Original version:

"Él me hablaba cuando se le daba la gana, y cuando no, no. Él nunca me llegó a pegar, pero a veces prefería que me pegara a que me ignorara. Él se sentaba frente al televisor y hacía como si nada más existiera" (S-19, Woman registered on line 19 of the database)

As evidenced in the stories, the women interviewed were being affected by gender violence and affective dependency. Recognizing that "gender violence is an issue that shows patriarchal practices in all its forms of manifestation" (Madera-Hernández and Herrera-López 2010, p. 88), it is assumed that couple relationships are the direct sample of such manifestations of violence. This type of violence, sometimes referred to as marital violence, domestic violence, violence by intimate partner, etc., affects not only women, but their different fields of action, such as family, work, and social (Ocampo and Amar 2011), and therefore it is not a problem that corresponds to singular situations, but a social one, and with multiple factors that interact with each other until inducing crime. These factors are closely related to family life, such as marital violence, physical punishment and affection received from parents, where the interests and/or expectations that bind them to the couple strengthen and maintain these power relationships (González and Santana 2001).

Intimate partner violence is a social problem that affects a large number of women (many without recognizing it as acts of violence), where a higher prevalence of psychological violence rather than physical and sexual violence is observed, and where in many cases they occur simultaneously (Martínez 2003). According to Cantera and Blanch (2010), one cannot ignore the grea<sup>t</sup> influence exerted by social stereotypes on gender (male provider, female caregiver), as promoters of intimate partner violence, given in a patriarchal society that demarcates the norms of action expected of the couple; in other words, women are legitimized to obey and follow the social demands that bind them to their partner in a condition of dependency. In this patriarchal order, norm and justice have been built from the analysis of a male subject that often suppresses the female subject in any of its forms of expression (Almeda 2017).

Estimating the relationship between codependency and female crime implies adding the category of gender violence to the duo. Palma states that, socially, it has been established that women commit crimes that are more related to passive and non-aggressive acts, since they are expected to be the promoters of social or communal good and not, on the contrary, those that affect this security (Palma 2011). This connection of women to the category of the fragile, the careful, and the maternal leads them to be judged by society with moral and exclusive restrictions that are termed as bad, dangerous and harmful. In this line, we could not see the unequal particularities between men and women, without looking at the context in which they are built, since it is in that same context that they change, transform, negotiate and realize the plurality of practices of daily life (Lamas 2003). According to this study, couple relationships are the socio-affective space in which the greatest violent practices take place.

Such violent practices are pronounced in codependent relationships that strengthen over time as a couple's addiction problem also increases; a fact that many times is not recognized by the affected subject. This relationship fluctuates between stable episodes and despair in the face of the disability of not achieving change in their relationship (Noriega and Ramos 2002; Freixa 2000). In this way, codependency is a multicausal problem (as it is spoken of crime), that appears and reproduces in power relations that make women vulnerable. This category is visible in women in prison, which also turns out to be a gender issue. In other words, gender is a discursive e ffect, a result of a set of identity regulatory practices that can face problems due to codependent relationships, which in turn limit them and often lead down wrong paths such as crime (as is the case of the participants in this study).

### *3.3. I Preferred to Remain Silent*

This category is closely related to codependency factor 3: emotional repression. Some women were understanding and accommodating to their partners, did not express their thoughts and emotions out of fear of being rejected or losing control of themselves, or even losing the relationship. As Momeñe et al. (2017) affirm, psychological abuse and difficulties in regulating emotions are predictors of emotional dependence.

"Sometimes I kept quiet to avoid problems ... because I knew that if I started talking I would despair and if I didn't end up crying like crazy, then I did other crazy things ... and he despairs of seeing me cry exasperates him ... " (S-14, Woman registered on line 14 of the database)
