Confront Codependency.

My name is Olivia. I designed Codaptable with the dozens of friends, family members, peers, colleagues, coworkers, and students I've worked with over my adult life who have been in some form of a codependent relationship, including myself.

I broke out of the worst of my codependent anxieties and behaviors in 2023, and I am now in a loving relationship with none other than another codependent. While we love each other, the challenges of being in a codependent relationship pervade and, in my opinion, corrupt the strong foundations a healthy relationship is built upon.

For those of us who have been what I've come to call the Coperson (the one in fear), every day is a battle to reclaim, or simply stay ahold of, the authentic self, lest you become subsumed by the grip of anxiety, worry, and obsession and resort to people pleasing in the hope that your relationship will survive just one more day.

If you've ever had any sort of relationship with a coperson, you understand the anxiety, the guilt, and the shame of wanting to assert your independence and autonomy, both within the relationship and in your own life. Those of us on that side find ourselves inadvertently (and sometimes even intentionally) creating a distance between ourselves and the other that we know will hurt them. We do it so that we, too, can hold on to ourselves, and hold on to the relationship.

Confronting codependency is not easy. Both people need to be on the same side of the fight. For me, I had to learn to assert myself so I could break out of the fear and be freely myself on the other side. That freedom has allowed me to fight for my coperson, even when they cannot fight for themselves.

These conversations, which in all honesty can get tense and heated, are necessary to help the coperson see that you are on the same side. You're fighting together to preserve the relationship and to keep either of you from slipping into the worst: losing the self entirely, or removing the self from the relationship altogether.

I created Codaptable as a place to practice those conversations before you have them. The Mediator is there to guide you through what comes up, to help you understand why you respond the way you do, and to offer you other ways of responding. The Coperson is an AI character who takes on the role of the person you find hardest to talk to, so that you can practice holding your ground without the weight of the real relationship riding on every word.

It is my hope that you find Codaptable, and your conversations with the Mediator, helpful in teaching you practical conversational skills and techniques to establish boundaries, no matter what side of the fight you're on right now. In your talks with the Coperson, challenge yourself to take bold steps so that you can see yourself as your authentic self.