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If someone is overly clingy in a relationship, it's hard to stop it, and it would mean to me not compatible and I would end it. You can't go into a relationship thinking you will change the person, and that is a huge turn off for me.
Do they both mean the same thing? If not, which one is worse in a relationship? If you've ever had problems with either or, how did you stop it?
Dependency=clingy
Co-dependency=dependent on having another person be dependent on you.
We used to refer to people who were care-takers and enablers of addicts as co-dependents, but it was later broadened to cover all people who have to have someone dependent on them. Generally the co-dependent person can appear on the surface to be the "healthy" one, but he/she can be just as screwed up (or more) as the person who looks needy and dependent.
I was in my first long term relationship in college and finally realized I was becoming co-dependent. He was a raging alcoholic/ pot head who was brilliant but failing out of college, and I one day found myself going to one of his professors to get him an extension on a paper, telling the professor a lie about him having a death in the family. suddenly it was like I was watching myself on TV--I think I dissociated a little. But when I looked at myself, it disgusted me, what I had just done. I hardly ever lie, and certainly not to a professor. And here I was telling this story to this man who actually felt sorry for my drunken stoned boyfriend who was at that very moment playing Nintendo and smoking a bong with his buddies. I broke up with him shortly after that as more and more things came into focus, and I saw how he had manipulated me. He was starting to make me feel so important, how I was his "angel" who was saving his life. Ugh, makes me sick now to even think about it.
I had clingy bfs and got rid of them quickly. There is nothing else you can do, they won't change if you tell them to be less clingy. We are what we are.
I used to be the clingy one emotional unavailable bfs and they were okay with it.
Now I have a bf who is clingy and I am clingy and neither of us is annoyed by it.
Co-dependent = TWO people, each intermeshed in depending upon each other, emotionally inadequate in and of themselves.
A perfectly healthy, independent, self-contained people can attract a clingy person, but probably won't tolerate him or her for very long.
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