When you take a look at the outside of a co-dependency relationship, we can see it as a simple give and take procedure, but we do not know that in the inside, it is really destructive to a relationship.
When a person ultimately seeks attention, love or care, they mistake it as real love. They will say things like: they can not live without their partner, they can not do things on their own and they can not focus. This is so not true! Little do these couples know that real love is about unconditional reciprocation – meaning, they do not need any paybacks for what they do. But with co-dependent relationships, they only try to save the relationship for the sick reason of just doing so. They do not think of the damage that they are doing as long as the two of them are involved.
There are a lot of people in this world who marry because they just need someone to be with them. It is a shallow reason, I know, but that is the truth. These people only need someone who can fulfill their physical, emotional and spiritual needs that is why they decide to marry the other even if they are not really in love. Well, the other might be falling head over heels to the other and that is one hurtful part.
Some people are just blinded by their needs and some provide those needs even if it means depriving themselves of the happiness. There are two types of person involved in this: the nurturer and the caretaker. The nurturer is the one that keeps their partner needy of them without actually helping the person. They make their partner dependent on them. The caretaker is the one that satisfies his or her need from the fact that their partner needs them. They feed from that as they feel special when they think about it.
Though these couples care so much for their partner, they are not actually helping them. They just tolerate whatever they are doing since they think that is easier than facing the problem and dealing with it. They do not also want to lose their needy partners so they help them instead of helping them help themselves. This is where co-dependent relationships destruct the couple. They make each other dependent on one another but they obviously do not help anybody even themselves.