Has your husband (or his therapist) weaponized codependency language to harm you?

Melinda, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery, was labeled codependent when she discovered her husband’s sex addiction.

She talks to Anne Blythe, M.Ed. about her experience. To see if your husband emotionally abuses you, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

How Do Men Learn Codependency Language?

Men who weaponize codependency language have often learned the concept of codependency from sexual addiction therapists, or marriage and family counselors.

When sexual addiction therapists and other professionals label a victim of betrayal and abuse as “codependent” they are essentially blaming the victim.

The Concept Of Codependency Enables Abusers

When professionals use codependency language with abusive men and their partners, abusers (consciously or subconsciously) find the concept helpful in enabling their abusive and unfaithful behaviors.

Why? Because when a therapist labels a victim as codependent, then he is implying that she is at least in part responsible for the abuser’s behavior.

Codependency Language Harms Victims of Betrayal and Abuse

Victims of betrayal and abuse are conditioned to blame themselves for their husband’s abusive and unfaithful behaviors. Because of this, when men weaponize codependency language, women may focus on bettering themselves rather than seeking safety.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions meet daily in every time zone and offer women the safe space they deserve to process trauma, share experiences, and express hard feelings. Join today and find a community that will support you as you begin your journey to healing.

Transcript: My Husband Weaponized Codependency To Hide The Truth

Anne: I’m welcoming Melinda on today’s episode, who is like all of us are. She is the wife of a sex addict. The reason why I wanted her to come on today is that she commented on one of the articles on btr. org. Every single podcast that we do is transcribed and turned into an article and put on Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s website, btr.org.

We love people’s comments here. So if you haven’t joined the conversation, I welcome you to do that. Just comment below. And that’s how I met Melinda. So welcome, Melinda.

Melinda: Hi there. Thanks for having me.

Anne: So let’s start with your story, Melinda. How did your husband weaponize codependency language?

Melinda: My husband revealed he had been having an affair. And later revealed he had been seeing a sex masseuse and also abusing pornography. We entered into a process of trying to figure out what was going on. I understood it was not my fault, and that it was something that I felt we could overcome together.

He struggled a lot with all of it, and ultimately showed that he couldn’t meet me where I needed to be met, so that I can recover from the betrayal. But for a period of time, he entered 12 step, and he also actually, I should say, has been trained as a counselor.

Therapy & Codependency

Melinda: And when we entered therapy after the revelations of his betrayal, something kept coming up that was baffling to me. Our therapist reinforced it, that somehow there was something in our dynamic that I was responsible for. That’s why he did what he did and was acting out in the way he was.

I was trying to wrap my head around it because I’m a person who takes a lot of responsibility for our own behavior and actions. But I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. I have also done a lot of work professionally, understanding trauma. So I was already under a trauma orientation, thinking I’m traumatized.

Why am I not getting understood here? Why does it keep coming back to something in my psychological makeup that’s creating this dynamic of his acting out behavior?

Anne: Essentially, it was trying to get you to take some form of accountability for the situation.

Melinda: Yes, and later I kind of understood where this is coming from when I started learning more about 12 step and codependency and what that means. How therapists and some in the 12 step field think about codependency.

I realized that a lot of that thinking was damaging to me. And neglected that his acting out was really, I’ve heard you use the term abuse, and I don’t know if I want to use that term, but it was definitely abusive. And a lot of his behavior, aside from the sexual acting out, was passive aggressive covert abuse,

Codependency as an Excuse

Anne: Emotional abuse in the form of lies and manipulation.

Melinda: Yeah, and a charming and playful facade. A lot of it was gaslighty as well. What I realized is that codependency was a great excuse for him to not take responsibility. We had problems prior to this throughout our relationship. The problems in my view was that he did not take accountability for behavior and responsibilities.

When the word codependency or the concept of codependency came into our relationship. It just became another tool to gaslight me and deflect. It was confusing for a while, because I want to take accountability. But he used it to not actually address the harm he caused.

Anne: There’s that, and then it goes further than that. Because he’s not just using it to avoid accountability for the harm he’s caused. He’s also using it to try and pin it on you. That’s why I call that abuse, because he actively attempts to harm you.

Melinda: Yes, yes

Anne: I mean, he doesn’t see it that way. He just thinks he’s trying to get away with it, but that is the end result. The end result is that he’s harming you even further by lying about your part.

