency of some kind will likely be generated if that option is given.

What that will allow to happen is that you will be able to get a different outside perspective from the one you have within your relationship now. It is a scary thought because what will happen is you will then begin to see your own personal issues that you have been distracted from by your husband's. That is the glue that holds two dysfunctional people together. What I also recommend is that you build yourself a solid foundation of support around you because making this change will rattle everything you currently are standing on, whether or not you choose to stay in the relationship. But it doesn't have to happen all at once, it has taken me decades to get to the place where I am today.

Another thing to consider is what kind of effect your husband is having on you overall. IE: Is he abusive? Some things I did not even know that were hurtful, unacceptable, injurious, etc. until I made the break away from the situation I was in as an adult in 1990. By then I had four children involved, one who has since committed suicide. Is your husband actively committed to making changes as well? In the long run, are you helping each other make progress or are you falling behind, losing your health and your sanity? Are you able to discuss with him how you feel in your relationship and what you want and need out of it? Where is the responsibility balance for keeping your relationship together? Ideally it should be 50/50. If it is not and you are continually carrying an imbalanced load, you'll need to take inventory from time to time and decide for yourself how much and for how long you will be able to tolerate it.