pearlady

I read an excellent blogger that writes about the relationship between women and men and she particularly focuses on a woman being in the fullness of femininity and how that interacts with the dynamic of the male female romantic relationship. Her perspective might not be everyone’s cup of tea but personally I relate to it and benefit from it.

The blog I read today discussed pleasing versus giving. I thought this was an appropriate topic to bring to the forum because I relate it to enabling. The writer states that giving comes from a place of personal pride and you do it without expectation of receiving. Pleasing comes from the place of retaining peace, ‘keeping’ someone, ultimately the pleaser decides to ‘please’ because of a perceived benefit to themselves of doing such.

The writer poses the following activity to get you thinking about what it means to please versus to give:
1) Get out a piece of paper, right now. Write down every decision you have made (or that you can remember) out of a need to please someone in the last month. Next to each of those decisions you’ve listed, write down the consequence of that decision. How did you feel after making that decision?
How did the person you wanted to please react? Did the reaction you wanted last? Did the reaction you hoped for even occur at all.
2) From now on, instead of focusing on how you might ‘upset people’, what you must do in this moment to prevent someone from being unhappy with you, or how you might ‘disappoint people’ or ‘make people dislike you’, start using some new language. As soon as you notice yourself reacting out of fear, ask yourself, what would really benefit me as well as this person right now? What would truly benefit our relationship?
I relate this to how I have been enabling my significant other in terms of his addictions and aside from his addictions. And really it doesn’t make a lot of sense because I am doing the pleasing to help myself honestly but it all ends up to his detriment and MY own detriment. It just prolongs the inevitable- he isn’t going to like me not supporting his addiction and it is better to face the fury now than it is to enable him so as not to have to deal with upsetting him and making the problem worse. I have been doing all of these things out of a place of fear and insecurity- perhaps losing him, upsetting him, not wanting him to leave me. I wasn’t doing these things out of love but instead out of fear. These are my problems. These are not his problems. He has said on a number of occasions that I have done things that I interpreted as giving out of love, but in reality are for myself.

He is right. My addicted loved one has a lot of work to do to get better but I do as well. I have loved because I wanted to be loved in return. I have pleased because I thought it would earn me love. And its not that I do not genuinely feel love, I exist as love but it is that I do not know show it through actions.

Because of being an adult child of an alcoholic and that damaged relationship, it is deeply engrained in me that I am not lovable enough ‘as is’. That’s why I am codependent. I rely on others to establish my value and self-worth. The blogger I read whole-heartedly believes that to truly give love and receive love, a woman must present herself as and be a woman of high-value. And that value is determined by the woman and respected and appreciated by the man. A woman of high-value doesn’t has enough personal pride to truly give.

I have not yet begun my own recovery but this is where I begin.

I am an addict too. Birds of a feather flock together- but can they heal together? Can I expect my significant other to achieve recovery, if I, an equally sick person, have not also done the work to reach my own recovery? I think not.

My addiction doesn’t have the benefit of acting high or smelling like bourbon- so it’s hard to see it for what it is. It is deeply wrapped up in the real and the imagined, in the experienced and the fear of experiencing.

I drink too much, but I am not addicted to alcohol, I occasionally use drugs, but I am not an addicted to drugs, I eat too much but I am not addicted to food. I am addicted to, devoted to, and attached to the idea that I am not enough and the only things that could convince me otherwise is if I am validated by a man’s love (and I am loved but I am constantly trying to get him to prove it), by the man that I am with reaching recovery- because I could not save my dad from himself or connect to him.

It’s a complicated little thing but if I am keeping it simple the fact is this: I want wellness for myself and I want wellness for my significant other. I want to stop denying my own problems and work towards recovery. I want my love to as well. I don’t know that he will. But I must.

These are hard things to admit.

I am trying to untangle a web of defense mechanisms created by a child with poor coping skills.

I read an article that said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but it is connection.