"Sharks and fish can be friends" from Finding Nemo

[AntoniaB]

Hey I was glad you wrote all that. There is a fair amount in there that really is similar to my sitch as far as the reason XH and I were married and the reason that logically, even if OW wasn't around and even if he didn't go into MLC, we needed to either do major repair, and major compromise, or break up. We were also ridiculously co-dependent, both children of alcoholic parents, and on his end, that manifested in abuse and physical threats and verbal punishment, turning him into a pleaser who never advocated for himself, and on my end, my dad was sort of a happy drunk, so my mom made excuses for him and just said "we can't divorce, he's a good provider and at least he's not violent, now go make us proud." In my family the alcoholism bred high achieving kids, perfectionists...and people who became control freaks.

So take the victim of physical abuse and ridicule and lack of parental support and love who is a people pleaser and mix that with a girl who is raised by a mom who takes care of everything in her power and raises 4 kids who show NO outward sign of the strife in their marriage, and you have a potent codependent cocktail.

Like you PEI I think we could have fixed things...but that wasn't what happened, and in the end, I do wonder a lot if it would be better to be in a relationship that wasn't going to require such a serious level of work and adaptation to "flow."

So Punkin what do you think of all this? Do you think that you and XH were codependent at all?