Two summers ago, I met a man on a dating app who would become my boyfriend. The red flags were there from the start, but I ignored them all. When I stayed at his, he didn’t have a towel to offer me, and he never changed his sheets. It became obvious that he didn’t know how to look after himself. Even though, in reality, he could survive without me (similar to how a teenage boy would survive on his own, eating burgers in bed), I felt like, if I wasn’t there to buy groceries, cook and clean, he might die. He would disappear for days, on a drink- or drugs-fuelled bender, and I’d assume he’d overdosed in a basement somewhere. I lived in fear that something terrible would happen to him. I became his boyfriend and his caregiver.
This was a familiar role for me: I’d done it in all my previous relationships. I needed to be needed. If the person I was dating didn’t need me, then what value did I have? I found safety in taking care of someone. This started as a family dynamic: as the eldest child, I had to look out for my younger brothers, and learned to overlook my own needs. Then, when I was 14, my girlfriend died in a drug-related car accident. My therapist helped me to see the connection; that because I couldn’t save her, I sought romantic relationships with men or women I thought I could save instead.
One evening, after being recommended it by Netflix, I began watching Beautiful Boy, a film about the breakdown of a father’s relationship with his son, who is an addict. It was about halfway through that I decided to leave my relationship. When Steve Carell’s character (David) hangs up onTimothée Chalamet(Nic), saying, “I wish I could help you, but I can’t do that,” I knew I couldn’t either. I admired the strength it took to end the cycle of trying (and failing) to save his son.
Even though he was my boyfriend and three years older, I related to the father-son dynamic in Beautiful Boy. I felt responsible for him, and he would tell me that he would die without me, threatening to take his own life. Until then, I hadn’t seen how much I was damaging myself by trying to help him. And that I would never be able to, not really. He had to learn how to take care of himself. As David says: “I don’t think you can save people.”
Despite deciding to end the relationship in September 2023, I didn’t take action until October, when I cheated on him. I felt I had to do something irreparable that would make it impossible for us to stay together. I told him what I’d done over the phone, then I called his mum to tell her about his drug problem. I don’t think she knew: she lived in another country and he hid it from her. Finally, I called a psychiatric facility and did all of the admin to make sure that he would be taken care of, and then never spoke to him again. The guilt I felt was overpowered by the feeling that this was something I had to do.
That was my last codependent relationship. I have a new boyfriend, who tells me that my company alone is enough. I’m the most peaceful I’ve ever been, but sometimes the voice that says I’m only lovable if I’m useful comes back. If I try to cook for my boyfriend when I’m tired and he tells me I don’t have to, I can spiral. But slowly, with help, I’m building a sense of self that doesn’t rely on being of service. Beautiful Boy helped me see that I don’t need to take care of someone else to have value.
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