As we know, this weblog was started in February, 2006, and it came under attack in August of the same year because it had helped me leave a Relationship. Now on strike from it due to the non payment of an advertiser, but desirous to continue posting so as not to drop my hit count and lose future advertisers, I am going through my old post drafts and seeing what I can put up.
Many drafts are uninteresting, but I came across a truly shocking one. It had been an e-mail I actually sent in May, 2006, to the Person In Question. It is very revealing of abusive relationships and what goes into them. Note that part of why I had not left was that I was afraid of what would happen if I did, part of it was guilt, and part of it was the deluded idea that I had gotten into the entire episode knowing there were certain dangers, and raising the question of these. I had been told not to worry, and had decided to take this Person at his word. And I wanted to keep him to it. [NOTE: these last two elements are the “codependent” part of it all, and I was very, very “crazy” in this regard. But the motivating part was that I was afraid of what would happen if I left — justifiably afraid, as it turned out. And what I do not like about codependency theory as applied to abusive situations is that it really does make the victim responsible. And I really do think the “codependent” or “enabler” can have greater responsibility than the addict in some addicted situations. I do not think the same obtains in situations of abuse, and the serious literature on these matters supports my view].
Note the dynamic this note belies — after one of the many occasions upon which, horrified at this Person’s behavior, I had left a restaurant, bar, or party most abruptly and made a beeline to my house, where, upon arrival, I had locked and bolted all the windows and doors.
I am sorry to keep harping, but I think this actually is important. I hope you won’t think “she’s just in one of her moods” (that’s a sexist move, you know, a common formula for discounting what women say).
I did make a serious error in 2004 and, just to show I am Taking Responsibility For Myself, I will say it was out of internalized sexism. It was on that Sunday that you were freaking out and I called your friend the psychologist. As you will remember, I had tried to break up because I couldn’t see how to share the life you were leading, listen to your plans to make bombs or whatever, and also maintain my health.
I relented the same day because it felt so bad to see you so hurt. That day I decided I would lead your life with until you got your green card, since you were so upset by the instability of that situation. I decided it would be impossible to evaluate our situation until that one was resolved. But you have to realize that the life you lead has little to do with mine, which is why I so resent being the driver for it due to your health issues.
It was a poor decision I made since the result of trying to live this life myself is that I go into these states of exhaustion, frustration, and claustrophobia which do more harm to all concerned. I really do understand that that life, is your life, and that you love it. This is why I don’t know what to do. I do not love it myself, and trying to live it is destructive to me; yet if I do not live it, I will cause you intolerable pain and I do not wish to be so cruel.
Right now I am irritated because I would have been happy to leave [a certain volunteer position] to [someone else who wanted it] because I had a paper to write. For your sake I did that job rather than take care of my own work, my own forms of recreation, and my own health. I do not know how to be responsible to both of us at once in this situation.
I realize it would be most sensible of me to enjoy your life more than I do, and I keep trying to talk myself into this. But I cannot help wanting to be up earlier, spend fewer evenings talking with people in whom I have only a passing interest and/or of whom I have already seen enough at work, and spend more time in the gym/library and out of town. I can’t get around this.
I am afraid that if I act on these things and leave you behind, I will meet someone less interesting than you, but whose lifestyle is more compatible with mine, and that I will thus hurt you even more than I have so far.
Much of my energy over the past two years has been concentrated on alleviating the pain of the “train wreck” you claimed to be living. This, again, was sexist as well as unrealistic on my part: the sexism is in the assumptions that (a) my life had to come second, by definition, and (b) that “train wreck” alleviation was my responsibility.
Check that out. Notice how I realize exactly what is happening, on one hand, and do not recognize it at all, on the other. I did not get a response to this mail. I thought it must have been terribly violent and out of line. It took me almost three more months to actually break up, after which a form of the things I had feared took place. (Of course, what took place was against me, but what I had feared would take place was self-mutilation of the Person — which was why I felt so terribly responsible. He had on various occasions done things to himself which, according to paramedics, had left him with only half an hour left to live had I not called. And I was the only person in town who realized these incidents were self induced. Everyone else I dared ask at the time thought me uncharitable to suspect it. His friends had — and still have, so far as I know — the paramedics on speed dial.)
As a very old friend would have said: can you just get down on that shit. (That friend would have also sung: hang it up, baby!) But I think it is important to talk about these things, shine some light on them, because people do not understand them.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
so maybe what you didn’t realise is the general nature of the dynamic — that it wasn’t at all specific to you, but that it had an entirely impersonal character based upon how abusive men tend to relate to women?
