4 Ways to Identify Codependency in Friendships Among Teens and Young Adults

Codependency in friendships can be a slippery slope when it comes to teens and young adults. Especially when examining relationships your teens have that are new to you, it’s important to understand what codependency in friendships looks like and how you can recognize its roots in either your child or someone else.

Teens and Young Adults Are Particularly Susceptible to Codependency in Friendships

While anyone can be in a codependent relationship, teens and young adults are especially susceptible. This is because the frontal cortex of the brain, or the decision-making center, is involved with choices related to social awareness, judgment, and emotional impulsiveness.

Teens and young adults don’t have fully formed decision-making centers until they’re 25. This can inhibit their ability to think long-term and make rational choices about the people they hang out with and why.

Another reason teens and young adults may be more likely to enter codependent friendships unknowingly is that they long to be accepted among peers. Of course, this isn’t limited to age, but it tends to plague young adults and teens in higher concentrations because they’ve had fewer life experiences to help them solidify what they believe about themselves.

How to Know If Your Teen or Young Adult Is Showing Signs of Codependency

While there are multiple ways to identify codependent relationships, when the following traits are present, you may want to pursue deeper conversations with your teen or adult child. Asking gentle questions, trying whenever possible to get to know their friends and supporting them, and letting them know they’re loved without conditions are some of the best ways to head off codependency in friendships.

What is codependency?

While it hasn’t been categorized in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a disorder, codependency is a group of behaviors that, when combined and overused, muddy the lines between give and take in a relationship.

Codependency can be particularly troublesome for teens and young adults who grew up in a household with an addict, someone who had a mental health diagnosis, or someone with a long-term medical disability. Teens and young adults who have trauma in their background or who grew up with caregivers who experienced trauma are also at risk. But anyone can learn codependent behavior, so it’s good to know what it looks like.

4 Signs of Codependency in Friendships

Your young adult or teen has an on-again/off-again friendship (or has had multiple types in the past)

When your child grows up thinking it’s okay to return to a friendship that isn’t balanced or healthy, that becomes the expectation of normalcy. One example would be if your child were part of a dramatic group of preteens who somewhat easily mistreated one another and disavowed friendship, only to be friendly again the next weekend.

This friendship group, which is often led by a more dominant personality type, can set the stage for unhealthy expectations of friendship in the future. If your child isn’t the more dominant personality in a friendship, he or she may be more likely to acquiesce when the scenario presents itself. There’s a line between giving in to serve someone when it isn’t convenient and giving in to serve someone because it’s expected.

Young adults who tend to want to please others and don’t have a dominant personality may fall into this category more easily. They want to make friends as they go off to college, fall into a roommate friendship where the roommate is comfortable making all the necessary decisions about room setup, paying rent, or even logistics about having visitors, and your child gets railroaded simply out of a desire to be amiable.

However, it’s an easy walk from that kind of friendship into codependency in friendships in general. Teaching your child to recognize the validity of having an opinion and owning it is imperative. This is easier said than done, though, especially if your child has struggled with low self-esteem.

Your child’s self-esteem rises and falls based on a friendship or sense of approval in a friendship

Even though your child has outgrown adolescence for the most part, these carryover behaviors from middle and high school can continue well into adulthood if low self-esteem is already persistent. While low self-esteem isn’t something you can quickly fix, it can improve over time.

Encourage your child to take chances (healthy risks), try new things (even if she isn’t sure she’ll excel), and get involved in clubs or groups where she has a common interest. Does she like to hike? Encourage her to join a women’s hiking group in college. Is she into skincare and beauty applications? Let her know others are also interested in these things and see if she can start a conversation based on those interests.

Understanding that her confidence comes from her love of herself or his love of himself is key. Sometimes, young adults and teens have grown up with a poor self-image because they were in a demeaning relationship in high school, had a negligent or abusive parent, or experienced some other kind of trauma that may not be obvious to outsiders. Counseling can be helpful for teens and young adults to explore the root of their insecurities in a safe place.

Your child exhibits signs of trying to meet a friend’s request or need beyond what seems reasonable, and it’s become a pattern

Give and take in any friendship is important if you want to be a supportive friend. However, when one friend is giving all the time and the other one is always taking, it’s unhealthy. At worst, it may mean your child derives some of his self-worth from pleasing that friend.

This could look like driving long distances to pick the friend up when he’s in trouble or has just had one too many drinks. Your child may feel like he can’t say no for the health and welfare of his friend. But if the friend is consistently staying out too late or not making healthy choices, it’s a much bigger problem than your child’s friendship can solve.

It’s essential to help your child understand that when there is continued one-sidedness and lack of self-control in a friend’s life, it reveals a weakness in that person’s character, not a lack in your child’s character.

Codependency in friendships may mean your child says no to other friends, interests, or opportunities because one particular friend has too much pull in your child’s life

Turning down invitations from other friends, letting go of hobbies he enjoys, or releasing opportunities for growth because of a friend’s opinion may signal an unhealthy dependence on that friend. Especially if your child struggles with low self-esteem, she may find that she thinks she doesn’t have her own opinion, not when she’s had a history of friends who have enough of their own opinions to go around.

If your teen or young adult doesn’t see the influence that a friend has over their life, and you’re struggling to know what to do, seeing a professionally licensed counselor, such as one available through our offices, may help you come up with a game plan.

Even if your child doesn’t agree to attend counseling and discover the roots of a codependent tendency, you can. Sometimes, codependent behaviors are learned, so uncovering any tendencies in your own life and making changes could help your son or daughter want that kind of freedom in their own life.

Codependency in friendships can also be a precursor to codependent romantic relationships. That’s why we advise that you don’t just do nothing and hope it will work out.

Seeing a professional counselor, even for a few sessions, can help you decide how you want to bring the topic up with your child and where to go from there. Contact one of our offices for an exploratory consultation, and we’ll match you with a provider who can walk alongside you  –  and hopefully help your child, too.