Melinda: Yeah, I became a scapegoat for many, many things, and this just allowed even more scapegoating. You know, his decisions to cheat and all the other stuff were part of that scapegoating. I didn’t understand why this was happening. I was reading a lot of books on how to help your partner heal, and what does reconciliation look like? And I was bringing them to him, and he kept coming up with, why don’t you focus on yourself?

Focus on Self vs. Relationship

Melinda: And I’m thinking, I’m focusing on what I need to allow you back into my life. And anytime I said, you know, your defensiveness is hurting me. I don’t trust you, you’re not doing trustworthy things. He said, well, stop focusing on me and focus on yourself. It didn’t make sense until I started looking at what codependency tells people. It tells them to focus on themselves, not on others. Which sounds great, but in the hands of an abusive and exploitative person, it can go awry.

Anne: Well, and also it’s what they want you to do. They would like you to stop confronting them about their abusive behaviors. So because that’s what they want, they want you to “work on yourself,” which to them means leave me alone.

Melinda: And a lot of this is about thinking that you’re controlling. And my orientation, philosophical and spiritual frame. I have a Christian background. But I have more alignment with Buddhist mindfulness practices, as well as I’ve become more of a feminist. I think about feminist psychology much more.

I look at it in that frame, and I see a lot of women being held responsible for men’s behavior in the culture. And I think that was just a natural extension of the woman is making me do this. He even intimated that the affair partner was the aggressor in this situation. And that somehow she was this temptress.

Anne: What could I do? She kissed me. I couldn’t do anything about it, right?

Melinda: So I’m always aware of the gender dynamic, and our therapists played along with it.

Therapist’s Role in Abuse

Melinda: She was a new therapist. So that was like the double trauma of facing the reality of his infidelity and all that. And then a therapist reflecting it back on me in our supposedly safe setting.

Anne: It sounds like the therapist became an extension of the abuse. So let’s go back to where you’re being supportive of his recovery. Did you ever attend 12 step or COSA, which is co sex addicts? Did you ever attend either of those groups?

Melinda: I did. What struck me was that I felt in COSA, I had to align with codependency. One of the few times I went for instance, there was one woman agonizing over her partner. Who was holed up in the basement with the computer looking at pornography. He wouldn’t leave the house, and I hear her describe the story. Instead of saying how angry and indignant about how wrong that was. And how inappropriate that was, she went back to, well, I’m going to focus on myself, take care of myself.

Challenges in Confronting Abuse

Melinda: And I thought, are you allowing abuse in your home because it’s easier? Because you don’t know how to set the boundary or even draw a line? I just felt like she just caved in to feeling like she’s beholden to the situation and must allow it to continue.

Anne: I think that happens a lot. Women don’t know what to do, and confronting it seems so difficult. Also the consequences of confronting it seem so difficult. Like, I can’t do that. And so, I’ll focus on myself, which becomes a way for them to do something.

I feel a lot of compassion in this stage for victims, because it’s difficult to know what to do. Living with an abuser or divorcing an abuser. Both choices are not good. The best choice is if you could have him not be abusive anymore, which you have no control over. So it’s a way that victims try to empower themselves sometimes.

And I think that all of us go through a stage like that. We can hold a space of compassion for ourselves when we were in that stage and others in that stage, as they work through exactly what they need to feel safe, because it takes time.

Melinda: Yeah, absolutely, I certainly had to accept where he was in his path. And that it was not in alignment with where I wanted to be. So that definitely took time.

Empowerment and Boundaries

Melinda: Just really allowing myself to feel how terrible the codependency situation was. And that allowed me to move forward. Realizing that I wasn’t the kind of person who was gonna say, well I’m gonna focus on making myself happy. And let him have his life in our home in our relationship. That wasn’t gonna work for me. I could not abide a relationship with a person taking advantage of the situation to gain advantage of my compassion, my understanding. And really not supporting me and being a fair partner.

And so that’s why I bring up about gender, and are women being encouraged to look the other way and take responsibility for men’s bad behavior. Just the message that we have to even help take care of them. And I think that can easily become exploited.

Anne: Absolutely.

Therapy-Induced Trauma

Anne: With this concept of codependency in your experience with therapists, how did codependency cause therapy induced trauma? Let’s talk about that for a bit.

Melinda: Yeah, we had worked with mostly traditional therapists, marriage and family therapists.

