Powerless over Others

I have codependent toxicities in my relating style and I'm grateful to have finally gotten into recovery around that. It's hard for people outside the thermonuclear core of codependency to really get it, I think. I have tried to talk about the debilitating aspects of codependent styles of relating with several different people since I started "working a program" about 6 months ago, and, unsurprisingly, codependent people get it and non-codependent people or people in the usual deep denial either dismiss the whole deal as hogwash or try to make relatively weak analogies in order to understand it. "Oh, I get anxious when she doesn't reply to my texts too." Uh yeah. No. 

If you want to self-diagnose or are curious, check this out and keep in mind that, on a level of needing recovery, the listed behaviors are profoundly powerful, compulsive and cannot be stopped via will power or programs of "self-improvement," or counseling therapy. (Counseling definitely helps, but, for me, a program of recovery has proven to be indispensable). The behaviors arise again and again over years of patterns that, even if you "know" them in a Freudian sense, keep maddeningly re-occurring, causing harm to oneself and others, leading to increasing despair and hopelessness. 

It's a very long list. In all honesty, I can check almost every item off, at a level of daily, persistent, chronic, sometimes acute, compulsive destruction of my relationships. 

I had a conversation with a member of AA about recovery from codependency and he called it a "luxury problem," and suggested that it was nice and all, but that recovery from alcoholism was truly life or death. This attitude is not surprising, even in light of a world littered with corpses of suicides whose relationship miseries took them out by their own hand, or homicides due to same, or all the misery and death that results from acting out the agonizing pain of codependency symptomatically via cycles of emotional and physical abuse, eating disorders, intoxicants, compulsive shopping, relationship anorexia, etc.

I think some of you reading this will be tempted to say "Everyone is codependent!" or some other minimizing or over-generalizing thing. This tends to come from either misunderstanding or denial. Being codependent in one's relationship style is different from normally dysfunctional relating in both quantity and quality, in crucial, identifiable and absolutely separable ways. In this way, codependency is like the difference between a "hard drinker" who can quit on his or her own and a "true alcoholic," who seems to need some kind of program of recovery and assistance in order to stop and stay stopped. 

For example, many people who are not codependent find themselves in an emotionally or even physically abusive relationship. Usually, however, just one. And that's that. They learn, leave and do not repeat. That's proportional to the experience. Someone suffering codependency, however, engages in the usual cycles of either enduring the abuse in one relationship for years or getting into one abusive relationship after another and each time resolving never to do it again. 

Step 1 of CoDA incorporates a single word change from the first step of AA that says it all:

"We admitted we were powerless over others-- that our lives had become unmanageable."

Substituting "others" for "alcohol" has so many profound implications that it is impossible to go into them here. But it at the very least makes clear the dimensions of the recovery issue. 

One of the recent encounters with this disorder involves the text messages from A. Here is a list of thoughts and feelings that these two text messages triggered in me:

"She sounds sad and stressed, maybe I should help her."
"If I had been a better partner, this whole thing would not have happened."
"Her suffering is my fault. Only I can fix it."
"I have abandoned the cats and I should have taken better care of them."
"Maybe if I respond in this or that way, she'll apologize for the suffering she put me through. Maybe she'll want to know what the past 6 months have been like. Maybe there's some way I can get her to ask me about my life."
"I am obligated to respond, I have no choice. I am also obligated to respond as soon as possible. I am also obligated to reassure her in my response somehow."
"I am obligated to take the little cat. I have no choice."
"I should respond by telling her to go fuck herself and never contact me ever again."
"I wonder if I should reply. I wonder what I ought to say. I wonder when I should reply. I wonder if not replying will cause harm. I wonder if replying will cause harm."

brain addicted to trying to have power over others

Brain in the freedom of admitting one is powerless over others.

Of course, depending on what a person is used to in similar situations, maybe some of the above responses seem perfectly normal and proportional to some of you. On the other hand, some of you might be horrified and think they are grotesque. Rest assured that, while they might be understandable, and perhaps as fleeting thoughts they might be harmless, they reflect codependent toxicity and are ways of responding that I no longer want to experience, regardless. I believe, to most "normal" people who function relatively well in relation to others, the above thoughts will seem not only absurd, but quite sick. 

I think part of the resistance to the idea of recovery from codependency is a sort of bottomless resignation to familiar misery. There's a powerful tendency to say something like, "Well, that's just the way relationship are. Neither person ever gets what they want, being a grown up means compromising, happiness is stupid and security is all one can hope for." I know that, many times in my life, I have wanted to cling to known suffering that was comfortable and familiar, rather than embark into the unknown, even if the unknown held the promise of a new freedom and a new happiness-- sometimes, even if the unknown logically had to be better than the misery I was in. I even contemplated staying with A and thought about "trying to work it out," so I am grateful that she just ended it. I had fantasies of moving into the room that was my study in the house, continuing the domestic partnership while she pursued her love affair, continuing to be a father figure for Everett. I guess such an arrangement could work for some people, but my inclination in that direction was born of desperate fear of moving out and being on my own (and, even deeper, the terror I had that stemmed from my unconscious certainty tha I was finally going to have to get help). And, from any sane outside perspective, it was a self-harming, self-hating idea-- not because of the practicalities of it, but because A at that time was abusing me emotionally, ignoring me, treating me like dog shit and really just did not want me around. 

But I want to be if it means I don't have to deal with my own life. 

Falling madly in love while at the same time working a CoDA program has been fascinating. Of course, "program wisdom" says "no new relationships for at least a year," but too bad. Not going to artificially put a lid on a fucking miracle just because of some kind of unnecessary rule following. I wrestled a lot for a few weeks with how falling in love with a woman (who shall for now remain not even named fictionally) was related to my codependency or unrelated to it. I went back and forth about love addiction versus love, affectionate attachment versus codependent over-reliance, etc. One day a few weeks ago I was looking at my 13 year chip and kept reading silently "To Thine Own Self Be True." To thine own self be true. To thine own self be true. And it dawned on me that, letting go into the love I felt for this new person was true. That I was in fact being true to myself. 

And that made it possible to begin to get more clear on what is healthy and loving (the CoDA preamble says "the only requirement for membership in CoDA is a desire for healthy and loving relationships") in this new miraculously enchanting encounter and what is coming from codependency. For example, given the circumstances, it is healthy and loving to not get attached to outcomes, to be supportive of pre-existing realities for myself and her, to be cautious and gentle and not make any too-fast or destructive, impulsive moves, to cultivate fundamental trust, to first think of how to be of service and how to be supportive. For now, the immeasurably valuable opportunity in this experience of love is to learn to be as deep in it as I've ever been in anything but to absolutely let go at the same time. 

In fact, it's only recovery from codependency that even makes this remotely possible. I was dreading that recovery would "take away" my ability to love this person from whom I get so much inspiration, joy, connection with life and beauty, adventure and laughter. But it has become more and more clear that it is recovery that brought it to me and makes it sustainable. On a daily basis, my admission of powerlessness over her is what makes it possible for me to show up.