A few years ago I spoke with a woman in my counselling office about her relationship with her husband who, based on what she told me about his behaviour, was in active addiction. And, his drug-of-choice - his committed love relationship - was with alcohol.
She had a long litany of stories and experiences to tell me: what it was like to live with a man who drank heavily when they got married ("he always drank - we drank with our friends - but up until a few years ago, he could always handle it. It seemed normal."), and how she saw his relationship with alcohol slowly consume him. She described a family that was repeatedly traumatized (my word, not hers) by his behaviour when he drank - which for awhile now had become virtually every day ("our daughter hates him - she doesn't want to be in our house anymore").
She was desperate for a solution. In her opinion she'd tried everything to make him change. She said she was at the end of her rope ... she needed help ... come to think of it though, she never said that.
Actually, I remember her search for solutions more as a stream of accounts about her husband's bad behaviour, his lies and manipulations .. his defiance and grandiosity ... her fear and anger, anxiety and despair, embarrassment and shame. She really wanted me to agree on what a jerk he was.
"Here I am in counselling and he's at home drinking right now", she said.
What I saw, even more than a solution was her desperate need for affirmation from me that indeed this was an terrible situation. She wanted me to hear and understand very clearly that he was out of control and she was not insane - that she was not what he accused her of being - a controlling bitch who spoiled his life's only pleasure, having a few drinks after a hard day's work.
After about forty minutes of observing her high anxiety and listening to her obvious distress, I began cautiously to shift the conversation from his behaviour to hers.
I asked questions like:
How did you feel when ....?
What did you do when ...?
How did you handle yourself ...?
What was it like for you to .....?
What was that like for you when ...?
However, instead of seeing her become more grounded and reflective (which I'd hoped), the more I asked about her the more distant was her manner ...
In the end I had to give up on my cautious tone and speak more directly.
"It sounds like it's survival time in your marriage. It's time for you to look after you own survival. You've got to stop thinking about him or the ways you can get him to change, and start thinking about yourself ... about your own health and happiness."
She wanted no part of that. All she heard was my advice to leave him. (Did you hear that in my words?)
I was trying to help her see that her happiness did not depend on him changing. She didn't have to leave him to find happiness (on the other hand she might) but in my opinion whether or not to leave him didn't have to be her first concern. What that first concern needed to be was to turn her attention to, and take responsibility for, her own behaviour which was, through and through, enabling behaviour.
Enabling is essentially the inability, or the refusal, to allow another person to experience the consequences of their behaviour.
And what's the payoff for the enabler? They don't have to take responsibility for themselves.
I tried to help her see that turning her attention to herself and her own behaviour (to her self-care) was to stand up to her husband's relationship with alcohol. Being attentive to her own happiness was to live no longer at the service of addiction. It would break the spell and begin to set her and her family free.
As I said, she didn't want any part of it ... we ended the session and parted politely without scheduling a follow-up session. I never saw her again.
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