Maybe I’ll be stating the obvious, but those of us in the mental health biz talk a lot about enabling, and the rule, of course is, DON’T.

Don’t make it easy for someone to stay addicted. Don’t bring him a beer, even if he’s your father and that’s what you’ve always done. If your mother’s half in the bag at your graduation, get really mad at her. Create such a fuss that she thinks, Good golly. I have a problem. I messed up. I better change.

If (s)he is your partner, you don’t go with him to the bar. And if (s)he comes home too late, you lock the bedroom door. If this person becomes violent you leave him. If he neglects you, you leave him. At least that’s what people tell you to do, and they’re right. You don’t deserve it.

But most people can’t just do what other people tell them to do, even if it is the rational thing to do. We’re an emotional lot, we humans, and we form emotional attachments, not rational attachments, and we can’t just break them because we know they aren’t good for us.

And a lot of people are hoping that an addicted partner will change, eventually. How long could a person stand to be addicted, after all?

It’s got to wear a body down.

Anyway, I’ve watched these relationships progress, what are called co-dependent relationships, and if the healthier partner (let’s just say, the one who isn’t addicted) works at self-growth and fulfillment, vocation, avocation, education, or community service, then after awhile, the partner, the one who is dependent upon a substance, begins to look really lame.

Improve yourself enough and you lose the love, so to speak, the emotional spark, the gooey, inexplicably needy, lovin’ feeling. It goes away with something I like to think is self-esteem.

Not always possible, sure, but always worth the trip, self-esteem. Sometimes worth it to work on it in therapy, is the truth.

I’ll tell you one thing. If you’re doing that, working on yourself, maybe finding new hobbies, getting more education, socializing and helping others, getting outside the relationship and flourishing, then you really will look at your dependent and think, What IS taking him/her so long?

And you look around and other people don’t seem to be waiting this interminable wait, this stay of execution for the dependent, and you think, I could be like them, free to date someone, free to drink socially if I want, without the fear that I’m giving permission to my partner to get hammered; free of a lot of things, sloppy drunkenness, poverty, a partner with failing health, all kinds of wretched corollaries of addiction.

And the world looks like a much better, happier place.

therapydoc