Codependency is an addiction to unhealthy, unproductive relationships. You repeat patterns that cause you pain, yet you feel unable to break them.

Codependency is an addiction to unhealthy, unproductive relationships. You repeat patterns that cause you pain, yet you feel unable to break them. These relationships have a compulsive quality; you get hurt, but you keep going back for more, in the hope of changing something. In codependent relationships you comply. You adapt to the dysfunction of the relationship and deny your own reality, especially what you are feeling. You also control. You try to manipulate your partner, and the relationship, to be what you want them to be, when they may not be. You control yourself in order to try to fit when you do not. So compliance is a passive way of controlling. Compliance and controlling are essentially dishonest. Dishonesty in relationships does not, ultimately, work; clarity and honesty do.