The email you quote, PZ, demonstrates a classic co-dependent arrangement, wherein the abuse ultimately is not perpetrated so much by the one who appears to abuse, but rather by the abused on herself, who, for whatever reason, sees herself as “unable” to leave because the situation is somehow unescapable, logical and even appropriate. The reasons are entirely subjective and couched in patterns that often date back to childhood. Adult children of alcoholics or neurotics, for example, often demonstrate the tendency to get locked into relationships so rife with drama and pain that their suffering is guaranteed. Until they no longer “need” to do that. This is not to lay blame, but to say that when the abused has resolved the issues, they simply quit following the script. And until then, they just move from one similar setting to another, as a rule. As you point out, PZ, in retrospect you can see that you had great insight into what was happening, but still did not see a way out. Obviously (and unfortunately), great intellect and analytical skills are helpless in such labyrinths. Where I think gender gets involved is that, while there are countless numbers of men who demonstrate the same codependent tendencies, the patriarchy ensures that men will often (though not always, by any means) play out their tendencies in the position of “controller” or “abuser,” while women will typically play the role of the “controlled,” “frustrated,” and/or “abused.” The “controller,” in this case, was using the green card situation and his emotions to “control” his “victim.” But the on-going nature of such scripts (moving from similar relationship to similar relationship) is the telling proof of the pudding, we might say. I’m so glad you are able to look back at it rather than from within it.
Jennifer, yes.
CS, much of what you say is true and I realize you mean well. I do have some serious disagreements with the 12 stepping paradigm from which you read, which blames victims really unfairly. It was going to Al-Anon which kept me in this relationship for so long, despite the fact that the battered women’s group kept telling me I needed to leave NOW and I knew they were right. At Al-Anon they told me I had to learn to have a nice life WITH this partner before I could leave.
I disagree with the idea that you stay in a negative relationship and repair yourself within it more seriously than I can say. It makes absolutely no sense: you would not tell someone to stay inside a burning car until they had the spiritual strength to resist burning.
Codependent paradigm in which abuse is perpetrated by victim upon herself, sure. But what you fail to recognize is an abusive situation rife with threats and intimations of violence. And what 12 steppers and other victim blamers have to realize is that ABUSE is DESIGNED so that the victims will become their own perpetrators. In codependency theory people are only victims because they are pre programmed by a bad early life to be this — so it is then their responsibility and their “lack of growth” that is at the root of further problems. Any serious abuse counselor or therapist will explain to you that EVERYONE is vulnerable to abuse, in the same way that EVERYONE breaks under torture.
“Codependent,” that MIGHT fit well enough for alcoholic families and so on, but if you have someone who is mentally ill, violent, powerful in your workplace, has allies all over town, and has a life threatening health condition they are using as a cover, it is NOT the same as just dealing with a simple alcoholic (that is *much* easier). If you have that going on AND also Al-Anon telling you you should be able to make the situation work (and also change the Person — if you live better, they will want to follow you, yadda, yadda, yadda), it is really disabling.
Until they no longer “need” to do that. How about, until they discover where they can go so as not to be killed for refusing to do that?
And until then, they just move from one similar setting to another, as a rule. I really, really oppose this idea although I have met many social workers who believe it and who habitually encourage people to stay where they are (or where the social worker believes them to be), to continue to “accept powerlessness,” and so on.
DOWN with the MSW, with Christianity, and with 12 stepping — we would all be so much better off without these hobbling ideologies! Things are not just imagined into being by victims — there is such a thing as politics!
P.S. It should be fairly obvious how Al-Anon driven the whole e-mail is. I am literally falling over myself to say it is my fault, make sure I am “taking enough responsibility,” as one is vociferously encouraged to do in Al-Anon. All of that codependency literature, M. Scott Peck, and so on, is just SO thin and starts out with such weak/poor assumptions about people, so little spirit, such meanness, so little soul and so little love for the world … I just don’t buy the preaching from it, don’t buy the paradigm. Like anything, it does sometimes have a few accurate points to make, but the general paradigm is pernicious.
It is the pernicious influence of that general paradigm this blog exists to free me of and protect me from.
You aren’t 100% right here. You are 1000% right. I wish this important piece could get a wider circulation among women who are stuck with these men and can’t see a way out.
And hey, stop apologising!!
