I believe family members of mine also have suffered from codependency.  It is not wrong to need someone.  But if you can’t (or are not allowed) to be an independent thinking person, with your own needs and opinions – codependency may be an issue. You know you (or someone close to you) is codependent when you (or that person) has no life.  Their life is circumvented around another person.  They need to be needed by this person.  They refuse to see or discuss problems that is occurring in the home.  And they are afraid of anger: their own as well as the controlling person’s.  Don’t feel bad: dysfunctional families are more the norm than the exception.  Most of us deal with some kind of dysfunctional family behavior.