Codependents have low self-esteem and would rather focus on the needs of others than on their own. They find it hard to be themselves because they’re more concerned with appeasing others and avoiding rejection than with doing what they want to do. Codependents are people pleasers who have an extreme need for approval, feel a sense of guilt when standing up for themselves, and can’t tolerate the discomfort of others. Guys, if that doesn’t get you to swipe right on my Tinder bio, I don’t know what will.
People throw the term codependence around pretty casually these days, like “Me and my boyfriend are sooo codependent!,” basically implying that they spend a lot of time together. Spending time together can be part of it, but it’s not necessarily about proximity. You can be in a long-distance codependent relationship where you don’t see the person very often, yet still obsess over their needs and behavior, or you can even be in one with a person you’ve actually never met but that you think you’re dating in your crazy haunted house of a head.
The type of codependence wired into my brain is pretty intense and can actually be quite dangerous. For some people, codependence can show itself in ways as extreme as buying drugs for a drug addict because you think you’re “helping,” having sex without a condom due to fear of conflict or abandonment, or getting into debt because you don’t want to admit to others you can’t afford certain things. However, codependence can rear its ugly head in seemingly more benign ways as well. Some of the less extreme ways my codependence complicates my life are being late due to an unrealistic number of commitments because I have a hard time saying no, losing sleep worrying about things I can’t control, deriving my self-esteem from my productivity and achievements, and looking like a crackhead Muppet from cutting my own bangs because I don’t make time for myself given how much I overbook my schedule.
My codependent brain has gotten me into endless quagmires, from trying to get an Australian stripper a job and a visa (the only reason I didn’t is because she never e-mailed me back) to training strangers’ dangerously aggressive dogs to staying in relationships years too long because I didn’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings.
Fine, I’ll tell you the stripper story. One night my friend Zoe and I had a very random instinct to go to a strip club. It was actually technically a “bikini bar,” but I had been before and remembered that they played late-nineties hip-hop, which always makes me feel deeply understood. It’s also the only music I know how to dance to.
I’m not going to lie, I always get along very well with strippers. Maybe I was a stripper in a past life or maybe I’m going to be one in the future, I don’t know. I have what I can only describe as fantastic chemistry with strippers, maybe because we likely have very similar childhoods and assumptions about what we have to offer the world.
Zoe and I were having a blast. We watched flexible girl after flexible girl dance her ass and tassels off. My codependence first kicked in when one of the girls was flying hands-free around a pole, using only her legs to propel her in circles. It was like watching an ice skater, which for me is very stressful because I spend most of the time wincing, anxious that she might fall and shatter her dreams of winning a gold medal and being on a cereal box or whatever ice skaters do after they retire at twenty-five. I found myself wincing watching the strippers as well—praying none of them went flying off the pole and into some perverted man’s lap, or worse, my lap given I was very into wearing studded belts back then.
After a couple of girls did their thing with their things, an incredibly tan and dare I say emotionally buoyant girl stormed onto the stage to “Lady Marmalade,” the version by Mya, Lil’ Kim, Christina Aguilera, and Pink. Maybe it was my deep appreciation for the song, or maybe it was the mostly ice cosmopolitan I was drinking out of a plastic cup, but this gal really lit up the room. She was a star, I tell you. She had a gorgeous body, but she had hardly any breasts, which made me root for her, given that most of the girls there were as buxom in the chest as they were lost in life. As Zoe and I watched this girl dance her heart out, I could tell that she was a little less lost in life and didn’t really belong in this giant box of tears. I could see this girl had potential—to do what, I didn’t know, but I had a strong magnetic pull to be the person to save her from her plight and get her on track to get her anthropology degree, which in my head was her obvious destiny.
After being hypnotized and quite frankly humbled by her dance, Zoe and I called her over to talk. She told us she was a dance teacher and had an abusive boyfriend from whom she was trying to escape. She was just making some extra money until she could get back on her feet. My codependent brain sprang into action. And she’s a victim!? This was like my dream come true: someone needy and helpless who also liked possibly feminist but maybe also sexist music from the early aughts? Add to cart.
I told the stripper I’d help her out in any way I could. I’d get her a job as a production assistant on a TV show, pay her to help me around the house, whatever I could make up to get her a job. Turned out she also needed citizenship, so I promised her I could help her with whatever she needed to ensure she could stay in the country and live her best life, because my codependence told me that this was for some reason my responsibility, even though the only things that could actually help her would be years of psychoanalysis and a time machine.
I gave her my personal e-mail and prepared everyone I worked with the next day that we’d all be having a new employee on board. The only hang-up to my rescue operation was that the stripper never e-mailed me. I can’t even believe I’m typing this sentence, but I was rejected by a stripper. There I was, prepared to marry her so she could get citizenship, and she never even reached out to receive my help. But that statement epitomizes what’s so frustrating about codependence: We think we’re helping, but the truth is most people don’t need, don’t want, or feel patronized by our “help.”