The codependent relationship breakup – when you can’t let her go because you’ve become too dependent on your ex-girlfriend. Does that sound familiar? Let’s talk about how your feelings about yourself impact how you feel about your ex-girlfriend, and why it’s holding you back from moving on. Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster, and here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend.

Dealing with breakups is tough. For some guys, losing a woman can be a life-defining event that is hard to overcome. In fact, breakups are generally known to be among the most stressful life events that we experience in our lives – this has been studied, measured, and compared to many other traumatic life experiences. So it is understandable that a lot of you may struggle with letting go of your ex-girlfriend. 

So I want to share some things that I noticed as a breakup coach. I’ve also been doing breakup and relationship coaching for more than five years. And at this point, I’ve gone from being mostly anecdotal in my approach, to being quite heavily invested in breakup science. I’ve read a lot of scientific papers on the characteristics of individuals who go through breakups, and of course, other things such as confidence in dating and so on. 

And with the years, I’ve noticed patterns in my clients that very accurately align with insights from scientific studies. There’s a typical persona of people who struggle with breakups. If I were to take an educated guess, I would assume that among most men who are watching my breakup videos (or reading these posts), almost all of you fall into at the very least a slightly similar pattern. You probably have an anxious attachment style, meaning you require more validation from your girlfriend, from your friends and family, and perhaps at times, you are also worried about being left by your ex-girlfriend.

That is pattern number one. And the second pattern, although not as common as an anxious attachment style, is being a codependent individual. Now, of course, before I continue, I should preface this to say that everybody can severely struggle with a breakup. You could be the most secure, confident, battle-hardened man, and yet, when you lose the woman that maybe you wanted to marry in a year or two from now, or maybe you even married her already, of course, there’s no way that won’t affect you on a deep level and feel like your life, which depended a lot on your ex, is suddenly unpredictable and no longer has a strong foundation.

But essentially, individuals with certain predispositions, such as an anxious attachment style, and being codependent in nature, make it much more likely to either want to get back with your ex-girlfriend, miss her a lot after the breakup, and struggle with moving on.

It’s common sense. The more insecure you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to feel insecure when you’re left or even abandoned by the people you care for or love. And of course, the more you care, the harder it gets to deal with all of it. It’s like dealing with a parent who always seems to criticize you, and you get angry about that. But then you compare this to your friends, or other relatives who are often very supportive, and you ask yourself… Why can’t my mom or my dad just be like that?

Well, it’s because they care a lot more about you than anyone else. So the way they feel about you is different. They will be more critical, and perhaps more careful and pessimistic, where others will be positive, empowering and encouraging you to take risks, and so on. 

So the way we feel about ourselves, and how others feel about us matters a lot. It determines everything in life. The way you feel about yourself determines how you respond to your ex-girlfriend, and how you respond to your breakup. Of course.

And so, one thing that often gets overlooked with breakups, especially when you cannot move on from a woman, is asking yourself whether you are codependent. Codependency is roughly defined as needing someone else to need you. Essentially, if the other person isn’t deeply intertwined with you, you will begin to panic, and in order to keep them close to you, you are going to do whatever it takes to keep them close. Now, that is in a way an anxious attachment style behavior. But I would say that codependency goes a step further, because there is almost a pathologic need by someone to be needed, to have a partner, to be loved. 

Codependent individuals tend to struggle a lot with being single. In fact, when I grew up, I never realized that I was extremely codependent. And this stemmed from multiple factors. My mom was the critical type of mother in my example, and I also got bullied in school, so naturally, I always tried to course-correct and needed to prove to myself that someone appreciated and needed me. I needed women to validate to me that I am competent, that I am able to achieve my dreams and that I could contribute to another woman’s life. And as such, when I would run into problems with women, I’d often avoid conflict and not seek ways how I could offend my girlfriend, I always tried to not get into fights, and so on. 

In that sense, codependency is like a compulsive behavior pattern of forcing yourself to behave in ways that logically should be seen as good or at least reasonable, but instead, your irrational fears take over. In the example of not wanting to cause fights with a girlfriend, of course, the act of not talking about what bothers us is precisely what causes relationship problems.

Likewise, if you’re codependent and had a breakup, you may hold onto your ex-girlfriend as a sign of commitment, hoping that she will see that you are willing to wait for her. Of course, that doesn’t work, and that behavior is the very thing that stops you from finding another, possibly better girlfriend who will notice your commitment towards her.

Codependency can probably be defined as a dependency addiction on your partner. And typically, one of the ways how that manifests, is that we don’t prioritize ourselves, but rather, we always focus on our partner first. That sounds a bit like a breakup, where you focus too much on your ex girlfriend, who isn’t even your partner anymore, rather than focusing on what matters. And what does matter after a breakup? What is it that you need?

