Actions and words

I have this way of judging people as "bad communicators" when they perhaps rely on behavior to do their talking for them, instead of using words to explain their behavior. For example, I have a lot of judgment about feeling like I am being ghosted. I always want to pursue the person and find out what is going on. Of course, if I am being ghosted, I am always free to take my power back by removing myself from caring. Not so easy for me, however. 

I recently posted something on Facebook from an Instagram account called Truth Potato- silly thing where a potato speaks "hard truths." This one said "No one is too busy to respond to you." I was struck by a young woman's reply (and U's heart reaction) that this attitude was "bordering on incel," and her assertion that "no one is entitled to my time." This is obviously true- no one is entitled to my time. I don't think the truth of it makes for a very happy way to operate in the world, however. The fucking potato was not saying "no one is too busy to interact with you and get into a conversation, or go out to have coffee with you." Of course, we are often too busy for those things. The key word in the stupid meme is "respond." Just say "I'm overwhelmed, tired and don't have time. Thanks for contacting me though. Maybe we can connect later." Or even more boldly "I just don't want to be in communication with you right now. Thanks though." It's funny/painful when someone we care about says "I'm too busy" but has all the time in the world for interacting with others, apparently. 

No one may be entitled to my time, but there are people who are worth it because of what they mean to me, the gifts that have already been exchanged, the trust on which we are operating. If I suddenly find myself adopting the attitude of feeling they are an imposition or a burden, what is going on? Maybe they seem to expect too much from me. Can I just say that to them? If not, why not? Maybe I am not interested in them anymore and find them boring or have lost my desire to be in interaction with them. Could I say that in some compassionate way? Simply disappearing definitely says it. But it says a lot- most of it probably fictional. It's weird how there is this dagger-like ability of people who ghost to choose people to ghost who are probably the worst people to ghost. 

I've ghosted women, for sure. In particular, about a decade ago, after the breakup with the Poetess. Here was my thinking at the time: every time we are in contact, it seems to hurt her. Also, she keeps bringing up how much she wants us to get back together. I feel like shit after these interactions and I think she does too. So I'll just totally ignore her and I bet she'll get over me and move on. 

That's a rationale for sure, but it leaves out a very important piece: the intermediate communication of saying, directly to her: "I feel like every time we interact, it is painful for you. I don't feel we are going to get back together, and my perception is you keep hoping we are and our contact makes it worse. The situation has me thinking maybe total disconnection between us would be best, at least for a while?" No- instead- just the cruel and indifferent-seeming silence, which is itself a lie, because during the time I was totally ghosting her, of course I thought of her and wished her well and would have liked to be friends. Meanwhile, when we finally did talk for a couple hours about a year later, she broke my heart anyway by saying that she used to sit in her place and envision me coming over to visit, and telling her I had been wrong and I wanted to try again. So, what I thought was my best effort to "help her get over me" had zero effect anyway, and may have made things even worse. 

     It's a definite characteristic of my codependency that I unilaterally decide what is best for people and then do that, without even having a conversation with them. One story I am thinking is that U probably thinks that I "would be better off" with less communication. I do not think that is true, and it would be an interesting conversation to have. Edit: the conversation was had, and in fact, I am better off without any communication at all, for however long it takes. This change warrants a whole other post, but that will have to wait. 

However, here's the thing: actions are a very powerful form of communication. Sure, without explanation and exchange, many actions leave it up to us to construct the attendant story, which can be very painful- for me, usually far more painful than just being told the truth. Now, if I could stop at the observation of facts only and cease the storytelling, especially all the ways that the story is a form of me taking everything personally forever and ever, that would be great. I am getting better at it. But it is damned hard. 

I do not read silence well, at all. I am not skilled at cleanly responding to actions without words. I always want to have "the conversation" about "what is going on." But I'm also trying to practice the skill of not pursuing that which retreats from me, but echoing the retreat. It feels outside in, and like a performance I have to force myself to do, and I don't feel skilled at it. 

It reminds me of the Al-Anon saying: get off of their backs, get out of their way, get on with your life. 

So easily said. If someone asked me today what superhero power I would have if I could- it would be that. The power to get off of their backs, get out of their way, get on with my life. 

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. 

In All Our Affairs

Gorski really has me examining everything related to the way I have operated in romantic relationships. I started thinking about a lot of my longer term partnerships and posted this to Facebook yesterday:

The existential drama is a chronic low level tragedy that no one even notices- like Willy Loman although not even worth a play- maybe one of those steely cold and aimless short stories in the New Yorker about apathetic, anomic rich white people cheating on each other with other apathetic anomic white people and not even really caring much when it's discovered.

You can live your own story as best as you are able, or you can play a role in someone else's, and put most of your energy into being the person in their story that they wish they were living. When we make a deal to be the character in someone else's story that makes their (fake) life come true, we might as well go jump off a bridge.

Living your own story whether it "makes other people happy" or not (which we can't fucking do anyway no matter how hard we try) is painful because it means saying fuck you to the world to the degree that the world tries to force you to exist for others and their fantasies and their ideas of what their lives ought to be like.