Anne: Many sex addiction therapists claim to know about betrayal trauma, but they don’t actually practice it. They just do codependency and call it betrayal trauma. And that is dangerous. Sex addiction therapists don’t seem to understand it. The best people seem to be abuse experts from what we’ve experienced.

Melinda: A therapist we’d been with for a long time left me with a lot of trauma. I have a lot of hesitation to even find a new therapist.

Codependency is a framework that’s part of a lot of therapy training. It’s a dance, that you have a relationship dance, and you each have a part in all your stuff and his stuff. Our therapists fail to recognize, like you said, abuse and trauma.

So they fail to understand what abuse looks like, what covert abuse looks like, and what emotional abuse looks like. That abusers can come into an office and look like the calmest, sweetest, most cooperative people. While you’re the partner tearing her hair out and looking like a crazy woman in the office.

Then you look like the one who’s unhinged and angry. And our therapist did say, if it wasn’t for your dynamic, he wouldn’t have cheated. And I later realized, no, it has nothing to do with me. I had to realize that it was part of his retaliation for me, even having expectations of cooperation and accountability in our relationship.

Neutrality in Therapy

Melinda: And instead of being cooperative and accountable. He thought, well, she’s no good. She’s giving me a hard time. Women on Pornhub are better for me.

Anne: Right, which is what abusers want. They would like to manipulate and, I won’t say, beat down physically, but to the point where they get what they want. That’s the point of the abuse. And for a therapist not to notice it, it’s also interesting in the progressive communities, for example. And I tend to live in that world, in an effort to be politically correct. They end up throwing victims under the bus unknowingly.

So you’d think they would understand abuse, but I have found neither side understands it. conservatives and liberals, neither one of those groups truly understands abuse.

Melinda: Yes, I don’t think therapists actually understand trauma and how to be trauma informed around betrayal. Our therapist was trained to be even handed, you don’t take sides.

Anne: Neutrality only serves the perpetrator, because neutrality is there are two sides to the story, and both stories are of equal truth. And it serves the perpetrator, because if they can say, I did this, but she did this. We have this toxic dance. It’s a toxic relationship, rather than saying, I’m the abuser. Some go as far as to say, I didn’t do anything wrong, and she’s the abuser. So many victims are accused of abuse themselves, which is also super scary.

Melinda: Yes.

Victim Blaming in Therapy

Melinda: And in fact, in our therapy sessions and even my conversations with my spouse, I said, you know, he betrayed me. I said this to our therapist. He betrayed me. And she said, well, I think you’ve both betrayed each other. And I thought, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? I did not. And I’ve only had loyalty and allegiance to our marriage and family life together. So that was just red meat for him to feed his victimhood,

Anne: I’m guessing the abuse got worse.

Melinda: It just continued the pattern of blaming me, being covertly abusive, gaslighting and love bombing. Then he’d wonder why I withdrew. And blowing up at me for withdrawal. And just kept continuing. As I saw this pattern over and over again, I’m holding my boundary. I’m saying clearly what I need, what I expect. He couldn’t get past that in my boundary. He tried love bombing. I love you, I love you, I love you.

He tried all kinds of things. He wanted me to let go of what I knew in my heart was needed for us to have a healthy relationship. For me to let go of expectations of him and by declaring his undying love and grandiose gestures, and I wasn’t going to accept it. I knew in my heart that I needed something authentic.

Love Bombing & Manipulation

Anne: Like one woman, she said, okay, I’m going to file for divorce. She filed, he came back and said, I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything. And she said, okay, these are the things you need to do. And he didn’t do those things, but he would say the right things, right? So you can clearly see when their actions are not matching their words. That’s manipulation, grooming, love bombing and not recovery.

Melinda: And of course, when I said here love bombing, he said, How do you judge me? You’re judging me. And so I thought, I’m not going to get anywhere, because I’m trying to call out and name the things that are not right in this situation. That are not working with the desire to see things work, not to punish.

And that was another accusation that I constantly faced. That I was trying to punish, control and avoid my own problems by naming what was happening.

Anne: Well, the weird thing is that one of your own problems is that you were being abused. So you clearly stated one of your own problems.

Melinda: Women use their voice. and speak up. A lot of our rage and anger in these situations is that we’re tired of being exploited, abused or taken advantage of. We’re written off, we’re told we’re crazy or want to control everything. I think we have to recognize male entitlement in many situations.

