Are you married to a person who struggles with addiction or who has significant personal issues? Is your marriage or family life going through a hard patch due of issues, financial difficulties, abuse, or the need to care for a family member who is physically or mentally disabled? If this is the case, do you feel that you are always trying to justify these problems? Is your alcoholic spouse going to call in sick today? taking care of the chores around the home since your poor spouse is simply too depressed to pitch in? denying that there is a problem with abuse occurring in your own home? Do you often end up being the one to make decisions and shoulder the responsibilities of the whole marriage or family? It’s possible that you suffer from codependence, which is a major problem that affects relationships and families. Because of your upbringing, you could have picked up the trait of being dependant on others. Because it ran in your family, you have a predisposition to marry someone who comes from the same background as you do. You may have learned behaviors such as making excuses, tuning out, controlling, excessive caretaking, and being hypervigilant because you feel like you should do something to save your family from shame or at the very least to diffuse the situation and keep the peace. These behaviors may have been learned because you feel like you should do something to save your family from shame. You do this not just because you want to be needed but also because you dread doing anything that could alter the nature of the connection. Sadly, even while these kinds of activities could assist ease tension and conflict in the short term, they won’t be of much use in the long run. You are not helping the problem at all; in fact, you are making things far worse by continuing to do what you are doing. You are also allowing yourself to get lost inside the issue, which increases the likelihood that you may, in the long term, discover that you are unable to deal. What steps can you take to break out of your marital and family life’s cycle of codependence? Congratulations are in order if you have made it this far in this little post and have realized that you do in fact suffer from the aforementioned issue. That is the first step in getting started on the path out from codependence. You must first recognize that you have an issue and then take action to begin addressing it. It will involve assistance from both yourself and a trained specialist. These difficulties, in the vast majority of cases, may be traced back to more fundamental psychological concerns. You should not allow your feelings of shame prevent you from obtaining professional assistance from a counselor or psychologist. In addition, there are programs that are analogous to codependents anonymous that will assist you in processing the problems you are having and will provide you skills to help you overcome those problems. Your spouse or a member of your family may also need the assistance of a trained expert, particularly if they are struggling with clinical issues or addiction. Make an effort to get them the assistance they need, regardless of whether or not they want it. In the publication “how to change your spouse from addiction, even if they don’t want to!,” which can be found on the website savemymarriagetoday.com, there are some really helpful tips. More extreme measures need to be implemented if there is abuse going on in your household. Get away from the situation, both for the sake of your own sense of self-respect and for the sake of your children, if you have any. Find a safe haven or support group that will assist you in regaining your independence and guiding you through the process of healing and becoming well. Codependents are also in need of recovery, and once this fact has been realized, the condition should not be allowed to continue. Seek assistance.