The latter, being the person someone else needs you to be for their life to look like what they think it should, is the weakest sauce there is, however, and the saddest part of all is that the person for whom you are playing the role in order for their story to be true ultimately does not care about you in the least. You are merely a means to the end of them living what looks like the life they think they should live. You are only useful to the degree that you help them look good to their family and friends, and most of all, to themselves- to the degree that you are helping them live the life they think they should be living. To the degree that you are their good wife, good husband, happy householder, reliable bread winner, to the degree that you keep yourself out of sight at any and all times when revealing anything authentic about yourself would scratch that look good.

Everyone is telling a story with you in it. Even if you are one of their main characters, if you are just a fucking plot device, well, that's misery and loneliness.

Have a great Wednesday!"

Finishing up Gorski's book, it feels like his analysis of "healthy" relationships and their characteristics outline the core beliefs of a combination of the human potential movement, family system therapy, 12 step recovery and cis-heteronormative default monogamous ethics. It's always somewhat of a let down for me when the "solution" for the difficulties in my life ends up feeling relatively shallow. There's so much tautology in the "self help" movement that goes sort of like this: 1. My self is broken. 2. I will benefit from inventorying all the ways my self is broken. 3. Here are the totally reasonable ways my self can fix itself. 4. I am now better. 

None of it works that way, in my experience, at least not reliably. It's too much like the old joke, "doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Well, stop doing that."

For example, Gorski goes back to one of the great and I think shaming and frustrating cliches about relationships and love: "The possibility of healthy intimacy starts with the self, This is a fundamental principle of healthy love. You must first develop a healthy self before you develop a healthy relationship. You will only attract to you for an intimate relationship someone who approximates the level of emotional health that you have yourself. This makes it very difficult."

Yeah, this is fucking bullshit. It's a form of therapy/recovery extortion- because of course, if I just try harder, if I just work harder to "become better," I will finally "attract" the "right person" for me. It's not only dangerous because it sounds so reasonable, it's also toxic. It also leads to all sorts of therapy/recovery manipulation of other people, identifying our own "level" of emotional "health" by measuring other people's. I just do not think life really works very well like this. I think the reality is MESSY, as I have said before, and there is simply no way in hell that I can "work on myself" enough to be "worthy" of a "healthy partner.". 

There are some bits of good advice in Gorski's otherwise disappointing tautologies and platitudes- have a program of recovery for yourself, learn how to get out of relationships, do things together, have a wide circle of individual and couple friends, etc. But these all ring hollow to me- like superficial look good kinds of suggestions. He doesn't mention discovering much, experimenting, risk taking, taking time apart, being sure to directly and honestly encounter each other on a regular basis- making the relationship important. Nowhere, not onece, does he mention being sure to fight, to express anger and sadness, learning how to grieve together, etc. It feels like his version of "healthy" is mostly that the relationship is really not that important, and definitely is not "as important" as one's self is. I think this may or may not be satisfying for superficial people who use relationships as a *part* of their lives, and who are self absorbed enough that all other people, including their primary partner, basically exist *for them*. I find this framework essentially narcissistic and not appealing to me. 

If one's goal in life, however, is to be SAFE, and if "healthy" looks rational, well defined, transactional and can be reasonably explained to others, then a lot of these therapy/recovery ideas of romantic relationships are great. In my experience- and this may well be supported by the evidence of, for example, so many of the therapy/recovery relationship gurus getting divorced, having all kinds of relationship problems, even if they are authentically trying to live their own talk- this intimate partnering is a mystery, risky, an adventure, a huge step toward letting go of control and entering into the whitewater, rather than just canoeing along on a pond. 

"Healthy" for me has to encompass devotion, access to the sacred, to a sense of adventure and story, to the depth of feeling that acknowledges mystery at the core of how we come together, and how we come apart. It feels to me like this adventure is available to all- including traumatized people, codependent people, "dysfunctional" people, etc. And it seems like a shame to me that the suggested remedy for addictive relationships is a reductionist, protective, rationalized framework of reasonable decisions and behaviors. This is already all too black and white, and all too tempting for those of us in recovery who are sometimes tempted to equate our feelings of safety with our feelings of having "gotten it right" or "being healthy." 

At the same time, of course, it feels to me like relationship recovery offers the promise of reduced agony, increased satisfaction. It feels like there are a lot of ways to have a healthy relationship, some of which, or some phases of which, do indeed involve the kind of rationalist clarity that Gorski and others offer. But too much sanity is insanity, and to think I can lead much of a fulfilling and rich life according to rule based or diminishing behaviors seems delusional. 

I think, ultimately, what is even more helpful for people to learn is the range of skills necessary to adventurously navigate the irrationality, unpredictability, mysterious secrets, inexplicable passion, feeling of destiny, adoration, devotion, attention, heartbreak, fear and basic insanity of intimacy. Instead of trying to bleach it all out through perfectly reasonable suggestions, let's assume we simply embrace the entire huge fucking mess, and what we really need to learn is how to navigate that with skill, compassion, tenderness and enthusiasm. That seems truly healthy to me. 

Gorski and yet more Gorski- part 4- of 5

I've given myself two more posts to cover Gorski's thinking on addictive relationships, in his booklet "Addictive Relationships: Why Love Goes Wrong in Recovery," because I think there's a lot more specific unpacking I'll be doing around my own patterns, not so much his more general framework. 

