Rebecca Humphries’ honest and forthright column (My partner cheated on me on Strictly, but it took another heartbreak for me to quit toxic love, 15 October) struck a chord with me when she said: “My heartbreak ... had come from the inescapable knowledge that, though they had been very different men, I had behaved the same in both relationships ... I had prioritised their needs to the point where I couldn’t remember what mine were.”
Putting oneself to one side in that way is almost a textbook description of codependency. In coming out of an emotionally abusive marriage of nearly four decades, and while noting some red flags in a new relationship with an exciting but unavailable man, reading it reminded me that I still have difficulty in telling the difference between the twin states of arousal and fear.
