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The Dynamics of Hostile Dependency
When Love and Loathing Coexist
“The individual may profess love or gratitude toward the object of dependency, yet simultaneously undermines or attacks them in covert or overt ways. The relationship is sustained not by health or mutuality, but by unresolved intrapsychic conflict and fear of abandonment.” ~ Karl Menninger, Love Against Hate (1942)
As a complex trauma therapist with over three decades of experience, I have encountered many individuals who present with the lasting effects of severe childhood emotional neglect. Such was the situation when I met Anna, a 36-year-old woman who grew up with a critical, emotionally distant mother and an absent father.
From the onset, Anna raised concerns about a persistent relational dynamic of recrimination and fears of abandonment with friends, family members, and romantic partners. Naturally, similar patterns showed up with former therapists and persisted in our work, with her idealizing me one week, then accusing me of not caring the next.
Although she had a long-term relationship with a kind and dependable man who offered her the stability she had never had, these patterns continued. In the beginning, Anna clung to Jason and expressed deep gratitude. She even went so far as to say he ‘saved her life.’ Nevertheless, over time, she became…