Yesterday's post listed the features of an addictive relationship: magical thinking, instant gratification, dishonesty, compulsive and obsessive control, lack of trust, alternating doubts, isolation and a repeating cycle of pain. Aspects of this litany that are lower level or even not operating for me anymore are: magical thinking, instant gratification, alternating doubts, isolation. Items that are huge for me still, presenting serious challenges: dishonest, compulsive control, lack of trust and a repeating cycle of pain. 

remember the good old Karpman drama triangle?

Dishonesty usually has the form he describes- I can't possibly express my authentic self- how I am feeling and thinking, or what I want- because then I won't be loved. I am working with this one. I think all it takes, behaviorally, to break through is to demote other people to being less important than my higher power, my recovery and myself. So other people are 4th on the list, and if they can't or won't love me after I am authentic, then at least I am only losing 4th place, rather than how it feels sometimes- 1st place. This is a sure sign that I have made people my higher power, so to speak, since the very ground of my survival seems to rest on what they think of me, and how they act. 

Compulsive control and lack of trust go hand in hand now. It's a strange feeling that I haven't had to deal with in a long time. I am fraught with the deep suspicion that things are happening that I am not privy to. I often feel gaslighted, by a few different people. This in a context where I have no evidence for any of my suspicions. A clear, direct sign that these are issues that are up for me right now, not situational but emerging from things that happened a long, long time ago. 

The repeating cycle of pain has been alleviated recently, but when it is operating, it consists of connection, followed by disappearance, with my abandonment shit coming up, followed by connection. The outer circumstances are all entirely normal for the most part, just ordinary life and a relationship between friends, for example. But my inner life gets severely buffeted as I am enthused by connection and then feel isolated, alone and abandoned when it disappears. Rather than being a glaring, repeated cycle of pain (such as that arising from abuse), this feels more like my own instability regarding intermittent reinforcement. I take the interaction to heart and I'm uplifted by it and enjoy it- I take the disappearance to heart, and I'm confused and feel lonely. 

The highs and lows have definitely calmed down a lot, a sine wave with a much lower amplitude. I am grateful for that. 

So, as I said in last night's CoDA meeting, I am not in an addictive relationship now, but I could be, and I sometimes feel "half-addicted," with some fragment of old patterns and attitudes at play. 

In the last post from Gorski, I'll look at his concept of a "healthy" relationship. The features are basically the opposite of the above- realistic expectations, delayed gratification, honesty, letting go of control and obsession, voluntary and free-flowing cooperation, social integration and a cycle of deepening contentment. Again, Gorski identifies the major culprit in creating an addictive relationship as sex, especially sexual behavior early in getting to know someone. I disagree, pretty much completely, but I'll have to take a closer look at my values and experiences in that area. Next time. 

The Gospel According to Gorski Part the Third

I am so goddamned in love it's silly. But dealing with the plain  fact that there's no arena for it. This goes to how I always have experienced "romantic" love- as a more general pull to the sacred. Dante and Beatrice always made perfect sense to me, as does Borges and his story The Aleph. In having no human and direct arena for being in love the way I am, I am forced to be creative and find ways to "sublimate" it or whatever. I hate it, to tell the truth. I can change my behavior, and I can redirect my mind as often as I am able, but there's honestly nothing I can do about being in love the way I am. That's how it is. I am by turns frustrated, offended (in that sense of having unwanted feelings fuck with me), tender, yearning, accepting, etc. In my past incarnations, I have tried to control, eradicate, avoid, even going so far as to hate the object of my affections. And all of that manipulative behavior was in response to feelings far, far less powerful than these, where Blake's dictum comes to mind: "Those who restrain their desire do so only because it is weak enough to be restrained." 

Anyway, I am quite sure the good people of recovery would see my heart-state as problematic, to say the least. But maybe many would not. Maybe instead the truth is that I am accepting what I can't change, that I have the courage to change what I can, and that I'm developing the wisdom to know the difference. Maybe sometimes we grow the most in the most uncomfortable and seemingly irrational fires. 

Back to Gorski: statement of the day: "If sexuality is the primary foundation of a relationship it will lead you into a dysfunctional relationship 90 percent of the time." This leads to the typical sex negative lines of thinking around relationships that I often find shaming, dismissive, white cis, heteronormative and with a default set of unexamined values that underpin a lot of the "help" that's on offer. On the other hand, certainly for me, an aspect of intense involvement from early stages of relationships with women arises out of early sexual engagement. I have always had a more culturally "feminine" experience of the connection between sex and emotions, finding it difficult not to become emotionally atached to women if we've had sex. I am told many men, and people in general, do not experience any necessarily intense emotional bond with people with whom they have sex, and that interests me. In my active sex addiction at a low bottom in connection also with a conflagration of alcoholism, when I was seeing sex workers, I even romanticized them. I seem wired that sex and "girlfriend" go together, and found it amusing that some sex workers actually sell something the abbreviation for which is "GFE," that is, "girlfriend experience." 

