Interview with María Jesús Delgado: codependency in the couple

The strongest love ties are able to adapt to a wide variety of adverse situations for a long time. However, sometimes that force that unites two people is not exactly loving, but is based on codependency processes: one part is vulnerable, and the other is shown to be controlling and/or providing assistance towards the other.

on this occasion We spoke with María Jesús Delgado López, an expert in Brief Couple Psychotherapy, so that she can explain to us what the codependent relationships that occur in some couple relationships consist of.

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Interview with María Jesús Delgado: codependency in couple relationships

Maria Jesus Delgado Lopez She is a psychologist and Director of MJD Psychology, a therapy center located in Alcobendas. In this interview he tells us about his experience offering psychological assistance to couples with a codependency problem.

In the psychology consultation, is it very common to find couples in which there is a great imbalance of power?

In couples psychotherapy, it is quite common to notice who controls the reins of the relationship. The need for therapy does not necessarily arise from the most powerful profile, but when you find the couple in session, various combinations can be guessed.

In some cases, the most influential have decided that they need therapy. In others, the less influential has gone on the offensive and therapy is considered as a last resort in the couple.

It also sometimes happens that one of the two wants to separate and the therapist is involved so that the dissolution is the responsibility of a third party.

In some clear case of psychological abuse, the perpetrator goes to the session seeking to maintain the status quo with the collusion of a professional.

And obviously, when the person who appears as a victim requests the intervention of a therapist, he is looking for help and confirmation regarding her perceptions.

These combinations can be many more. As many as couples.

Do you think that today the idea of ​​couples in which one provides materially and emotionally and the other is limited to assuming a role of dependency is idealized?

I rather believe that, traditionally, one provided financially and the other provided emotionally; Those were the couples that our parents and grandparents tried to set up. Currently, role-playing is more random and free. What is much more on the order of the day is the preeminence of an emotional dependency.

He imagines a couple in which one of the two is the provider par excellence (in all areas) and, however, depends on from the other in an incongruous and painful way: feeling abandoned when his partner does not thank him for the last gesture of delivery.

What are the fears or concerns that people dependent on their partner usually express?

The clerk lives waiting for the gaze of his partner. He feels his own existence based on the interaction with the other. The fear of breaking up, therefore, is the main stumbling block in the internal security of a person who is emotionally overdependent.

Not being relevant, not generating interest in the other, is the continuation of the above. Since it is experienced as a gradual abandonment of the loving involvement of the couple.

The inability to accept the separation also affects a lot. In these cases, the dependent feels that the world is collapsing at his feet. That he has no footholds or resources to continue living, and that there is nothing for what, either.

At the same time, it is curious to observe how the partner of the clerk enters, on some occasions, into a paranoid spiral to look for food and constant dedication to the other and, thus, save him suffering for which he does not want to feel guilty.

In other cases, fatigue has set in, and the couple withdraws from the field of play: they cannot even wants to be expectant to care for the dependent, a love and a commitment that never are, nor will be, enough.

Is it easy for people who have developed a dependent relationship with their partner to realize that this is a problem?

Yes, it's easy. Normally they can raise it in an individual session and get involved in a process aimed at finding their autonomy. But, in couples therapy, the dependent can feel ashamed, vulnerable, weak... he fears complicity between his partner and the therapist.

Very often, I notice the anxious look of this personality profile on me, and how the internal drive appears, on my part, to protect him from his fear and his helplessness in therapy.

What are the clearest signs that one of the members of the couple has a dependency problem?

The first signal is given to us by the origin of the demand. When it is the clerk who asks for an appointment for the first time, there he already gives the first data in which he blames himself for being oppressive and not leaving his partner alone.

When the demand comes from the other, it is possible that the dependent is refusing therapeutic intervention because of what he supposes of threat: that fear that the other wants to separate in a more or less civilized way or that it can leave him without a mask protective.

Also, already in session, we find various possibilities. Sometimes, the clerk is royally bored, he just wants to go home with his partner. Therapy is an impediment to his constant search for fusion. In some cases I have seen how he simulates a non-existent interest.

On other occasions, the non-dependent emphasizes her power over the other (and here we find ourselves with a quite common paradox, the supposedly most vulnerable, the one who initially presents himself as the most dependent, is the one with the upper hand) and wants at all costs to devalue the other.

Other times the clerk has realized the increase in insecurity in her own perceptions (Luz de Gas) and comes to therapy to find the way to return the manipulation of the other (it is obvious that, here, there is no emotional dependence clear).

There are probably dysfunctional ways in which partners psychologically adjust to each other's behavior. What do you think are the most common?

Talking about codependency is talking about someone's 'addiction' to their partner's dependency on them. Believing that your obligation is to satisfy, in all their needs, your partner... puts you in a position of control and possibly manipulation of the other.

A supposed constant sacrifice by and for the other tells us about a feeling of a certain omnipotence that prevents the desirable autonomy of the other. And as a curious fact, when advice, sacrifice or intervention are not taken into account, we can see the codependent, the omnipotent, getting angry and going into crisis because his partner does not "respect" him, nor value his efforts.

What is done from psychology to help in these cases, from couples therapy?

In authentic relationships, not vitiated by ulterior motives, when there is an authentic effort and orientation to work for a better and happier relationship, it is fortunate to be able to have the work of the life partner to raise awareness of the level of self-esteem, in the cognitive distortions that usually occur, in a collaborative search to practice what assertive.

But it is also about finding affective security in oneself and observing where we place responsibility in couple interactions. Get to have a deep but equitable and committed relationship with happiness in one and in the bond.