And no, it’s not your ex girlfriend that you need. Yes, of course, on a fundamental level, when you break up, it’s your girlfriend who you miss or need. After all, she was and maybe still is the most important person in your life. To you, nobody matters more than her. But there always has to be one person who matters more to you, and that is yourself. There’s a difference between depending on someone, needing them deeply, and perhaps even at times making big sacrifices for them at your own expense, versus obsessively depending on someone, becoming insecure when that person no longer needs us, and prioritizing them above everything else.

At the end of the day, you may have some codependency patterns, and those have especially shown through in your relationship before the breakup, or maybe they haven’t… Maybe they only manifested after it was over. But, the bottom line is that after the breakup, the most important thing is how you feel about yourself. Do you feel secure, confident, re-assured, certain, knowledgeable, and more. Your ex-girlfriend influences that negatively, of course, but your goal has to readjust these feelings about yourself as an independent man. 

Now that you’re alone, you have to get back to a healthy base level of confidence, independent of your ex-girlfriend, because she’s no longer a part of what makes you, you. When you lack confidence, or even just a general belief in your own skills, everything goes further downhill from there.

It’s for that very reason why codependent people get into the wrong type of relationships. They approve of a relationship with a woman who seems to be too controlling, or too promiscuous because they desperately want to be needed. Or they behave poorly in relationships, such as always approving over their girlfriend’s behavior. And then, of course, after a breakup, the pattern is no different. They hold onto that woman because she is not that bad. She needs to be pleased. It can be fixed with her. If only your behavior is good enough, she’s going to see your value.

And of course, let’s not forget that to an extreme degree, codependent men will try to re-attract their ex-girlfriend, while others, in quotes, “only” struggle with letting go. So, when you struggle to let go of an ex-girlfriend, you should ask yourself if you would be acting the same way if you would feel more certain about life right now. If you had a lot of friends, if you had a strong social network and everybody respected you, if you would be making twice as much money as you do right now, and so on… Basically, if your life would be in a much better place, do you believe that you would still miss your ex-girlfriend? Do you still think you would need the approval of your ex-girlfriend? Or would you at the very least have it easier to move on from that relationship? I am sure that you would. You would have more things to enjoy in life, and you would readjust to a base level of happiness much quicker versus feeling the need to be valued and needed by someone.

Of course, it’s possible to miss an ex girlfriend no matter how great your life situation is. I’ve worked with clients who were, well, essentially rich kids or at least, very wealthy and they had nothing to worry about in life. And despite this, they still missed their ex-girlfriends like crazy. So certainly, a general mindset and personality traits do play a big role in all of this.

But, of course, people can be unstable in their lives to varying degrees, in their finances, social connections, their perception of their body, and so on. The point is that the unhappier you are with yourself and the more you view yourself as not desirable, the more you THINK that you need your ex. You’ll NEED her to need you. The more that you believe that you are not enough, the harder it will be for you to move on from your relationship with her.

So, whether you are an extremely codependent man, mildly codependent, or hardly at all, but you just miss your ex girlfriend a lot, naturally, because you spent three years together… My advice for you is this: Focus on the parts of yourself that you feel are the least desirable. Focus on the things about yourself that confuse you. Of who you are, or who you’d like to be, and perhaps there is a gap between reality and your ideals. And there’s no need to hate yourself, look down on yourself, think that you’re not good enough. That’s not the point. The point is to look at yourself, no need to compare yourself to anyone else, and to try and become a better version of who you are today, into the future, in the best scenario with the goal of becoming your ideal self.

And as soon as you are taking steps towards that, you’ll feel proud of yourself. You’ll instantly feel more attractive, more desirable, more dependable, and you’ll probably even look forward to another woman wanting to depend on you sooner than you can imagine. When you feel dependable, you generally don’t need someone else, especially not an ex-girlfriend, to show you that she depends on you and needs you. Instead, you will be proud of the fact that you are dependable. You will know that it is an obvious truth, and you will not require that validation from a woman. Instead, you will be happy to give what you have to offer.

Codependency is effectively an act of taking, rather than giving. You’re trying to gain proof that you are needed. But when you ARE dependable, you are giving what you have to offer, without any expectation for something in return.

So if a woman can depend on you because you have worked hard on yourself, then there’s no way that you are going to feel codependent. Instead, you’ll only feel like a dependable man, and you’ll never question what you bring to the table. And I guarantee you, by that point in time, you’ll have moved on from your ex-girlfriend with complete certainty. So, if any of you guys identify with a codependent mindset, ask yourself how you can stop feeling the urge for your ex-girlfriend to need you. Focus on how you can develop yourself to a degree that you never need to prove anything to anybody.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.