So I do get a lot of the cautionary wisdom about sex. I have never employed such wisdom in my behavior however. And in my current case of being in love with the woman I know intuitively is the love of my life (cynicism be damned), it would not have mattered- gradual acquaintance leading to deeper intimacy or sudden intense conflagration, it would have al led to the exact same place. There may or may not be other reasons sexual behavior was damaging for her and me, but the timing or spacing out of it absolutely does not come into play.

Again, I feel like there's wisdom and then there's just what people do. Sometimes we are wise, and sometimes we hide behind wisdom or morality or ethics in order to avoid terrifying changes that might actually be great for us. Sometimes we just do our best and mess shit up and grow as much as possible as a result. It seems funny to me in a larger sense that the emphasis Groski puts on this process is "staying safe," when it seems to me that no matter what, this stuff is never, ever safe. It's painful by necessity. That doesn't mean we ought to dump a shit ton of kerosene on what is already risky by nature, of course, but it does mean that the stately, slow development of a romantic relationship arising from a gradual experience of the other levels- superficial to companionship to friendship to sex- is going to be "safe." I mentioned to a friend of mine, a woman I've known for 25 years, that maybe I should wait to get sexual with potential partners, take it more slowly and really become friends first. She said "Sounds nice in theory, but what if you are sexually incompatible? I like to find out fright away if that basic absolute necessity is there." There's wisdom in this also.

Having said that, for now I will list Gorski's characteristics of an addictive relationship, and leave a lot of the exploration of these ideas for another post, because I have to get back to work. 

1. Magical or unrealistic expectations
2. Instant gratification
3. Dishonesty
4. Compulsive and obsessive overcontrol or avoidance
5. Lack of trust
6. Alternating criticism of partner or self
7. Isolation (of the two people together- isolation of the relationship)
8. A repeating cycle of pain

Definitely a painful list, absolutely familiar to me from years of experience. I think the most glaring things for me at the moment are dishonesty- the tendency to not express what I am actually thinking and feeling when I sense something is at stake- and lack of trust- this is nearly universal for me right now. I have been experiencing truly a lack of trust in the entire universe for the past two years, basically. It manifests in specific ways of course, but it is a global feeling that nothing whatsoever has my back. 

More when able. For now, this from one of my all time favorite writers:

"I took the Metro to Cité. I walked past Notre-Dame and thought of the hunchback Quasimodo swinging his misshapen body across the bell-ropes of love for Esmerelda. Quasimodo was a deaf mute. Cupid is blind. Freud called love an "overestimation of the object." But I would swing through the ringing world for you."


~ Jeanette Winterson, from 'All I Know About Gertrude Stein"

The Gospel According to Gorski, pt. 2

I am feeling incredibly irascible, disappointed and frustrated today, so it's a good day to do things besides the internet and social media, where I often find even more reasons to be agitated. But I've got a certain momentum around Gorski's "Addictive Relationships: Why Love Goes Wrong in Recovery," and the energy is more cathartic than annoying, so here I am. 

The next section of Gorski's talk is about levels of relationship. He says: "People from dysfunctional families often fail to recognize that healthy relationships can operate on a number of different levels. Problems occur when one person is operating at one level of a relationship and the other person is operating at a different level of relationship." Connected to this idea is the extreme nature of a lot of relationships that people from dysfunctional families get into, which Gorski calls "pain and abandonment." "Most people from dysfunctional families learn early on that they have two relationship options: intense painful involvement or isolation and abandonment. 'I can choose to be totally dysfunctional and intensely involved with a human being until it hurts so bad I can't stand it or I can be so completely alone that I hurt so bad I can't stand it.' Life becomes a vacillation between painful loneliness and painful involvement."

So a few words on that pattern, which is certainly true for me at various times and to varying degrees, although somewhat less so after two years of CoDA. Primarily, at this point, what comes up for me regarding this black and white situation of loneliness or enmeshment is that I miss a lot of cues, or misread things. Since involvement is totally consuming for me, I misinterpret when people are interested in a much less intense connection. And since I feel like the way to protect myself is isolation, I miss chances for new, looser connections with people on a variety of levels. More on that in a minute, around Gorski's idea of "levels" of relationship. 

Another aspect to this extremism is that, in a kind of Hegelian dialectic (oooh fancy), every involvement contains a seed of terror in it, because I expect to be abandoned and to suffer, and a lot of alone time contains a seed of terror in it, because I expect I will never be involved again if I stay alone. No intimacy, from this perspective, exists on any solid ground, because it is always either a terrible risk or an agonizing lack. Much as Bill W outlines on page 53 of the 12 and 12, there is no chance for a legitimate meeting of another separate person within this extreme context. I am quite glad that I no longer exist in such a stark place, while recognizing of course that there is more growth for me around these extremes. Probably in the triage of early recovery in CoDA, the very first thing I experienced was an amelioration of this black and white world. When it kicks in again now it is instantly recognizable and I know right away that I need to get into self care around it. 

Here are Gorski's levels of relationship with a paraphrase of their chief features:

1. Superficial involvement: casual interaction, no investment and no commitment, temporary associations, situational interactions. 

2. Companionship: this is where the activity is more important than the person. For example, when I want to go to a movie but want someone to go with me, so I ask. If they say they don't want to go to a movie, I'm not likely to change my plans- because the activity is more important than the other person. 

