In early September 2026, Ukrainian blogger and entrepreneur Anastasiia Skalnitska announced her divorce after three years of marriage. Initially, she emphasized that the split was happening "without insults," but soon she published a series of statements in which she accused her ex-husband Bohdan of years of deception: allegedly, he invented debts and problems because of which she sold cars, transferred money, took out loans for employees, and invested in his ventures. Later, claims emerged about debts in her flower business, loans taken out in employees' names, and numerous infidelities. The couple has a son together. At the same time, the ex-husband's position on the accusations voiced is absent from open sources, and all the facts listed remain exclusively Anastasiia's version.

Codependency: when "saving" becomes the norm

It was this story that prompted an expert analysis. In a comment to the Wave RBC.UA publication, family psychotherapist Bogdana Yankiv, who has 20 years of professional experience, explained why even a financially independent and successful person can fail to notice a partner's manipulative behavior for years and continue to "save" them. In her words, in the described situation one can speak of signs of a codependent relationship model: one partner constantly takes on responsibility, solves problems, and "pulls" the other through, gradually beginning to perceive this as a natural state of affairs.

"Here I would like to talk about blind trust. These are boundary things: you can trust blindly — that is one extreme, and you can not trust at all, consider the world dangerous and not trust even yourself," the psychotherapist explained. She emphasized that the ability to recognize unhealthy behavior is directly influenced by previously learned relationship scripts: a person often chooses a model familiar to them, even if it is destructive, because they already know how to behave in it — to help, endure, avoid conflicts, or take on all the responsibility themselves.

Script versus anti-script: the 70-to-30 rule

In her practice, Bogdana Yankiv conditionally divides the choice of partner models in a 70-to-30 ratio. In her assessment, about 70% of people live by the "script" — unconsciously reproducing what they saw in their family of origin. This is not about choosing an exact copy of a mother or father, but about a familiar dynamic: the distribution of responsibility, ways of resolving conflicts and financial issues, a tendency to endure certain behavior or "turn a blind eye" to problems. "There is no other example. And then a person lives by the script — the way it was," the psychotherapist explained.

The remaining 30%, in her words, act by the "anti-script" — consciously trying to build relationships that are as opposite as possible to those they saw in childhood: "I will not be like my mom, and I will not build a relationship with a partner like my dad." However, both the script and the anti-script are formed under the influence of prior experience. In order to choose a partner not only by the principle of "familiar" or "the opposite," a person needs to become aware of their own behavioral models and understand why a certain type of relationship seems normal to them. "The brain seems to pull in such people: 'This is familiar to me, I know how to live with this and what to do.' And healthy partners may pass by, because it is something foreign and unknown," Yankiv noted.

Warning signs that should not be ignored

One of the main markers of help that turns into codependency, the psychotherapist calls constant one-sided responsibility: financial problems are solved each time by only one partner, while the other does not demonstrate specific actions or results. "Years-long" temporary difficulties, regular requests for money, and the involvement of outsiders in the couple's problems — employees, business partners — should be a cause for alarm. "Why should other people be involved in this? This is a couple's issue, it should not shift into the plane of work, activity, or business. If this is already happening, then a lot has been crossed here," Yankiv pointed out.

Separately, she drew attention to the factor of publicity. In the case of public figures, the situation can be complicated by the need to maintain an image of a happy and successful life. Due to multitasking, raising children, work, and the desire to keep up a "good picture," a person may fail to notice or may justify for a long time what seems obvious from the outside. This does not mean that public status automatically makes a relationship unhealthy, but it creates an additional barrier to an honest self-assessment of the situation.

Contradictory data

It is important to emphasize: all claims about financial schemes, infidelities, and manipulations voiced by Anastasiia Skalnitska are her personal version. The ex-husband's position is absent from open sources, and neither party has confirmed or refuted specific episodes in a format that could be independently verified. Psychotherapist Bogdana Yankiv, in turn, did not pass judgment on the facts of a specific marriage, but analyzed the described situation as an illustration of a codependent model. Thus, in the public sphere two levels of information coexist: confirmed expert comments from a specialist and unconfirmed one-sided statements by one of the parties to the conflict.