Oh, THAT conversation
But my wife told me that when she originally saw the title she thought it referred to that first conversation between couples when the unhappiness threshold is broached out loud, and it’s finally in the open that the marriage might not last forever.
I chuckled at the shift in perspective, but I didn’t have much to say about that first divorce conversation. A few times, I’ve coached the ones who were initiating their divorce to be kind, respectful, not let the conversation wander into the same old grievances, or get out of hand. Not particularly innovative or creative on my part. There’s no script. More often, I’ve been with clients right after the conversation has happened – devastated, outraged, panicked, but sometimes eerily calm.
I remember a client filling up with tears, out of the blue, when recalling the conversation “many years ago” initiated by his wife that put his marriage officially on the divorce track. He said, “Right after it happened, I told everyone I was totally shocked, never saw it coming, couldn’t really understand why she was doing it. But I was lying to myself – more than to anyone else. I didn’t let myself see – didn’t want to see - how unhappy she was. I’d been on my own roll, and I was too selfish, too immature, and too frightened to deal with it.”
Even my veteran status doesn’t diminish my continual amazement at the power of selective attention to cause an intelligent person to not see what’s at stake – in this case the man’s marriage and family – until it’s much too late.
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Hey Shaun…. been a while eh?
In addiction recovery, we have a saying, “My head has a contract out on my ass”, which refers to the oblivion and harmful thinking that you speak of.
If we let our thoughts meander to things that either overlook our marriage or damage it, then we are living this statement.
Same is true for so many parts of our lives. Health, work, other relationships. For this reason, I see tremendous value in seeking the input of others. This can help us stop the self-destructive patterns of thought/belief and resulting behaviour.
Few people wish to face painful truth about where they are at. Yet is is so valuable. I am glad to have a condition known as addiction that has forced me to seek honesty and reflection of others. Had I not, I would probably be dead now.
Yet in going through the process of having to seek help this way, I discovered that it is similarly helpful for all other aspects of my life (step 12 of the 12 steps… continued to practice the principles in all of our affairs).
Unfortunately, for many, if not most, we do not do meaningful self-examination and then the work to change until we suffer sufficiently for our current ways. It seems to just be the way we humans are.
Ciao.
Chaz
Hey Chaz -
Always good to hear from you.
Over the years, I’ve heard a few addicts, usually the more verbal ones, say something close to what you’re saying: that the enforced, semi-public self-inventory required to be in recovery meant that people who didn’t tend to be very self-reflective (to say the least) were re-experiencing life itself – just by having a few nanoseconds of thinking BEFORE they did something. Amazing.
It’s pretty clear that among the many forms human diversity takes, the tendency to be compulsive occupies a significant piece of the population – seriously hardwired. For that group, thinking about what you’re doing – before you do it – was never really a serious option. And most don’t waste much time looking in the rearview mirror, either. They’re not literally stupid, but not much learning is going on, either.
If an addict survives and actually “works” his or her recovery, they’ve actually gone through the eye of the needle. Truth to tell – they know things about life that many would prefer to let slide.
Most recovering addicts are sadder and wiser, but some are among the happiest people I know.
Welcome back, Chaz!
Shaun
Hi Shaun,
I would like to comment on your comment to Chaz. “Most recovering addicts are sadder and wiser, but some are among the happiest people I know”
This is my story on how divorce affected, and still is affecting my human experience and identity.
Although Im not an addict of substances, Im certainly a relationship addict. I only realised this since my separation and divorce. For weeks I struggled to break the habits that I formed over 7 years of marriage. It was not easy, I also went through many painfull ‘withdrawal’ symptoms.
This process actually broke me down into many pieces, and through determination and will power I worked through my recovery, I managed to ‘get through the eye of the needle’.
But in doing so I uncovered another ‘eye of the needle’ I have to get through….co-dependancy)
I also learned so much about myself, some things very negative, but I put a name to it…co-dependency…now for me this was a break through, it made so many things clearer to me about myself. Whats going to be the challenge is to deal with my co-dependency issues, before I move onto another relationship, otherwise I drag those apples with me.
But my point remains, if I never faced my demons, I would never have found out deep rooted issues about myself, which may have ruined any future relationship I may have. I now have the chance to heal properly, get help and move on in life.
My state of mind right now is ’sadder and wiser’ and Im working on the ‘happiest’, but at least I know what I need to do.
Thanks for the opportunity to share.
Best regards
Richard
Hi Richard-
Welcome back to you, also.
Co-dependency used to be “huge” among Baby Boomers, especially in the 80’s. Practically everyone said their problems came from being the Adult Child of an Alcoholic, or having come from a dysfunctional family.
I remember saying then to colleagues that it would be a shame if it turned out to be only a temporary fad, because the insights surrounding the label come from things that have been true about humans forever.
Having natural empathy, and an intuitive grasp of other peoples’ feelings is a good thing – mostly – but a few degrees of extra intensity, extra investment can become a trap located in the same “brain” territory as other addictions.
I’m impressed with how you’re navigating, Richard. You’re not there yet, but you bring curiosity to yourself in a way that allows you to “see” yourself. I’ve cautioned often – insight alone isn’t enough. It’s the doing – the breaking of the patterns and habits of thinking, feeling, and behaving – that are crucial.
It feels like you’re heading precisely where you need to go.
Please stay in touch!
Warm regards,
Shaun
Richard…. welcome to the dialogue. And thanks for your input.