3. Friendship: the person is more important than the activity. The association of two people for the purpose of mutual support and enjoyment of each other, as Gorski puts it. 

4. Romantic love: "This is a friendship in which there is shared passion, sensuality and sexuality." I found this definition of his to be nice and clear, very rational, and rather idealistic, but whatever. 

I am not very good at companionship, really. I have been okay at superficial relationships, such as with colleagues with whom I rarely interact, or people on a rafting trip, or on an airplane. I am fairly skilled at conversation and small talk, although I sometimes have the habit, less often now, of immediately taking the conversation someplace heavy and over-sharing. But companionship is an area where I lack skill, for the most part. In fact, when I read his description that the activity is more important than the person, I felt a sense of moral qualm. That is selfish and unfair, I thought. So one way I fail at companionship is I pretend it's friendship, I pretend to be more interested in the person than the activity, and I "compromise" a lot more often than I probably could. 

Friendship is truly hit or miss for me. I recognized about ten years ago that the hardest part about breaking up with romantic partners was missing their friendship. I didn't even realize how much I valued the friendship, for many years. My sexual frustration, boredom, emotional dishonesty and other destructive tendencies with romantic partners made it seem like the friendship wasn't really that important. It's also instructive to see that many of my long term partnerships became all about companionship, almost exclusively. It's interesting how partnerships have gone from romantic, to friendship, to companionship and even to superficial relating, over time. Like housemates. Barely even excited to see each other, if not flat out dreading it and avoiding. It has felt like it is a long, long road back to romantic partners, once that companionship or superficial relating has settled in. Well, not just a long way- but you can't get back to there from here. 

Gorski's definition of romantic love seems "healthy" to me but I must admit I have not experienced it as reflected in hsi definition for long periods of time. Of course this is where so much dysfunctional learned behavior arises for me. But I also feel like his definition is altogether too simple and pat. The evangelical nature of a lot of this family system stuff, rearing its head again. He also has some quiet strands of moralism underpinning some of his thinking here, especially in regard to sex with people other than romantic partners. The endless and everpresent emphasis on heteronormative monogamy in a context of commitment is a huge part of so much recovery literature. I reject it flat out. The default assumption that this is the goal of relationship recovery anoys me, as does the unexamined axiom that being able to sustain a "healthy long term committed monogamous relationship" is the pinnacle of sanity and skill and the key to happiness. I guess a lot of people get into relationship recovery because this is what they want and they suffer from being unable to do it. This was not my motive. 

However, when I think about many of my social interactions and romantic relationships, it occurs to me there are areas of glaring lack of discernment and skill. For example, I do not have many friends. Currently, all of my recovery people are companions, in the sense that recovery is more important than they are. I do a lot of superficial interaction on social media, but there's a pull in some of that toward a "deeper connection." I think some of the women I have ended up in long term relationships with just wanted a sexual companion, where sex was more important than I was, and I misread them. I think this was true for me as well, many times. I guess this is when I have felt used, or they have felt used- meaning, one or the other of us thought we were romantic partners, but we were not, authentically. I have been friends with a lot of women, but there are many ways I have expected more from that friendship, on an emotional level, than was reasonable. Many other patterns come to mind in regard to what I'll call "misleveling" of the nature of relationships. 

This misleveling of course can occur within a long term relationship as well, where on a given evening, for example, what a person wants is companionship and what the other person wants is friendship or romance, etc. One of the common patterns in the last year or so with A was that she wanted friendship/romance and I was withdrawing, not even really wanting companionship. What level of a relationship is it when you don't even want to be there at times? Normal and natural I would say, something all of us seem to experience, as long as re-connection and communication is still possible. But my extremism has often kicked in, where any separation feels like abandonment and leads to over-protective isolation, sometimes under the same roof. The housemate situation again. 

The idea of finding levels between total isolation and extreme involvement appeals to me, of course, and my recovery community has offered a lot of experiences along those lines. I'll be reflecting on exactly what kinds and levels of relationship I am truly most interested in and if I am not experiencing that, why not? And if I am, to what degree and in what ways? 

The idea that we have a choice of how to relate with others, at what level, and for what purposes is honestly new to me. 

The Gospel According to Gorski pt. 1

Working my way through steps in CoDA, with the additional reading of Terry Gorski's classic "Addictive Relationships: Why Love Goes Wrong in Recovery." Gorski pulls no punches, leaves no room for much grey area, and has all the fervor of a lot of the family system and relationship therapists of the '90's. I think, historically, the "discovery" of the structural causes of relationship dysfunction, arising from the dysfunctional family, was such a supernova of epiphany that a lot of people went extremely hard to the black or white thinking around all of it. There's an undercurrent of ideology to some of it that I find obvious now, but when Bradshaw had his show "Bradshaw: On the Family" on PBS, I found it riveting and I was a true believer. It is probably ultimately a good thing that a lot of the framework is blunt and leaves little room for middle ground, since our denial around these realities can be so intense. Having the bullshit stripped away is painful- which reminds me of what A used to say to her son when she was going to remove a bandaid- "do you want the slow pull or the fast pull?" He would always choose the fast pull, which always made sense to me. Why not get it over with?

