Peeling that is not appealing

Onion

Delving into CoDA's pamphlet, "Peeling the Onion: Characteristics of Codependents Revisited," as an adjunct to doing Steps 1-3 out of the CoDA step and tradition workbook. 

The goal of this booklet: "In order to gain a deeper understanding of our codependency, we look inward, continuing the emotional work of "peeling the onion." The onion represents the pain of our childhoods and the realization of how this has adversely impacted the very fiber of our lives. Our goal is to gently arrive at a new level of understanding of the pain we still carry, but have not yet been "recovered" enough to approach until now."

It's an...appealing image (haha), and it resonates with my past experiences doing step work, where, over the four times that I have taken that trip, the process has gone "deeper" each time. It's hard to explain exactly what "deeper" means in this regard, but I know it when I feel it. Part of it, for sure, is the willingness to look at aspects of the self and my personal history that I didn't look at in prior trips. There's also been a repeated experience of being able to see clearly the significance of various events in my life. 

I had been meaning to work closely with this little booklet for a long time. It's a funny one in the CoDA groups, because whenever anyone suggests "hey, let's read from 'Peeling the Onion'" at a literature meeting, many others groan or roll their eyes or express discomfort with how heavy and intense it is. 

Lo and behold, as a big old segue from Gorski, the first section of the booklet is about relationship addiction. The main aspects outlined here are:

1. Fear of not being enough

2. Fear of our feelings

3. Fear of being alone

1. For me, personally, this has always been a powerfully toxic hook. Women paying attention to me, admiring me, wanting me and falling in love with me have played an important part of my being reassured that I am an okay man. That I am enough. When I have been betrayed sexually, it has probably stabbed the deepest around my insecurities- that I am not enough. It was pointed out to me by the counselor several months ago that my imagination of a sexual partner cheating on me with another man always depicts their sex as far more mind blowing, powerful, and pleasurable than the sex she was having with me. That's revealing, for sure, especially considering how rarely the same has been true for me. Usually, betrayal sex that I have had is sort of sad, lonely, shabby, perfunctory, has a little bit of a desperate quality to it and does not in the least provide me with the boost or sense of "being enough" that I am looking for. 

2. The booklet elucidates: "We may engage in inappropriate behaviors to avoid painful and overwhelming feelings. In sex addiction, we may use sexual acts such as extramarital affairs, going to strip clubs, use of porn, or excessive masturbation rather than experience our feelings. As shame-based adults, we fear true intimacy, afraid of being engulfed or controlled by our partner. Instead, through sexually acting out, we control and manipulate others." There's more, but that's a great start. It's always weird how a lot of defenses go up around all of this, or how people say it is sex negative, or shaming in itself. I think this is because people miss the key point: all of these acting out behaviors are *to avoid feeling our feelings*. It's exactly the same as getting drunk, or eating sugar, or gambling. We use sex and romance to avoid having an authentic encounter with our own emotional life. 

3. fear of being alone often haunts me immediately after social interaction- sometimes it is at its worst right after an AA or CoDA meeting, for example. "In relationship addiction, we stay in the relationship no matter how unsatisfying, because we cannot tolerate being alone. We are afraid of change, do not know how to let go, or how to move on with our lives unless we have another relationship lined up." Again, there's more, but that has definitely been operative for me at times in my life. It isn't operating now- a couple of women have been flirty or outright said they wanted to "date" and I am not into it, nope, nope, nope. When U ended our romance back in December, I worked on not pursuing her, asking her to rethink her decision or trying to force us back together, although our interactions rekindled the flames a few times and I did try to rekindle things a couple times. I do look back on those interactions and feel like I could have had better boundaries and respected hers more. She definitely has an undoing effect on my resolve, if we get close. But it hasn't felt addictive. It's been painful, but there's been letting go and a sense of re-establishing the ground of simply being friends and not "coloring outside the lines." 

Fear of being alone oddly enough sometimes enforces my isolation, since it is a lot more emotionally stable to be consistently alone and, as a result, not experience the let down of re-entering alone time. 

The next section of the booklet outlines something Gorski doesn't even touch on, and an entire set of behaviors that actually get a lot of praise both from our culture and from people in other 12 step programs: Relationship Avoidance. One of the things that appeals to me about CoDA is that it acknowledges that a form of codependency that is equally painful as over-attachment is what is sometimes called "codependency anorexia," the complete elimination of all intimacy or connection from our hearts. The booklet outlines it this way:

1. Love anorexia

2. Sexual anorexia

3. Relationship anorexia

4. Fear of intimacy

The three anorexias are fairly obvious, just from their names. Causes that are suggested include having had parents with terrible boundaries who got their emotional needs met through us as surrogate partners, sexual abuse, sexual shame, promiscuous parents (especially of the same sex as us) whom we observed and resolved not to be like, and, in regard to relationship anorexia, we tend to practice all sorts of avoidance behavior in an attempt not to become attached, and to protect ourselves from being hurt. 

I'm as much an avoidant person as I am addicted, it seems, with sharp oscillations between these maladaptive strategies. Women have been frustrated by my tendency to be wide open emotionally at the beginning, but then to gradually withdraw and become, ultimately, completely inaccessible. I definitely have tried to avoid intimacy while still "being in love" and having a sexual relationship. As much as I rush in passionately, I also fearfully hold back and avoid interaction. It's been a real yo-yo pattern for decades. 

Fear of intimacy is shame-based. If intimacy is defined as sharing vulnerabilities and needs, the fear is stirred by my vulnerability and needs having been shamed when I was a kid. It was true that all emotions were inconvenient in my family system, and I feel I was shamed for feeling and for being "too sensitive." It can sometimes actually feel physically painful when I contemplate a romantic partner actually seeing me- my opening up and being vulnerable. In particular, this jumps into fierce and walled-off operation around "negative feelings" such as loneliness, jealousy, anger and boredom. I do have the kind of "soft male" background of "being in touch with my feelings" with women when it comes to more romantic emotions such as sadness, tenderness, ardor, joy, etc. But the real gritty intimacy of being honest about the dark shit, I have tended to avoid. 

After this primer on relationship addiction and avoidance, the booklet goes back through the patterns and characteristics of codependents (outlined here) but with more detailed stories and examples. I already did some inventory around this, and wrote about it on this blog, although at the moment I can't find those posts. I'll have to go back and find them because I think my writing was fairly exhaustive at the time. 

Having looked back over the descriptions of relationship addiction and avoidance, I can clearly see two years of CoDA progress in many of my reactions to situations involving sex, love, romance and communication. For one thing, I have gotten at least a tad better at creating space.