I freely admit to being mentally ill, and under treatment for my illness for much of my life.

I am on my own now, and doing well, but when you are mentally ill, it is arrogance and hubris to think you are every 100 per cent well or cured. There is no such thing as being fully healed, only self-aware and in control.

I am super vigilant about my life and feelings, and I never delude myself into thinking I can forget my illness. I am not normal, whatever that is, and will not ever be.

Last year, I met a friend I liked. My friend professed to love me and care for me. My friend asked to borrow money, it was an emergency, and I agreed. Then my friend asked for more, there was another emergency, and I gave my friend more. Then my friend offered to work to pay for the money but my friend did not show up to do the work.

When I needed  him, he was not there. When my friend was last here, he wanted to borrow more money. I will not give him any more money. He is not my friend. Each time I gave him money, I said it was fine, don’t worry about it, I trust you. And I did. And I do not any longer. And this, after decades of therapy.

And this, I must also confess, just five or six years after I gave almost all of my money – close to $200,000 to a different “friend” who took it without hesitation or worry and one day disappeared. I told him not to worry too, and he didn’t

This episode let to my breakdown and indirectly, to the end of my marriage. It is not a story I have ever told fully or ever will tell fully, some things just don’t need to be shared.

In therapy, a wonderful and genuine healer told me I had lost perspective, I was simply giving pieces of me away to people all of the time, I used people badly and was badly used by them.

It was a kind of addiction, she said, most often afflicting people who were abused or traumatized as children.

Their shattered egos and sense of shame and need for love make them especially vulnerable to relationships that are neither nourishing or healthy, and that are so one-sided as to almost be psychotic. These relationships are reliably destructive and unhealthy. They don’t work. They can’t work.

You simply cannot have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person, she told me. I deserved better, she said. You must learn to ask, she said, not just what you can do for somebody else, but what is it that somebody else can do for you? Good relationships can never be one-sided.

I told her about my friendship with a woman named Maria I had met only recently in my small and remote town, this was the first time in my life I felt the power of a balanced and nourishing relationship. I was falling in love with her, I said.  I was afraid to mention it to the therapist for fear she would see it as just another unhealthy relationship to be avoided, and warn me off. I had just begun the process of ending a 35-year marriage.

She listened carefully, and then said: “you have been working hard here, and listening. I fully support this new relationship. It will open your eyes to what a healthy relationship can be.” And my world changed.

I used to think “Co-Dependence” was something Dr. Phil discussed with Oprah Winfrey. Then my therapist told me to read a book called “Co-Dependence Now,” and then I was convinced me the book was written for me.

According to psychologists, co-dependence is an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with co-dependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.

For me, all of the above. Co-dependency is many things, but in general terms, it is a type of dysfunctional relationship where one person supports or enables another person’s drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, selfishness or under-achievement.

Co-dependent people are the enablers of the modern world, we make it possible for so many others to avoid responsibility for their lives and deeds.

Other forms of mental illness are better known and famously destructive, but I can tell you – and so many of you already know this – that co-dependence can be a life-killer, a black hole of unhealthy relationships, anger, hurt, mistrust, crippled friendships and loveless and lonely lives.

Recently, I had a second reminder that co-dependence lives forever inside of damaged people.

It can be controlled and understood, like alcoholism or other addictions, but the impulse can never be fully eradicated or cured. I have just realized that there was another friend in my life who is not a friend, but the kind of fantasy friend co-dependent people conjure up all the time.

A person who has come to me for help, who I have helped many times, but is not a friend to me and cares nothing about me. This happens rarely now – I have several very good friends who are both nourishing and healthy, my therapist would approve.

I have learned some things. I called this person up and was honest about my feelings and disappointment. People don’t like it, but it is good for me to stand in my truth, that is healthy. I walked away, and that is healthy too.

My relationship with Maria – and years of good talking therapy –  has helped me to understand what a true relationship can be like. In many surprising ways, the dogs have helped me to see this also, learning boundaries and perspective with them has helped me throughout my recent life, from being a grandfather to a good partner and husband to a loving but rational dog owner.

On Facebook recently, a nice woman urged me to go join a group called “Facebook Addicts For Boston Terriers,” since we are getting Gus on Friday. (There are also many groups like this for grandparents.)

But now, I listen to the alarm that goes off in my head, because there are so many co-dependent relationships in the dog world, a million Dr. Phil’s could not cope with them.

I have learned this about co-dependence. You don’t wish to be addicted to any person or emotion or thing, not a drug, not a grandchild, not a dog. Addiction is not love. Giving pieces of yourself to others is not friendship. Turning your life over to something else is not cute.

Making a grandchild the center of my emotional universe is not for me, love is different from that.

For people who suffer from co-dependent relationships, trust is very hard to find and to keep. By definition, many of their relationships must and will betray them. And when they do, they will often blame themselves.

Relationships must be mutual, founded on trust and empathy – both sides. They must feel nourishing, not unsettling or uncomfortable. When you walk away or put the phone down and wonder what it is that just happened, then something is wrong. You cannot, in fact, have a healthy relationship with an  unhealthy person. When you feel uncomfortable, speak up about it, and if that doesn’t work, then walk away. Co-dependent people can rarely work out their troubles, they just vanish and go somewhere else to get what they need.

And I am lucky. Co-dependent sufferers, like alcoholics, often need a whack on the head. I needed many.

So many lessons in life, and they continue to arise and be learned and face. For me, co-dependence is one of the biggest.

Co-dependence is a ghost that never wants to go away. But help helps. If I can’t always forestall it, at least I can foresee it and recover in time. That is the lucky thing about mental illness for me, if there is such a thing.

Unlike many awful chronic illnesses, I get to recover every day.