Gorski doesn't address denial very much in this little pamphlet, but I've thought and encountered the following stonewalling pushbacks in myself and others when it comes to doing family of origin work: "They did the best they could." "They were better than their own parents were." "You never lacked for anything- food, clothing, school." "I was a spoiled brat anyway and deserved the punishment I got." "Sure, this is all true, but it's universally true- get over it." Or even just flat out: "wow, it sounds like we grew up in different families," from siblings. Their rosy picture is met with my litany of emotional and intellectual abuse. They may be right and I may have fabricated all of it, who knows? The plain fact is that it is true for me, and I decided back in the '90's not to be gaslighted about it, although I didn't think of it that way at the time. 

Another side note on a lot of family system things- extraordinary efforts went into dismantling a lot of my inherited toxicity from my family of origin, from about 1987 to roughly 1997, on and off, but none of that work got me sober. In fact, I was somehow able to navigate intense explorations of how I had swallowed hook line and sinker the bullshit of my family system but without ever even questioning my drinking or relationship addictions. This experience leads me to believe that sobriety *has to come first*- there has to be a baseline of the essential principles of sobriety in recovery before family system work can have much overlap with recovery, for an addict. This is just my opinion of course. Few people really talk about this, that I am aware of. And a lot of family system therapies seem to me to not be particularly behavioral, and so it would be possible to "gain insight" into a ton of dysfunction without *changing a single thing* about how one operates. 

Gorski outlines "the relationship process" in the following steps:

1. go into yourself and know what you are feeling and experiencing.
2. Articulate that experience responsibly to your partner
3. Listen to their response. 

Repeat, and/or be open to many variations.

I don't know about you, but this is a ridiculously rational framework for relationships, from my perspective. Jung talks about the encounter with another human being as fucking ALCHEMY for God's sake- both people are transformed- like a chemical reaction. I wonder what I would have said, or what I would say, if someone said to me "what is the relationship process, in your opinion?" 

Here's an attempt:

A relationship is where two people trigger each other's unconscious strengths and weaknesses and engage in a shared enterprise to make the unconscious conscious through a series of painful projections and owning those projections. Relationships are mysterious and fraught with risk and we are changed by them in ways that we never expect going in. Since we are all essentially not trustworthy, all relationships are essentially risky and probably foolish, and to be intimate with someone is to invite them to hurt us or even destroy us to the core. However, relationships are the main way we access the truth about ourselves and learn, grow and change. 

So you can clearly see that I load relationships with a lot more than what Gorski is talking about. I exaggerated a few of those items based on pre-CoDA world view- but some of the basic outline is still there. 

I would say that my actual behavior around even the very first step- examining myself and knowing what I am feeling and finding a way to speak it- is a short circuit and a catastrophe for me a lot of the time. I spend or at least uysed to spend a shit ton of energy trying to figure myself out. I also used to strategize and censor myself a lot, even unconsciously. Let's say I look inside and discover I am angry with my partner. Oh fuck no. I am in no way shape or form going to express that. Not even in a responsible way. So right at the very beginning, I am already looking for ways to short circuit Gorski's framework. 

A few things that are apparent in the Gorski paradigm:

1. Clean and clear boundaries. I investigate my own experience enough to know it and own it and be able to communicate it. 
2. I commnicate it using I statements and taking ownership for it. 
3. I stay open and willing to hearing what my partner says in response. 

There is a very strong sense of two separate people engaging in a fairly well delimited exchange. The other person does not get put in a position of feeling causal in my experience or like he or she has to fix me or say or do anything to change how I feel. I am not asking for the other person to change, only to listen and validate. 

I'll be thinking a lot about this framework. I will confidently say that I had zero experience of this kind of well-delimited and safe, reasonable, open minded and attentive exchange in my family of origin. My memory is that it was not only rare, but literally non-existent, ever, at any time. And I can dimly see where some more well skilled partners of mind have expected it, and have gotten some very strange and confusing shenanigans from me instead. 

Fifteen and acting like it

Today marks 15 years since I went into total abstinence from drugs and alcohol- got sober- started this strange other life. Or it started me. At the Big Book study meeting I go to every Wednesday evening, we were talking about the paradox: the universe gets us sober, keeps us sober (some people call it God- I do not)- yet there is a lot of "work" we have to do to get sober, to stay sober. It's only a stark paradox if one forgets that there is no difference between the universe and me, in any significant sense. 

The Buddhist path to recovery has had me considering more regularly that I am not the one who is sober, because I don't exist, so to speak. It certainly feels like I exist, especially in misery and suffering, or the dull fact of boredom, or the electrical fire of anxiety. But, instead of the gentle, nurturing and surrounding feeling of a loving God, the past year or so has more been characterized by relief through emptiness. 

I'll take it wherever I can get it. 

Anyway, as I turn 15, it becomes more and more clear to me that the serious issues I have now are with sexual, romantic and intimate relationships. These have always been a thorn in my side, since a very young age- maybe 13 or so, maybe younger. Most of the major suffering, sense of hopelessness, desperation, isolation, abandonment, exhilaration, joy, rightness and solidity of my life is attributable to romantic involvement. From the first girlfriend (where the two of us were talking about getting married and having children after being together for four months, when I was 17), to my current life, the longest stretch of time that I have been single has been nine months. 

