Barbara de Angelis Quotes

There's a fascinating school of thought that some women are relationship addicts. You get really strung out on a guy who's not returning your enthusiasm and tell yourself you're going to fix him and make him better, and of course it's impossible.

A codependent person is one who has let another person's behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person's behavior.

I believe I was a codependent out of the womb and have been struggling to free myself from its vice-like grip for many, many years.

Being codependent means that when you die, someone else's life passes before your eyes.

Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, lives, and behaviors of others. They react to their own problems, pains, and behaviors.

No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.

I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.

Why do people stay in relationships that are tough from almost the very beginning?

I've dated a number of 'mama's boys.'

I've always been the kind of woman who had a man in her life even when he was the wrong man.

If you're getting abandonment, if you're getting abuse as a child, if you're getting uncertainty when you're a child, unfortunately you tend to look for that in your life later on, and you think that's love.

It's a recurring thing: It's that I fall really deeply for bad relationships. It's just always been this way and not changing.

I'm a fixer, unfortunately. I'm like, 'Oh, I can fix you.' But it's not just guys I'm dating anymore. It's this entire legion of young girls who tell me they need me to maintain any sort of sanity or peace.

When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.

In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people.

What's a codependent? The answer's easy. They're some of the most loving, caring people I know.

... we always love best the people who need us.

Some young ladies are so starved for male approval that what should be a normal attraction to men is accelerated into an obsessive need for male affirmation. Tragically, these dear ladies allow themselves to be devoured in the arms of men who have neither regard not respect for them as people.

I s'pose, I can't have it all my own way, can I? You can't drown in a person unless they let you.

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can't deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. Every time I see these feelings in someone else's face, it weighs me down.

It's important to have your own space. I've never trusted people who do everything together. I call them "Kool-Aid Couples," because it's like they drank the same Kool-Aid and it's drugged them into constantly gazing into each other's eyes.

You can usually tell when a couple becomes centered on each other because they are forever breaking up and getting back together.

I did not need to know if he could love me. I needed to know if he could need me.

I have a tendency to make my partner my everything and that is unfair and it doesn't end up working out because you can't rely on that one person to fulfill all of your needs emotionally.