A Model of Intensified Codependent Bonding in Toxic Relationships: A schema-based dual-trap hypothesis model

The Model of Intensified Codependent Bonding in Toxic Relationships is a hypothesis model by Kevereschán András that examines why some individuals may remain strongly attached to toxic or abusive partners for exceptionally long periods of time. The model conceptualizes codependent functioning as a schema-based relational construction centred on Self-Sacrifice, frequently accompanied by Emotional Deprivation, while schemas such as Subjugation, Defectiveness/Shame, Abandonment/Instability, Mistrust/Abuse, and in some cases Unrelenting Standards, may further intensify the pattern. Two interacting pathways are proposed. The first is an investment pathway. Self-sacrifice, especially when combined with unrelenting standards, may create a strong tendency to work for love through persistent giving, accommodation, problem solving, and emotional investment. This can generate an unusually large amount of accumulated investment, thereby increasing vulnerability to the sunk-cost effect when leaving the relationship is considered. The second is an idealization–consistency pathway. Within the proposed mechanism, love is experienced not merely as something to be received, but as something through which the person may experience themselves as lovable: “If I can love, I am lovable.” Working for love encourages a lower, more self-sacrificing relational position. From this position, looking upward toward the partner becomes structurally important, making partner elevation and idealization a predictable consequence within the internal logic of the model. Because this idealized image is repeatedly constructed and reinforced through the individual’s own judgments and decisions, abandoning it may produce an unusually strong consistency pressure. The model therefore proposes that, in some codependent relational patterns, leaving a toxic partner may threaten not only attachment and accumulated investment, but also a personally constructed route to self-worth and lovability. Its deliberately stark endpoint can be summarized as: “If my abuser is not admirable, then I am not lovable.” This statement is not presented as a literal conscious belief, but as the possible endpoint of the proposed internal causal chain. The model integrates schema-based thinking inspired by Jeffrey Young’s Schema Therapy, empirical findings on maladaptive schemas and codependency, including the work of Éva Knapek, Katalin Balázs, and Ildikó Kuritárné Szabó, and connects conceptually to the author’s earlier Love Criterial Model, particularly its distinction between reciprocity and the pathway of pre-giving. The individual components of the model draw on existing empirical findings, while the complete causal architecture proposed here remains a theoretical hypothesis requiring direct empirical testing.