Slowly getting into relationship recovery over the past two years, after a while of being engaged in it (no pun intended) back in 2010, has been eye opening. It's also been interesting to see how all of my relationships, even the non-romantic ones, such as those with colleagues, friends, people in AA or CoDA, etc, have been problematic for years. More on all of this going forward into year 16 of sobriety, where the new intention is for emotional sobriety and well being. 

I saw Dr. O for the first time in six months today, and told him I was not feeling resilient in the face of the loss of U, eye surgeries, prostate cancer, the challenges of finishing the dissertation. Contrary to what many people say about "Big Pharma" he did not suggest any new medication. In fact, he said it sounded normal and situational for me to be wrecked a lot of the time right now. He recommended I take it easy, he reduced the dose of buproprion to 150 mg extended release a day, and he referred me to a counselor. "You need to talk this stuff out more. Check back in, and if your circumstances have improved but you are still feeling awful, let's talk about meds." I found this incredibly reassuring on many levels. I have been beating myself up a lot lately for having feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, resignation, hopelessness, fear and resentment. The appointment and his advice puts it in perspective and helps me get a sense of my current situation. 

As I have been saying, sometimes maybe whistling past the graveyard, the emotional turmoil that I am in these days seems proportional to the combination of health issues, grief, constant failure at the PhD and loneliness. 

Meanwhile I embarked on a deep cleaning of my place this morning, and have a lot more of that to go. Getting ready to move at the end of July. I guess if I'm preparing at the beginning of April, I'm ready to get moving. I felt a certain amount of rebellious anger at depression this morning, recognizing the ways in which I have been under water the past few months. Barely, functionally dysfunctional. 

By the basic rule of three degrees applying and two degrees departing, today also marks the beginning of my second Saturn return, with Saturn at 20 degrees 15 minutes Capricorn and at 23 degrees 17 minutes in my natal chart. The mythology around the first Saturn return is heavy indeed- limitation, restriction, The Tower collapsing because of unstable structures, tough transitions, accepting heavy responsibilities, etc- largely due to its timing around age 27 to 29 or so. In fact my first Saturn return roughly coincides with my trip to inpatient rehab. So it's a very special sobriety anniversary this year, and I think the second Saturn return will be good for me. There is less mythology around the second (or third for that matter), but the positive elements of structure, taking stock, taking inventory, consolidating, getting ride of broken or useless things, protecting myself and finding ways to engage in being a hermit all sound okay with me, considering the wildness and weirdness of the Pluto mythology that's been in the air. From Hades to Chronos, maybe a good thing? Let's hope I don't look too appetizing. 

I've been reading Gorski's booklet, a transcription of an Adult Children of Alcoholics talk he gave in 1993, called "Addictive Relationships: Why Love Goes Wrong in Recovery." While he is awfully black and white concerning matters of the heart that in my opinion by necessity are messy, confusing and often painful, I'm being challenged by his framework- which is basically a recycling of John Bradshaw and, extending further back in the lineage, to Erik Erickson. 

When he was invited to give the talk, he was asked to focus it on his idea of the answer to this question: "What is normal in a relationship?" His first approach was to go back to a more fundamental question: "How many people in America come from basically functional families?" His definition of a functional family:
"A functional family of origin is a family unit or home that basically equips a child with the necessary emotional, intellectual, and relationship skills to deal with life as an adolescent and as an adult. In a functional family, we learn to recognize what we feel, put labels on our feelings, and then tell other people about the feelings. Conversely, we gain the capacity to care about what others feel, to listen to their feelings, to respond to them. 

A functional family also prepares children to cope intellectually with the world. It teaches them to think clearly and accurately without major denial. It teaches them to see reality more or less for what it is. And, finally, a healthy family teaches children how to relate in a productive manner through relationships with other human beings."

He estimates that about 20% of people have a functional family of origin. So any effort to find healthy and loving relationships is truly an effort to be abnormal in our culture, not normal. It is to find ways to be abnormally functional, "healthy" and capable of intimacy. I put the word "healthy" in scare quotes because I dislike the connotations. This is where I mildly depart from a lot of the black and white proclamations of Gorski and other helpers- I think it is perfectly alright to be dysfunctional and functional, both. I think, realistically, we are a mix of unskilled, unconscious patterns and skilled, capable responses which we have practiced. I think being in love with someone is bound to be messy and painful, and I don't think that is "unhealthy" or dysfunctional. I think some of the most beautiful, alive, vital and transforming experiences of my life have happened in that mess, chaos, intensity and mutual seeing with another human being. The recovery community can be intensely cynical and dismissive of romantic love. 

At the same time, we grow and become more capable of reliable, trustworthy and true experiences. So to say, well, this is healthy and that is unhealthy- I find that emotionally shallow, shaming and an all too easy judgment to make when one is not in the maelstrom of fucking loving someone to goddamned death. I want to be capable of the whole range of love and feeling, but I also want as many skills as I can practice. U asks me, are you sad? I can't tell you how tempted I am to say Oh no, I am FINE. Just fine. How are you? But instead, I say, yeah, I am sad. Not asking you for anything, U, just telling you. Being honest. It's not yours, but our friendship is. 

