Codependency looks for safety in unsafe people.
Abusive relationships take many forms, and all of them involve lies. Lies are disorienting. They are brute-force attacks that can inflict dizziness as easily as a blow to the head. Getting hit is confusing, but getting hit by someone who says they love you and want to make you happy seriously damages your equilibrium.
You are assaulted on two fronts: physically with violence, and emotionally with attractive words.
Words of promise and long, sincere explanations about how they want the best for you twist your mind until you agree to endure it. You know they are lies, but they are too intoxicating to ignore. You stay for the allure of the promises coming true, for the glorious future of seeing only them in your kaleidoscope and painting your whole world beautiful with their unique color.
Codependents are often drawn to attractive, flirtatious partners who lie. Flirtation gives the confirmation and arousal their loneliness or insecurity craves. Lying provokes the torturous self-doubting they need to feel normal. The dizzying insecurity. The facade of lies that passes for love because it’s all either partner ever knew.
Since the truth of the person they are with is so carefully hidden, they fall in love with hope—hope that the secret truths are confirming and that the illusion will become reality.
By committing to a relationship with a liar, codependents create circumstances that justify the way they already feel. At least now they don’t feel it alone, and everyone justifies their reasons as valid. Who wouldn’t feel desperate and insecure with an abusive partner?
One of many codependent superpowers is being able to project whatever truth they wish onto people so they can experience their fantasy of helping someone who deserves it. Supporting a liar with unconditional love overwhelms the desperate need for confirmation.
The liar easily tells them everything they want to hear. Every time. They present a fantasy of themselves on a golden platter. All the liar wants control over a weaker, honest partner who will serve them. They always have the perfect thing to say, and that’s how you can tell they are lying.
Lies always make you feel wonderful. That’s how you know they are lies. Only the truth digs into your soul, like with threats of violence, social destruction, abandonment, or financial ruin.
When a codependent knows they are being cheated on, and is on their knees begging for the truth, their conscious desire is to be comforted with a lie. They want desperately for their fantasy to be real, and to return to the comfortable cycle of abuse.
Subconsciously, they want to be set free. They want closure. They need their liar to utter just one word of terrible honesty. They need to hear what their abusive parents never had the guts to say. “I never wanted a relationship with you.” “You are only here because I feel sorry for you.” “It would be better for me if you were on your own.” “I don’t know what love is, and I don’t love you.” Absolute pain, but absolute truth.
Truth forces the codependent to confront their fears. It rips them out of denial and into a confrontation with the core of their being. Codependents chase after liars because they possess the truths that will wake them up into their higher selves. Liars also possess the critical selfishness that could bring balance and strength into the codependent’s heart. What the codependent wants is the blessing of rock bottom.
A deep, abandoned part of them knows their true strength and self is there. As with all unhappiness, if they follow the pain and find what is hidden there, they will be set free.
Both violent and non-violent abusive partners have the same playbook. It contains three primary relationship-saving behaviors: promises, excuses, and apologies, usually in that order. These are the ingredients for the narcissistic shell–that thin mask that hard codependents wear.
The promises separate you from trust in yourself. You know something isn’t right. They know it, too, and by promising you something, they give you the ability to employ the codependent superpower of giving people the benefit of the doubt. The reward for believing the promise (instead of yourself) is threefold: you get to continue to hope, live in your fantasy, and assuage your fears of being alone.
Promises can come in the form of declarations (“I promise not to hit you.”), and explanations (“I’m a very healthy person. I’m just drinking every day until I find a job.”).
When the promises inevitably turn out to be insincere, the liar resorts to excuses. Excuses are improvised caveats to existing promises. They are always spectacular, sparkling explanations that assume zero responsibility.
Of course, it’s not the promisor’s fault that the promise didn’t come through; something came up, someone got in the way, the circumstances changed, they forgot, it turned out to be impossible, or they needed something they didn’t have.
Excuses prop up the injured promise and protect the image of the person who made it. The promise isn’t really broken, it just has an addendum now, or an amendment, or a change of condition that acts as a rationale for why your emotions are still safe. Most importantly, the mask of the promisor is still intact.
They saved face, and the codependent has evidence that what they want to believe is still true. All the doubt gets explained away. Keeping the fantasy alive and siding with the aggressor is always easier than accepting the truth and endangering your relationship, self-esteem, and physical safety.
When the excuses fail, because reality is too apparent, the guilty switch from excuses to apologies. Apologies are delivered in several ways. Sometimes the liar accepts responsibility, fully empathizes with the codependent, and begins love-bombing until the partner is ready for more promises.
If you persist in your upset, or try to leave, you run the risk of being attacked, physically or verbally, with the full armory of their takeover toolbox. Once the situation stabilizes with you agreeing to believe what they say, the status quo continues, usually after lots of heavy promises and unbelievably emotional make-up sex.
When someone apologizes and then keeps doing the exact same thing, it is not an apology. It is a means to control you. Just like the promises and excuses that preceded them, it is part of the mask to keep you from seeing who is right in front of you, disorganized and insecure, fear of their deepest pain possessing them like a demon ready to destroy any thought that approaches the dark psychic hole it burrowed into.