Thanks, Hattie! I really think one of the books that should come out of this blog is a book on abuse. I REALLY find it pernicious and politically objectionable to accuse abuse victims of “codependence.”
Apologizing is what you have to do constantly in Al-Anon, that is what was driving me to write this original e-mail! But you are right, I should also stop apologizing in general!
As another friend points out, saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” is the hallmark of an abuse victim. And I find it fascinating that “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” is what Al-Anon people demand you say.
*
I was irritated enough at the Changeseeker’s comment — not at her, she’s a friend, but at the ideology in it (we don’t agree on twelve stepping and so on), to which I really did try to submit for over 15 years, to my detriment — that I couldn’t see straight, got into a fender bender that was my fault.
I am so glad I am not in therapy or Al-Anon because I would then have to beat my breast about it and show the authorities therein that I really do realize it was my fault, and that I know I should be more careful. I would have to promise publicly to be more aware about driving when I am too angry to see straight, mea culpa, mea culpa, and so on, etc., etc. I would have had to compound the problem rather than keep it in perspective.
Instead, I get to be as I was before therapy and Al-Anon. I get to say yes well, these things happen, it could have been worse, it could have been on a public street, police could have been involved, there could have been injuries, I will learn how to handle these comments better and not let them get to me so much, I will find a way to pay for the damage to that woman’s car without going into too many privations myself. It is SO much healthier to think that way than to think in the therapy/Al-Anon way.
*
And, to continue the rant: here’s a Takaki obit from the SF Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/01/BA7B17T6TQ.DTL
See what a mensch he was?! And so generous — and this is the way I think people are, even if therapy and Al-Anon think people are narrow and mean.
*
Anyway: I really think the whole 12 stepping industry does a HUGE disservice by calling abuse victims “codependent,” and the therapy industry does a HUGE disservice by reducing crime and what amounts to crime to a “communication problem” or a “lack of clarity” on the part of the VICTIM.
And I really don’t think they’d do that if so many of the victims weren’t women.
Jennifer talked about the subtle strategies of the patriarchy earlier, and the Changeseeker said the strategies weren’t subtle. I would say that codependency theory IS one of those subtle strategies, especially when female self help writers call it “feminist.”
Apologies to Changeseeker, I know you mean well and I wouldn’t say these things on your blog, but this is my blog.
Oh, yeah. Here’s another piece of self help sophistry: “If that comment upset you, it must be because it is true and you can’t face it.”
That is ridiculous on its face. It is, however, a fact that I am tired of taking seriously these kinds of self help claims. It is also a flaw in me that I go into a white hot rage when I feel projected into and condescended to, and that I carry THAT from childhood. And it is not something I think I can get over, it is something I think I must learn to better care for and manage.
But more seriously, and as I suggested above, it is the reduction of everything to “codependency” and “addiction,” the overburdening of the individual with these things, and the refusal to look at all at larger societal issues that I find so pernicious about the self help movement, therapy, and Al-Anon.
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And the Al-Anon types, if they were even willing to recognize that I am as I am, would say I am in the minority. They would say most people do not have the capacity for introspection and spend their lives blaming others for everything that happens. I just do not know a lot of people who are like that, or do not know them well enough to know that they are like that, or something. I am always really shocked and amazed when I meet people who are like that.
But the self help types say that kind of person is normal/universal/etc., and maybe they are right … or maybe it is true of the average suburban-American … I do not know, it is just that most people I meet aren’t that way.
A battle well-fought, PZ, in the messages above.
I think that there is another dimension to escaping the chains of abuse, too, and that is the social acknowledgement, by others, of the reality of one’s experiences, as being grounded in the real world.
Not to experience that others see — at least components of the experience — like you do compounds the injury. It is as if an accident happened in the middle of the road and everybody stood around to stare, or to mock, and nobody rendered assistance.
Yes. And that once again is what I do not like about social workers, mainstream psychotherapy, Al-Anon, and all other agents of Da Whiteman.
I mean, honestly. I asked everyone who knew us to please let me know if they saw anything odd in our interaction, and everyone kept telling me we seemed like such a great couple, so well suited, and so on.
The battered women’s group said I was being abused and making excuses for it, and had trouble believing I was not also being hit. I got mad at them and THIS was out of denial. This WAS a case of not wanting, or not being ready to listen to the truth.
And yet then also: my anger that evening was about what I just stated, but it was also mixed with outrage at the attitude of the social worker in charge toward all the other people in the group besides me. I was white and middle class, the social worker was white and working class with unresolved child sexual abuse issues, and everyone else was Black and poor and was being hit or had been. This last group was the smartest and most perceptive, however, and the white lady’s lack of confidence in them was very hard to take.