It seems like it is shaping up to be an interesting year. 

fucking miserable

How's that for enticing clickbait, dear readers?

It's funny that, given the circumstances, people seem surprised when I say I am unhappy. I guess most people don't really want to know. And those close to me are probably sick of the same old same old. I will say this: I am consistent. It is a consistent unhappiness. Reliable and loyal. By my side. 

I have been feeling surges of resentment and anger lately, and I'm reminded that, in Chinese medicine. it's liver season, and the liver is the seat of anger. Supposedly, all the "toxins" (basically alt medicine's equivalent of "demons" or humors") start to clear, but in doing so, one experiences greater than normal levels of irritability and anger, up to and including red eyed fire breathing rage. 

This does happen to me fairly reliably every spring, so who knows. 

There's some kind of weird resignation phrase that has been scrolling across my Jenny Holzer mind a lot lately. "You love someone you can't be with. Big deal. It happens all the time. It happens in a lot of people's lives. That's the breaks kid."

I do find it oddly reassuring. In a despondent, Casablanca-ending sort of noble way? Or something. 

It's CoDA meeting time, so this will be brief. I do see the shrink in a couple days, and I'm toying with the idea of starting Zoloft. I can be on that combo my counselor last year called "Welloft." We shall see. I have had a great many days where simply taking a shower or sort of working in a very slow and painful, desultory way has been excruciatingly difficult. 

Often lately I just want to stay in bed and not get up. Like, all day. Definitely the down turn of the wheel. 

And I can say that I am actually doing better than I was two years ago. I have had a whole flood of memories of the soul killing awfuloness of two years ago the past few weeks, since anniversaries are important to me. I wish I had a shit memory. I wish I weren't sentimental, too, and especially seeming to get emotionally attached to people who just are not sentimental. Or hide it well. But yeah probably just are not. 

Anyway- bring on those 12 promises of CoDA, and thank you! Uh. Any time now. Checks nonexistent watch. Whistles. Sighs. 

Dumbass or Smartyface?

Lately, it's been a manic alternation between those two extremes- feeling like I am completely benighted, unskilled, ill-equipped, totally sailing in the dark; then feeling sharp, insightful, knowledgeable, capable and competent. This is the weird pendulum of the PhD experience for me, especially throughout the dissertation writing process. Although, more accurately, probably 80% of the experience has been that dumbass impostor feeling. My internal critics have been having a field day as I try to hack my way to the finish line of this weird five year hazing process. 

The above figure is the result of the worst case climate change scenario projected out to 2070, for my study species. The red areas indicate range contraction and the very light green areas indicate range expansion. Under this particular scenario, the species loses 53% of its suitable habitat over the next 50 years. This is similar to the population viability assessment I did (and will have to redo), which shows a species very vulnerable to extinction. Not that surprising, given that it is an island isolate under unique climate and soil conditions, and is basically stranded out there. 

Onward to the molecular phylogeny of the group I am studying, finishing that up. Also doing some fancy historical biogeography  and divergence time estimates for the same group. The analysis shows most likely routes of dispersal and radiation of the species, probably from mainland Mexico across the Gulf of California to Baja, although some taxa may have gone up around and then descended into Baja from the north. I have all of the data and almost al of the analysis, and I'ma good portion of the way into the writing, so it's all moving along.

The main thing is to just keep showing upm, even when the critics in my head are telling me my data is shit, my research is shit, my mind is shit andmy whole dissertation is shit, shit , shit. Keep showing up and putting every effort into all of it in the face of all that self-doubt. It is this repeated encounter that I avoided for 30 years, not going to graduate school. 

Daily meditation, twice daily most days, 20 mins in the morning and 20 at night, has been helping tremendously. A friend of mine in Refuge Recovery gave me a zafu, and it seems so official now. Meditating is sometimes the very last thing I want to do but I have been practicing anyway. At first, ten minutes seems to take forever, but now 20 go by fairly quickly. 

CoDA stepwork is still around step one- We admitted we were powerless over others-- that our lives had become unmanageable. I have been doing a written inventory of all the different ways I have tried to have power over others, how I have tried to manage in all of my relationships. It's a long history and clearly a series of failures rooted in unskillful means and impossible expectations, the core of codependent behavior. It's great to get it all down on paper and see the patterns, but it's slow going and painful. 

The thing that wakes me up at 2 or 3 in the morning currently is not having a job or situation for the fall. Now that I finally emerged out of the species distribution modeling chapter that had me in its clutches for months, maybe I can set aside an hour or two every day to putting all of my job materials together and looking. I'd love to find a post doc doing research somewhere. We'll see. 

Meanwhile it's spring, I'm horny af and have no outlet for it, so it's interesting watching that energy ebb and flow. I'm sick of a lot of the weird cycles of thoughts in my head, but I am trying to apply friendly, compassionate and kind openness and patience to myself. It's not easy for me- I have really been noticing how harsh I am to myself, my own worst enemy by far. Sometimes it seems just as bad as it was years ago. Other times it feels like enormous progress., A similar pendulum to the whole dumbass/smartyface thing. Maybe there's a time in my life at some point with more even keel, stable, peaceful sailing. 

That time is not now.