Codependency, Interdependency, Enmeshment

Three related but distinct concepts. **Codependency:** excessive emotional reliance on a partner, often paired with enabling harmful behavior; identity is organized around managing or fixing the other person. **Interdependency:** healthy mutual reliance — two people who support and need each other while maintaining individual identity. **Enmeshment:** loss of individual psychological boundaries; partners are so merged they cannot function independently or tolerate the other's separateness. Healthy relationships are interdependent.

Origin

Codependency: recovery movement 1980s; Enmeshment: Bowen/Minuchin