She was so totally willing to believe in the “reality” of their incompetence, and so unable to believe in the obvious FACT of their resourcefulness.
And I have recently been informed I give people too much credit, and I won’t say that’s untrue, but I will say I’d rather err that way than the other way.
For some reason, people seem to read physical proximity with an other (often a proximity that is unwanted or undesired) as implying an affinity for this other. This also probably stems from patriarchal forms of reasoning, which have traditionally bound couples in holy matrimony on the basis of the woman’s inability to choose superior or alternate options. Anyway, proximity is read as deep emotional affinity — and what were those black people doing in a whiteman’s country, anyway, if they weren’t inherently attracted to the whiteman, and if they didn’t have such deep emotional affinity for him and his ways?
Well, I did and do have a lot in common with the Person In Question — good and bad things both. In a town larger than Maringouin we would probably never been as good friends as we were, but here and at the time it started there was every reason why the relationship was, as one observer put it, “inevitable.”
One good thing about it was, I learned enough about how abuse works to be able to understand what had happened in Reeducation. Otherwise I do not know that I would have.
On the putative universal applicability of codependency theory (if it is a theory — I think it is mostly mush, does not stand up to scientific testing except in a very restricted way) — it is NOT SCHOLARLY to just take one half baked theoretical paradigm and try to run the entire world through it.
and in my above post I meant “alternative” options.
(brain fry, brain fry)
I think that a lot of ppl latch onto approaches that seem to offer key insights and to explain everything. I was pretty much still at this stage when I was writing my honours thesis. Now, at a doctoral level, things have opened up. It does take time and persistence to get to the level whereby you can see the inherent complexity of almost everything. Everything has deeper and deeper layers to it. It is not possible to profound everything that is — but one can tacitly acknowledge the complexity in one’s thesis in terms of the tone of voice one adopts, a degree of self-reflexivity and explicit acknowledgment of the scope and limitations of one’s theory.
and again (sorry) — I meant “Propound” rather than “profound” (but this was in fact a Freudian slip).
My mind is severely on other things — like moving into the next stage of thesis writing, and a conference on Friday.
My brain autocorrected the typos, it seems.
Onto other things — yes. It was why I got so irritated at that response to this post. As in, haven’t we been through this already…
ANYWAY. Back to Real Work.
Another thing about these self helpers. They like to find people who will talk openly about certain things and then set themselves upon them, “you are not being honest enough!” … if said people do not think about themselves and the world in the “right” way. I am SO tired of it.
*
I would put up a separate post on a related incident except that one of the principals may this blog. It involved two married ladies with M.A.’s, supported by their husbands, very New Agey and self helpy, who set me up to be friends with a single woman with a PhD. I liked her but soon realized she was a mild alcoholic interested in a partner to go to bars and chase men with, so I didn’t actually make friends with her. The Ladies said that if I were more skilled and dedicated I would have been able to train this woman to be friends with me on some other basis. They really pissed me off with this, because: why should I impose myself on this woman I barely know in that way? She had made it quite clear what she was after… why fight her? why not just let her go where she wanted to be? The Ladies decided I was not enlightened enough, and had this woman been a relative or something, or an old friend, then I would certainly have acted differently, but I had just met her.
My point is the intrusiveness of the Ladies and their extreme desire to catch one in some sort of melodramatic, never ending, self perpetuating net.
I’m happy to be considered not enlightened enough for many things. I really don’t think it matters. Everybody is free to have their opinion of me.
Yes — a point I would like to be able to reach on this matter. I keep thinking I have, only to discover that when pushed on it (as by the Changeseeker) I throw virtual rocks in self defense for several hours just to make sure I do not internalize what they say.
My problem is that my first, really traumatic academic job had the same opinion as Reeducation (which was later), and both had actual authority over me … and I did not expect them to be malevolent … and those ideas were so much in fashion at the time that the first person I heard challenge them was a foreigner I didn’t know and had a conversation with for random reasons.
I apparently still have this nagging feeling, but what if they are right, what if they are right? And I still have to keep reminding myself, they are only right in THEIR world.