Empowerment Through Boundaries

Melinda: I think that gets missed when we’re just thinking about, well, women are punishing because she can’t look at her own stuff. Or she’s controlling the situations because of her own trauma. And I think so many women are pretty self-reflective and pretty thoughtful. Women have been working on their own sort of self healing for many, many years.

Let’s celebrate that and acknowledge that women have evolved a lot of good self care, and empowerment. Abusive men need to have a lot more work around how to come along with us. I do think the codependency models kind of holding women responsible for their partner’s alcoholism, that’s just from another time.

And I think. women are doing their own healing. They’ve been doing it for a long time. I think we need to work on abusive men and their entitlement.

Anne: I love feminist theory. I’m a happy, unabashed and unapologetic feminist. And I think radical feminism is the only way to beat this. By saying my opinions are just as important as yours. What I want in a marriage is just as important, and if you want someone who will be quiet and look the other way. This marriage will not work for me. And I, as a woman, have the right to say that, and I have the right to set boundaries around it. It’s okay with me if that’s not what you want.

Mirroring with lies

Anne: And if it’s not, then have a nice life. So when I first married. I am opposed, and I know that many listeners aren’t. So I do not want to offend anyone right now. I oppose guns and motorcycles. When I dated my ex-husband, I said to him, if you like guns and motorcycles, that is super cool for you, right? Like, I am so happy for you. That’s great. I will not date you. So you just do your thing, shine on, and live your life.

And he told me, I don’t ride motorcycles. And I don’t like guns. I’m not a gun person. And I was like, cool. Well, I found out later that was a complete lie and manipulation. So I tried to be upfront, I was very obvious about it, what I wanted. And he thought he could gaslight me. Rather than saying, oh, you know what? I love guns and motorcycles. We’re probably not a good fit. Do you know what I mean?

So same thing with a pornography. I don’t want someone who will cheat and look at pornography, lie and manipulate me. So if that’s who you are, then shine on. You live your life just far away from me. And I think women are becoming empowered to the point where they can start saying that. The hard thing is when the man looks like that person, when he manipulates you.

Dating After Abuse

Anne: And now I’m not dating, but if I go on a date I would actually probably keep my opinions to myself, because I don’t want him to know what I think, I just want to know what he thinks.

So I’d maybe say, How do you feel about guns? Without telling him what I thought, so that I could hear what he thought, just without knowing what I thought. Does that make sense? So that I can’t be manipulated. So I think my dating strategy will be much more cautious and take it a lot slower, and also not put everything out there while I get to know the person.

Because I don’t want them to use it against me or to use it to manipulate me. I’m afraid someone will groom me again. Let’s put it that way.

Melinda: Yeah, I think men in this world have to understand what we’ve been through and why we may come off as guarded or protective, or suspicious. Despite our best intentions to be trusting and open hearted, there’s a lot that some of us have been through that makes that very difficult.

Anne: Well, and I think we’ve learned to look for what a trustworthy person looks like. It takes time. You cannot determine that from a five minute conversation or a 10 minute conversation. You can’t determine it from a one two hour date. It takes time, years and experience to figure out whether someone is trustworthy. So taking our time is important.

Not being manipulated anymore

Anne: And had we done that before, we might not have even hit the nail on the head. Because we might not have known what we were looking for, but we know better now, which is awesome.

Melinda: That’s a great point. I think that’s where I’ve arrived to know clearly what I’m about. And when I see something disconnected, or when I meet someone disconnected from that, it’s incompatible. I can see it more clearly, and that helps, I think. That you just know yourself better and recognize somebody else that might be unhealthy for you. To your point of having the boundaries and being willing to say, you know, this isn’t for me.

This relationship isn’t for me, because, you know, you’re doing you, and it’s not working for me. That I know not all women can do that. I know so many women trapped in these situations, for whatever reason. And leaving is, may feel worse than staying if they held their boundary. But for me, I found that as I struggled, we have two children. So leaving took a while, but eventually I found the logistical possibilities to make it happen, to have him leave.

That’s when things really changed. He couldn’t hide and manipulate me anymore because he wasn’t around. I could stand more firmly, and then he had to reckon with himself. And so, he reckons with himself now. I’m still not sure if that’ll bring us back together.

Anne: Well, thank you so much Melinda for coming on today’s podcast. I appreciate you sharing your story, and I loved the word weaponizing. So I want everybody to consider in what ways certain therapy language hurts abuse victims.