In an on-line article* a few years ago Melanie Evans wrote: Co-dependency is a dis-ease of being outer-focused rather than being able to healthily detach from people and situations to focus on and take care of Self. Co-dependency is an unhealthy dependency on outer circumstances. Rather than take responsibility for their own lives, co-dependents try to control events and people through granting compassion, advice giving, lecturing, helplessness, emotional blackmail, manipulation, guilt or anger. Co-dependents feel empty on the inside and try to fill this emptiness with things’ outside of themselves. In most cases co-dependents are trying to re-write the scripts of their painful childhoods and will re-attract the same pain over and over. Co-dependents often try to make safe and trustworthy environments with unsafe and untrustworthy individuals and circumstances. In just those six lines; a single paragraph, I find the shortest, most clear glimpse of codependency I have yet to come across. This is especially true of the last line: Co-dependents often try to make safe and trustworthy environments with unsafe and untrustworthy individuals and circumstances.
When there is no enemy within,
the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
African Proverb
* http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/articles/codependency-issues.htm
Male Codependence 
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