The Codependent Fantasy: If I Love Them Properly, They Will Change

This article explores the codependent fantasy that enough love, patience, and understanding will change another person. It examines how hope, self-abandonment, and early relational conditioning keep people attached to harmful relationships, and why recovery begins with seeing reality clearly rather than trying to rescue someone who will not change.

In my experience working with codependents, there is a fantasy that persists despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. That is the belief that that love ( codependent love), given in the right way and in the right quantity, will eventually transform even the most distant and abusive of people. It’s not always conscious and many codependents do not always recognise what they are doing. They describe it in other terms instead, hope, loyalty, commitment or understanding. Yet underneath is a strong conviction that if they can just find the right tone, support, forgiveness or the right moment, then their partner will finally become the person the fantasy subscribes to.

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This fantasy is one of the main reasons that codependent relationships last longer than they should, even when it is plainly obvious that it should be over. The codependent is not attached to the person in front of them, but who they hope they will become, or they can mould. They are not in a relationship with reality but potential.

Potential, while usually positive, can be a dangerous concept when it used to override evidence. Codependents stay in relationships that are not meeting their needs because they are living in anticipation of a future version of the other person. They tell themselves that under the emotional distance and manipulation is goodness, under the defensiveness, there must be vulnerability somewhere and crucially, under the emotional distance and avoidance is someone who will open up if enough safety and love is given.

Of course, there is some truth in this. Many difficult people are wounded, frightened and have histories that explain why they are like they are. However, knowing this is not the same as changing it and insight is not the same as taking responsibility for it. The truth is that many who have suffered do not look at the way their behaviour affects others.

This is where the fantasy starts to become costly for the codependent. It shifts attention away from what is happening in the relationship and places it as a duty to rescue. The codependent believes that the relationship will succeed if they love cleaner, more patiently and more sacrificially. If conflict arises, they assess how they could have communicated better and if the other person withdraws, they assume they need to be less demanding. Tragically, if the other person is abusive, unkind or cruel, they believe that they need to increase effort to reach them. This mirrors their experience in childhood where they had to manage an unsafe environment by adapting and managing. The early relationships follow them into adulthood and relationships become a problem to solve, rather than an experience to enjoy.

Many codependents learned early in life that love was not something that they naturally received. It had to be worked for and negotiated and maintained by being perceptive, useful, careful and emotionally available to others. They learned that connection meant adaptation and being highly attuned to shifts in mood and what it took to restore harmony. In adulthood, this becomes a powerful template for relationships. It is then obvious that someone angry, distant or difficult can be changed by loving them more and better. This belief keeps the codependent away from a vital question: what is this relationship doing to me?

That question is often avoided because it shatters the fantasy. Once it is taken seriously, the codependents is forced to notice the emotional cost of loving someone who fails to bring honesty, consistency and care to the relationship. They are forced to confront that loving this person is not healing the relationship but enabling its continuation.

With a narcissist, or with someone self absorbed, the pattern becomes even more pronounced. The codependent often mistakes endurance for devotion. They believe their capacity to stay, understand and and absorb is a sign of love and its depth. In truth, it is evidence of how much they have been conditioned to abandon themselves. The narcissist will, of course, revel in this arrangement because they greatly benefit from it. They are not required to change when there is a codependent around them who will compensate for the damage they willingly cause.

This is one reason why codependents lead lives of exhaustion and disappointment, punctured by the addiction on the scraps given to them. They respond enthusiastically to moments like a brief apology, a rare moment of tenderness or a period of effort and vulnerability. The codependent thinks these moments represent the real personality of the person they are with, and quickly forget all the evidence they have to counter it. They think that the person is a victim driven by fear, trauma or confusion. So they stay because they feel they have caught a glimpse of the real personality. The trouble is that this glimpse is either manipulation or never arrives fully enough to build anything on.

Letting go of this fantasy can feel brutal for a codependent and I have personally experience this. It can feel unkind, cynical or loveless. Many codependents feel that they are becoming distant themselves if they stop believing in the potential. However, dropping the fantasy is not the same as giving up on compassion. It is simply making a choice to stop confusing compassion with self-abandonment.

I learnt painfully that true love did not require me to deny reality just to sustain it. It did not ask me to live on promises, projection or crumbs and I learnt that carrying the emotional responsibility for the weight of a relationship is easily confused with hope.

The turning point comes when the codependent realists that it is not their job to reparent their partner into maturity. Their job is to express honestly the truth of what they are living with. Sometimes, that means the other person cannot meet them in that space. Often they won’t. The most painful aspect of this is the realisation that love, genuine or not, does not have the power to change someone who is deeply invested in staying exactly as they are.

That is reality and reality is where codependents really start to heal.