I can relate to relationship addiction… and codependency. I had engaged in some relationship addiction behaviours with my first wife. It treated her a trophy wife to a large degree. I realized that a lot of the pain I felt in losing her was the fact that I would be giving up a symbol of what people may have perceived as my success by having won and retained someone like her.
It wasn’t until I discovered that I had genuine value independent of her that I really was able to let her go and move forward in life and relationships.
Yet there is another side to this coin that someone wise shared with me the other day. He shared that he thought that the whole co-dependency issue is often over-played and overshadows the importance of inter-dependency and inter-twining with our spouse.
To put it more simply and clearly, the fear of co-dependency seems to steer many of us to be autonomous in our relationships and poise ourselves to remain at a distance such that we can leave a relationship with minimal un-winding from the other person. Which really works against intimacy.
By way of definition, co-dependent would define being incapable of functioning or lacking value in the absence of the other person.
Inter-dependent would mean two healthy people combining synergistically to build a life greater than the sum of the parts.
Inter-dependent by this definition is healthier than co-dependent. Yet both require an intertwining that would be agonizingly painful and complicated to split apart.
So… I wonder if our society for fear of co-dependency (and relationship addiction) avoids healthy inter-depencency. And thereby we miss out on the synergy of a intertwined intimate relationship.
Is that a lot of double-talk or does it make sense?
Shaun? Thoughts?
Ciao.
Chaz
Hi Chaz,
Firstly, thank you for commenting, Ive read your previous conversations with Shaun and enjoyed them thoroughly.
Im at that stage now of trying to see value within myself.
Its not as easy as one would think. Ive been divorced for 4 months and Im still struggling to understand my co-dependency…the “whys,whatfors and how I let myself get into a co-dependent relationship”. I seeing now that Im going to need some professional help on this because its a big mountain to climb on my own.
You raise excellent points and it makes so much sense to me. There is alot of valuable insight there which Im going to gain from, thank you. I cannot add anything more.
I can only learn from mistakes made in the past, and ensure that I dont take the same destructive patterns forward.
Having said that I have a lot of work to carry out on myself, I remain an optimist, and would like to enter into a successful marriage one day where my partner and I can share each others lives, but still remain individuals. I suspect that is the key.
I would enjoy a further conversation, please stay in touch. You sound like a psychologist and I can see how well you and Shaun relate. Unfortunately, I cant put my thoughts down on paper as well as you and Shaun can, but I still enjoy participating and learning.
Kind regards
Richard
Hi to you both-
I want to say right away that this may not be a high-traffic blog, but I’m surely blessed to have such extremely high-quality comments on mine.
Chaz, you and I have never really disagreed on much, but this time it’s almost eerie. In your recent post, partly responding to Richard, you got onto something that has been a personal focus of mine for a long while: co-dependency as opposed to inter-dependency.
In fact, very often with clients I’ve been known to interlace my fingers to give a visual of what I mean about interdependency, as contrasted with co-dependency, and why I think healthy inter-dependency is so fundamentally human we simply shouldn’t try to escape it. Our uniquely-extended, vulnerable period of total dependency as infants and toddlers means that we’ve all had intense feeling states that blend and distort with the emergence of our complex human minds – which is mostly healthy and fine – but which is also loaded with sexuality, fear of abandonment, “fusing” with someone you love and need, aggression, etc.
I always resist going “shrinky” but it’s simply true that many of us invested in our relationships in ways that weren’t very healthy. I remember my eyes getting warm as I “saw” myself, line by line, in what I was reading from that first handout summarizing the elements of co-dependency.
What’s hard to know is when it’s simply enough to recognize, read about, talk about, and sincerely “own” a problem within oneself – and therefore really get past it – or whether an illness or a syndrome has been uncovered, which then requires more than insight and remembering. It requires sustained “recovery” – or even medical cure.
I realize now I was a bit wary with you, Richard, because I didn’t want to stomp on your own early recognition of your codependency. There are wonderful insights there, and I believe it’s helpful and important to pause and take a good long look at what co-dependency is.
But, like Chaz, I know I began to pull back from hearing about it all the time, and having all relationships put under that microscope, making any relationship a psychologically loaded, even suspect experience.
Not only did I see people explaining every problem they have in life as coming out of their codependency, but I began to worry that we were becoming the kind of adults who think the ideal relationship is some sort of parallel play, purely contractual (and ultimately sterile) adult affiliation, rather than a warm-blooded, human mingling of hopes, quirks and needs – with both sides striving to be healthy and reliable for themselves and the other.
I have clients who blatantly say, “Relationships are a total hassle.” I think the idea of interdependency helps us pull back from that brink. The knowledge that we need each other shouldn’t cause us to fear failure in our relationships.
Rather we should be exulting in them, benefiting from them, enjoying the giving as well as the receiving in our relationships. Sure, especially as we get older, we should know ourselves well enough, remember well enough, to heed the signals if it looks like we’re on the verge of “losing” ourselves as the price for being in a relationship.
I’ve said to you before, Richard, that the anguish you feel at the loss of your marriage is a strong force, but it actually bodes well for the long haul. Taking your relationships very seriously is much better than the other way.
When we’re licking our wounds and vulnerable, we wonder if we’ll ever be worthy of being loved again. The actual problem is, will we finally manage our relentless selfishness and anxiety better next time, put our best foot forward, do the “giving” we believe is in us, and actually be the partner we aspire to be – so that the other will end up glad they joined us on the journey.
Always a pleasure,
Shaun