BluWave, there's something I forgot to say - I feel co-dependency is a controversial topic. I believe humans are hardwired for co-dependency. It's how we were designed to live interconnectedly as a species for survival. I think only in our Western societies are we encouraged to 'break the co-dependency cycle' because we here value independence and self-sufficiency but that's not how it is in most other parts of the world. So on one hand I recognize that I can't be co-dependent on a husband who walked away and will offer nothing in return, but I feel it's healthy and normal to be co-dependent on others as a human being. One of the problems we face in our Western society is that too much pressure goes on a married partner in the absence of living with the extended family who each play a role in helping make a family function. When it's just a husband and a wife alone without parents and relatives there cooking, cleaning, offering a listening ear, giving advice, lending money, and upholding a code of ethics then all the pressure goes on the other person to be everything that we can't be. We depend solely on that other person for our needs which can be unrealistic unless that other person is extraordinarily kind and selfless. There are also societies where the husband's only real job is to bring home money and he enjoys his leisure time with his male friends and the wife depends on her female friends and mother for emotional support. This is just my own observation from my international development career but I think sometimes our marriages are set-up for failure when there's not enough external support for the married couple. Again because we believe in independence and self-sufficiency we wouldn't necessarily want family members interfering in our lives but we're products of capitalism and we have the opportunity to receive both the benefits and disadvantages of this way of life. I think the world would be a better place if we're all co-dependent the way people are in poorer societies in developing countries but we live in an unequal society where that can't happen. Anyway I always write too much but I'll try to recognize the aspects of co-dependency in myself that need to change in this cultural context while still valuing the aspects that make marriages, families, and communities more successful in other cultural contexts.
