TL;DR

I did that, chances are you did that too.

Body

Alcoholic and his bottle is a pretty good model, that, per analogy, allows us to easily understand other addictive processes and relationships.

Some time ago, alcohol was demonized. It was the evil, the satan itself. People thought that by restriction of alcohol humanity can be saved. Well, as we all remember, the prohibition in US in 1930s brought a lot of goods to the mafia and perhaps not a single good thing to the rest of the world. At least we all know this won’t work - and, that the problem lies in one’s behavior, responsibilities, borders and enforcement of those borders, per individual basis, not population-wide.

It’s not like everyone drinking alcohol is an addicted alcoholic or will get addicted. It only hits some of us.

I think the same thing is going on with codependency and BPD in women.

It is not enough to have one codependent human being to form a pathologic, abusive, manipulative relationship. It takes two. It always took two people.

We, men, we have no fucking idea how women work in general. For some of us, especially those raised with absent-father homes, those codependent mothers start working on us from a very early age and there is no present father, thus no counterweight. Those of us are fucked from the start, but those can still be salvaged. I am one of those people and I believe I am heading in that direction.

I remember long time ago, when my mother bought me a pack of cigarettes when I got angry. This was strange for me at the first time, because I remember her telling me a lot of times I should not smoke. Somehow, when I showed anger, I got them. Perhaps she did this to calm me down. By doing this, she exerted control.

„Was it the same cat?”

Those of us, who learned to hate their codependent mothers, will hate wives too. I entered a relationship with a lot of hate towards that woman. I was the king of passive aggressiveness. When I started living on my own, I suddenly saw that I like board games and cinema and perhaps I even don’t mind football, while being with wife I told her numerous times that I don’t want those activities together. That passive-aggressiveness, fueled by alcohol, on the other hand, gave her a complete manual on how to play me the way she wanted.

I was never supposed to get sober and to find TRP. That was not a glitch in the Matrix, that was a core dump with SIGSEGV. That was meant to happen. When I sobered up, the relationship was done. I was no longer a man she could control. There was something missing. She no longer had the upper hand. There was no poor man's soul to rescue.

The deal is… your improvement on MRP, your „swallowing of the red pill” (God, I fucking hate this term)… it may have more bitter taste than you imagine.

It takes two people to form an abusive, pathologic, passive-aggressive relationship. Lack of sex is only a symptom, it’s not even a tip of the iceberg.

And it takes two people to fix a relationship. It takes your wife too, to follow. Bear in mind, that doing all this „RP stuff” may result in premature end of your relationship. Not that it would be something bad, with such presumptions it could be the best thing that ever happened to both of you.

They want a man who can be controlled. We need to be able to quickly recognize them and their manipulative behavior and… that’s all we need. Paul Elam, Tara Palmatier, Shari Schreiber, do you copy? Why demonize those people, what purpose does it have? In my opinion it has no purpose. All it does it creates unneeded fear and tension in people dealing with those people. I mean… it may be needed for a moment, demonizing alcohol allowed me to cut it out of my life completely, but after a while I just learned new ways and I learned not to care… and it may be the same with those codependent women, first you demonize them, but after a while that demonization serves no purpose at all.

Could this whole „Say Goodbye To Crazy” book be better if it not had „crazy” in title? I don’t know, perhaps I would not even read it, because of my anger phase. Today I see futility of this whole anger towards codependent women. Remember, they’re exactly like that 70 year old granny who was „raising” her 40 year old alcoholic son. It is her fault for choice of husband. It is husband’s fault for not being proper, manly father. It is their child’s fault for not manning up. It is our fault as a society for not creating better mechanisms for this man to get his ass kicked and sober the fuck up.

That granny won’t kick him out of the nest. She will keep him there, feeding him, giving money for alcohol, cleaning his vomit. This is what she wants. Without him, she would have to look at her own life, at her own persona, at her own achievements. This may be terrifying for a man, not to mention a woman. So she needs him, just like he needs chemistry to cut out of his emotions and not look at his own life at all.

They’re both blind. They’re both plugged. Cut off from reality.

To learn, one must feel pain. The most important thing, you don’t beat the shit out of a drunkard telling him to man up, because that drunkard is anesthetized. He is unable to learn. You don’t chase a codependent woman, possibly coping with other ways (cheating, sex, LDR, emotional cheating - those all are coping mechanisms too!). You just realize that she is that 70 year old granny and it does not really matter what kind of man she has nearby, as long as she has him. Those women don’t need quality males, this is why there is often such holy uproar when a businessman’s wife fucks a pool boy. As long as she is anesthetized she won’t feel anything. And she may choose to be anesthetized for her whole life, because she is a woh-mahhh and rules for her are different.

So this is why you don’t save hoes. Your wife included.

Summary

Codependent women and codependent people in general aren’t necessarily good or bad, they just are. Just like smokers, just like alcohol drinkers. They just are. I tolerate some of them, but in general I don’t want to spend time with them. They manipulate to survive, just like I do. You can consider manipulation evil, but it is just another mechanism of survival. The real question is… can you spot a manipulator?

Can you spot a codependent?

Can you save yourself?

Codependency kills.