Many years ago, I was in a relationship that was extremely dysfunctional and unhealthy for me; so much so that my marriage to a sex addict has always (even at its absolute worst) seemed to me to be healthy by comparison. In that previous relationship, I exhibited all the behaviors of a textbook codependent: changing myself (from my hairstyle to my taste in books and music) to make my partner happy and trying desperately to get him to change as well. I was convinced that we would be happy, if he would just be more romantic, listen better, pay more attention to me, learn to communicate better, like my friends, learn to like the things I did, make some concessions, learn to compromise… Yep, everything would be perfect then. We’d be a model couple, if only everything about both of us were different.

When that relationship ended, I realized I had been going at things all wrong. I shouldn’t let anyone change me, and I should not try to change my partners. Of course, I thought it was as simple as realizing that. Now I knew what to do: ta da! I was fixed! No more work needed. I wasn’t codependent. I had acted like a raging codependent when I was in that particular unhealthy relationship. And also a few other relationships. But whatever. I was better now.

I used to go to 12 Step meetings and simply say, “Hi, I’m Mary.” I never followed it up with “I’m codependent,” because I was sure that I wasn’t. I used to be, but I hadn’t been acting like that in my marriage. Well, at least not before I found out my husband was a sex addict; after I found out, one of the most frustrating things for me was seeing a lot of unhealthy behaviors I thought I was done with come raging right back. As I worked on my own healing and understanding why those old patterns were popping back up again, I gradually came to see that codependency was not just a set of behaviors but also the underlying pattern of warped thinking that caused those behaviors.

When alcoholics stop drinking but continue in the same destructive thought patterns that led to the drinking, they’re called dry drunks. When I was out of the drama of a destructive relationship, I hadn’t been acting out in my codependency, but I still hadn’t addressed the underlying problems that caused the behavior in the first place. I spent some time abstaining, but not sober: I was a dry codie.