You cannot reach a person who is determined to control you with lies. On some level, the codependent knows this. They know their significant other is fatally flawed. They confuse pity with love, forgiveness with desperation, and grace with denial. They know that their lover is a liar, a cheat, impossibly insecure, and unreliable. They stay in the relationship believing that as long as they play the game they are in control of a relationship that the other person has no logical reason to abandon. It doesn’t work.
When people are prevented from experiencing the consequences of their actions, they are robbed of their chance to grow and become a better version of themselves. The only force in this universe that prevents a codependent from walking away from violence, theft, emotional abuse, lying, and cheating is the delusional belief that taking it on the chin is an act of love.
But you do not let someone hit you because you love them, and you certainly do not do it out of love for yourself. You do not protect them from themselves because you love them, you do it to protect yourself from your fear of loneliness, and the unbearable torture of feeling responsible for the pain of someone who you deeply pity. But the “love” you deploy to protect yourself ultimately robs them of learning from losing someone as amazing as you. Everybody loses.
Thinking about leaving makes your gut sink, and you accuse yourself of being selfish, narcissistic, impatient, mean, and ungrateful. Since they are your life, leaving means that life is over. There is no more intolerable feeling. It is worse than the death of a parent. Parent death is natural end expected, and when they are gone, they are gone. But when you leave a lover, they are still out there, sharing with someone else all the secrets that you waited years to hear, and love you waited to receive.
What’s the cause of their behavior? What’s their diagnosis? What is the treatment plan? You are on board. You will work ten times harder than before. You can latch yourself onto any promise, excuse, or apology. You will do anything to keep the love alive. But what is it? Trauma? Narcissism? Borderline? Depression? Are you ready for the answer?
It doesn’t matter! What difference does it make if they are a psychopath, bipolar, or both? They are incapable of treating you as an equal, or of supporting you with the healthy consistency that you deserve. While you rob them of the opportunity to learn from their behavior, they rob you and all of your friends and family of seeing you happy. It’s not your job to fix them.
What’s the simplest unacceptable red line they are crossing? Violence is usually the gold standard. You don’t deserve to get hit by anybody. Not in the street, not in your home, not in the car, not on vacation, not in the parking lot, not in the back of a police vehicle. Deciding with that fact alone, can you give up trying to solve their problems and leave? What about cheating? Lying? Financial infidelity? Unrestrained substance abuse? Why let them traumatize you any further?
If their words and actions are not the same, or if you are struggling to explain their behavior to yourself, then you are experiencing a problem that will never go away on its own. If your interactions with them make you second guess yourself, you aren’t the problem. Healthy relationships are confirming. They make you feel better about who you already are. They do not chip away at your confidence and convince you that your gut has it all wrong.
It is imperative to evaluate behavior with your eyes and not your ears. Your ears are the portal to the storm of words in your head. Abusive interactions usually involve intentionally manipulating this storm to blow into the liar’s favor. Your eyes, however, are not as easily deceived. If you walk in on your life partner having sex with someone who is not you, your eyes are 100% aware of reality. So are you. That does not change until your ears receive the brain’s instructions with the words, “It’s not what it looks like.”
They are not going to change. Where they are overflowing with promises, excuses and apologies, liars are equally empty of remorse, regret, and insight. If they self-destruct when you leave, that’s fine. Maybe rock bottom will break you both free from inherited behaviors and take ownership of your lives. You can and will do better. What becomes of the abuser is up to them.
Many codependents can verbalize that they are in a bad situation. But as soon as they act on this awareness, their gut starts sending signals of immeasurable fear. When you ask them the problem, they will say, “I don’t know.” Behind that “I don’t know,” if explored in therapy or group, is a truth that you are an expert on. It’s your life, and you know exactly why it is unfulfilling.
If you catch yourself explaining to your worried friends or family that your lover has a “good heart,” and find yourself repeating promises you’ve been told, making your own excuses, and apologizing for their behavior, maybe it’s time to wake up. If you are telling these things to yourself, then it was time to wake up yesterday.
It’s better to be alone and heartbroken than alone and heartbroken in a relationship. At least one of those makes sense. When you are left guessing in a relationship, then the relationship is toxic. There is no debate. Then they lie, control you with false promises, or act violently, all of it is toxic for you.
If you feel like leaving would make you a bad person, ask yourself the following:
Would you rather be a bad person and suffer from your own mistakes, or be a good person and suffer from someone else’s?
————Reality Check————
Enmeshment with a liar will eventually result in you lying to yourself. Many people unknowingly lie to themselves, and for that they cannot be faulted. It won’t benefit anyone to do so. But you can take time to examine yourself, your motives, and your fears, and develop a personal relationship with the pain of honesty.
Developing this relationship is the best way to properly gauge the honesty of others, and protect yourself from people who would consciously do you harm. You should be able to detect the presence of a lie when someone says they love you before and after they insult you, hit you, cheat on you, and steal your time, energy, and patience.