The Dance – Understanding the Alcoholic / Codependent Relationship
by Lisa Frederiksen
By way of background…
If a loved one enters a residential treatment program – it usually lasts around 28 days. At the end of treatment, clients are encouraged to go to an SLE – Sober Living Environment. That can be their home (as long as all alcohol has been removed and all persons in the home agree to abstain from drinking) or it can be a treatment center sponsored SLE (usually a home in a residential neighborhood where other clients also reside, along with an employee of the treatment center).
Now to my experience…
I’d told my loved one of my fears about what might happen if he insisted on coming home as his SLE, instead of following the treatment center’s recommendation and going to one of theirs
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Yet, when the time came, he started doing that “thing” he did, and I started doing that “thing” I did. He with that “I’m so sorry” expression, pressing me to let him come to our home instead of a treatment center SLE, to let him do what he wanted — playing on the notion that if I loved him, I would. And there I was acting on my feeling that I needed to somehow make it okay for him because if I loved him, I should. After all, he’d stopped drinking, gone into rehab — what more could I want or expect him to do? But I wasn’t ready. I was scared – what if I didn’t do what he needed done and he relapsed. And I was enjoying not having the constant worry about “what if…”.
It was us doing the “dance” we’d done a thousand times before. That day, I was furious to find myself even considering doing it, again. I erupted!
I erupted from a place so deep — a place where years of broken promises, lies, disappointments and deceit had festered, until this one. . . more. . . tiny. . . little request proved to be the last straw. I erupted because I simply didn’t know how to feel, let alone say, “No, this isn’t right for me. I don’t care if it’s right for you or the man in the moon. It isn’t right for me!
Instead, I was getting it all mixed up in my love for him and my ingrained belief that I had to do what he wanted as a demonstration of that love. I was getting it all mixed up in my belief that not doing so would be selfish on my part and in my world, being selfish was bad, bad, bad. Suddenly, it all came crashing in, and my fury poured out as we engaged one more time in the dance of manipulation we both did so well – a dance choreographed by years of fear, anger and love.
In dancing, it only takes one partner to change the step and thus the entire dance; it may even end the dance. The same is true in family recovery from this family disease. It just takes one, but if both change and learn the new steps and practice those steps, together, a new dance is created. Sometimes one or both will go back to the old one – that’s normal – it’s what is most comfortable; it’s what they’ve practiced for years. But a new dance is possible. It may be together; it may be solo, but it is possible. It just takes practice.
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To read more about experiences like “the dance” and find the tools that helped me get a grip on my life, please read my book, If You Loved Me, You’d Stop!…
January 17th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
[...] 3. Learn a bit about the new brain research – research possible in just the past 10-15 years, thanks to new brain imaging technologies. Understanding the basics of how the brain develops, how it works and that we can rewire our brains will be astoundingly freeing. It will give you the ‘ah ha’ moments that will likely change your life. This information will help you understand what happened in the brain of your loved one. More importantly, it will help you understand the ‘control’ you do have – namely changing your brain wiring by choosing to change how you react to your loved one’s drinking behaviors. Check out The Dance – Understanding the Alcoholic/Codependent Relationship. [...]
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:41 pm
[...] 3. Learn a bit about the new brain research – research possible in just the past 10-15 years, thanks to new brain imaging technologies. Understanding the basics of how the brain develops, how it works and that we can rewire our brains will be astoundingly freeing. It will give you the ‘ah ha’ moments that will likely change your life. This information will help you understand what happened in the brain of your loved one. More importantly, it will help you understand the ‘control’ you do have – namely changing your brain wiring by choosing to change how you react to your loved one’s drinking behaviors. Check out The Dance – Understanding the Alcoholic/Codependent Relationship. [...]