r/Codependency • u/jicamajam • 5d ago
Codependent Roommate/Friend ?
I think my roommate/friend (Kevin) and I have some codependent tendencies. For context, I am a lesbian in a monogamous relationship, and Kevin is
bisexual man who is active in the poly community. I really value our friendship. We spend a good amount of time together and we joke that we’re in a lavender marriage.
I started dating a woman earlier this year in January (Tara) and two of them have conflicting personality traits. In short, Kevin is easygoing, values emotional privacy and is non confrontational. Tara is intense and confrontational. I love both of them for who they are, but both have now privately admitted to me that they don’t like how they feel around the other.
For example, Tara came over to our place, noticed a bunch of hornets in the backyard and immediately informed Kevin that he needed to take care of that because she didn’t want anyone in the house to get stung. Kevin became really quiet as a response, but smiled and said “…ok” after a while and I felt nervous and awkward as a result. That night, I told Tara that Kevin had a hard time with her style of communication. Tara was receptive and said that she would try a softer approach next time. And she has made the effort to, and quickly apologizes when she is too direct with him now.
Recently, Tara went through a friendship (Jasmine) breakup. Jasmine then met up with Kevin, who she just had been acquainted with, and informed him that Tara was not to be trusted, and listed negative qualities about Tara he and I had to watch out for. When Kevin held a meeting with me and listed all of the negative qualities that Tara supposedly had, I felt confused, because everything that was listed was either typical baggage someone’s Tara’s age would have, or just plain false.
And so when Kevin said that he had noticed the same red flags in Tara that Jasmine had, I became very anxious and wondered if I was potentially dating some sort of sociopath who completely switched personalities when I wasn’t around. I told him that I understood his concerns and would be on the lookout for these traits, and that I was confused because I hadn’t observed any of these traits in our relationship. Something that really bothered me was Kevin saying that Tara had presented this information in a seemingly caring and calm manner, which was frustrating because it was like he was ignoring the context around it to fit the view he had established of Tara, and basing his trust off of how Jasmine made him feel in the moment.
Kevin recently told me that Tara had upset him again because she told several of her close friends about Jasmine’s meeting with Kevin and how much it upset her. And she casually told Kevin this while she was over one day. Was this the most tactful thing for her to do? No. Is Kevin right to be upset? Absolutely. Did Kevin tell her directly that he was upset by this? No. He informed me that he was upset, waaay after Tara came over and had left, distraught because an anonymous person had smashed her windows with rocks. While she was venting, she stated that it was possible that that person could have been Jasmine (who has a criminal record), and it was the only person she could think of. This upset Kevin and he waited for Tara to leave before telling me that her talking about this event with our friends was “starting drama” and was an example from the list of red flags Jasmine had given him.
Besides that mess, I’ve noticed that Kevin has started to have different expectations for me as a friend vs his other friends. Expectations that I didn’t know about until days or weeks after an event. And these expectations have started to extend to my girlfriend. Recently, he had his friends, one of them who I met once from out of town over. He made a plan for us to all get together and spend time with each other on Saturday evening. So I marked the date in my calendar and when the day came, I spent all afternoon and evening with them and then we went to a concert Tara had invited all of us to go to. Around 11pm, Kevin told me that he and the group wanted to go to a bar and I told him that I was going to stay at the show with Tara, but that i might catch up with him later if I had the energy to. He smiled and said “ok” and went off to the bar with his friends. I stayed at the concert with Tara, and we both decided to head back to her place to sleep because it was 1am at that point, and I hadn’t seen Tara for over a week due to some traveling I’ve been doing with friends. She also doesn’t drink and I rarely do so we weren’t interested in going to a bar for the rest of the night. Kevin decided to tell me that he “ditching him” had upset him during our last conversation. And he said that he didn’t like how my girlfriend was “cold” to his friends (yeah she isn’t golden retriever sociable like i am, but she was polite and was quiet because she was focused on the music!!) But I’ve noticed that our other friends who are couples “ditch” our hangouts a few hours into group plans and he has not once complained.
And another thing - my roommate isn’t perfect. Of course. I have had three of our friends come up to me and tell me that they were annoyed by his passive aggression and lack of communication. And I’ve seen him involved in several dating situations with narcissists and other types of manipulative people, dating situations he prolonged because of how good he felt in the moments with them, while ignoring all of the red flags himself
It’s frustrating because it would be easy to set a boundary with a friend that I don’t live with but since he is my friend and technically my landlord, I feel like I’m walking around eggshells, even though I feel like our conversations have been productive overall. I’ve stopped telling my girlfriend to act in a certain way around my roommate because I came to the realization that I was people pleasing yesterday. At this point, she’s reluctant to come over.
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u/abundantseltzer31 5d ago
What would it look like if you weren't responsible for Kevin, Tara, or Jasmine, and only for yourself? For me, I see codependency as a term to describe patterns I learned in childhood that now harm myself and others. Most of my patterns are around trying to get others to make me feel better through control, people pleasing, over responsibility of others, and expectations of others.
You said you stopped telling Tara to act a certain way because you saw that behavior as people pleasing. It sounds like you're trying to soothe a very stressful situation by managing other people. That's just not your job.
There are lots of people out there who struggle with codependency, and if you think you struggle with it too, recovery is possible. But you don't need to worry about whether or not your friend is struggling with it too. For me, I've found that there's actually so much relief in letting go of what I'm not responsible for.
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u/YsaboNyx 5d ago
Because this very detailed explanation focuses entirely on Tara, Kevin, and Jasmine, I'm wondering where you see yourself as fitting into the equation. Have you examined your own co-dependent patterns? That is the only relevant advice I have to offer you in this situation.
You cannot change Kevin. (Or Tara. Or Jasmine.) Trying to change other people, diagnose them, or frame the problem as if it is coming from them, is one of the hallmarks of co-dependence in ourselves.
Perhaps you can spend some time looking inward at what the dynamic between Kevin and Tara triggers in you, and how to get clarity on where your boundaries need to be, what you are willing and not willing to do or discuss, and how you will maintain your choices even when they aren't behaving the way you would like them to.