*
I am so tired of expunging demons. But anyway – the thing is that during the conversation with those Ladies, wherein they were trying to convince me to deal with that woman and show me how, one of their husbands was also there, and he is an actual recovering alcoholic and serious about it. He just said well, that woman clearly wants drinking partners, and I am not saying she is bad or uninteresting otherwise, but if you’re not interested in being her drinking partner or in contending with dealing with her while “drawing boundaries” around her drinking, there is no reason you should have to.
And I thought, damn! He actually understands the principles Reeducation teaches in its highest mode! And these Ladies, and common Reeducation, claim to know all about it and try to teach people to get into it in its most Gollum-like dimension!
So I am still trying to deal with my own introjection of those Ladies in all their avatars. My superego still says I should be like them and I am trying to bleach that idea out.
*
HMMMM. Because becoming a Bodhisattva would mean REALLY not being affected by that stuff, not just PRETENDING one could deal with it. I claim that so long as I AM affected, I should not pretend I am not … and I note that the Bodhisattvas, although they may interact and have contact when necessary, do not DEAL with it all the way those Ladies would like one to.
This is an aspect in which the Changeseeker is right on that e-mail: it really is an internal battle.
And an internal battle I would really, really like to put down. Come out on the other side of. Leave behind. Not have present to clutter my days.
So I find myself throwing rocks at those who would tempt me back in.
“It was all you.” “You ‘needed’ that and sought it out.” “If you rejected it you would just seek a similar situation.” It all sounds too much like, “Come on, you know you wanted it.” SO … patriarchal.
Right. The patriarchal model is of women as masochists. I believe there is much imagining going on that we create terrible situations for ourselves in order to create a dramatic scene that will draw others to us in interest. The opposite is the truth. I was brought up to believe the public crying was profoundly shameful. I deeply resent those who have managed to reduce me to this public spectacle — and it has only happened once in my adult life.
Anyway, you should train your superego to latch onto something else. Superego is a guard dog, and needs something to monitor. I’ve taught it to watch whether I train at the gym regularly enough, and whether I’m getting enough sleep.
And. I will stop obsessing on this because it just gives them power. But.
NOTE that I got into that relationship AFTER the disaster of Reeducation and not before. And the reason I went to Reeducation was that I knew I had the potential to get into this kind of relationship. I had been careful about it all along but wanted to work the seeds of it out. And I told this to Reeducation, which took advantage of the information to do me in.
And I do not think it is fair to say that I sought destruction and to claim that I had a pattern of seeking destruction. I had a pattern of the opposite and it was not a “false self” or “denial.” The freakin’ paradigm is WRONG and I am smarter and deeper and better educated and more honest and more introspective than its inventors.
And I have been kind to these inventors all this time because I know I have had more advantages and opportunities in life than they may have had. And so I let them tell me that those advantages and opportunities, and my use of them, were crap. And I stopped using the well of strength I had from my past, because if I did that I would be “arrogant” or would be implying I was “better than others” or something like this. And all of this was a ridiculous error.
And THAT is my ridiculous error, NOT “seeking destruction” or some sort of thing. And what these people are doing is drowning in a swamp, and putting out their arms to draw one in. And I am so DONE with being patient with all of that.
OK. That is finally all.
“Right. The patriarchal model is of women as masochists. I believe there is much imagining going on that we create terrible situations for ourselves in order to create a dramatic scene that will draw others to us in interest. The opposite is the truth. I was brought up to believe the public crying was profoundly shameful. I deeply resent those who have managed to reduce me to this public spectacle — and it has only happened once in my adult life.”
EXACTLY. And in that relationship, the Person always said that my dissatisfaction was just a desire for drama. Typical.
“Anyway, you should train your superego to latch onto something else. Superego is a guard dog, and needs something to monitor. I’ve taught it to watch whether I train at the gym regularly enough, and whether I’m getting enough sleep.”
Yes. Mine used to be trained to those things but Reeducation said it was a defense mechanism enabling my denial. I have had terrible habits since
(which I am exercising at this very moment). BUT you are quite right and I am going to activate this superego.
On defense mechanisms. The Emeritus Professor said the other week it was paramount I “defend myself” against a certain colleague. Who is not accusing me of anything, quite the opposite; he just using too much of my time and energy. I really liked the use of the term DEFEND YOURSELF, because it was most apt.
So: defense mechanisms are GOOD, we decree.
So there. 🙂
You force many to think differently about you; that, they charge bitterly to your account. You came near to them and yet went past: for that they never forgive you.
You go beyond them: but the higher you rise, the smaller do you appear to the eye of envy. But the flying one is hated most of all.
“How could you be just to me!” — you must say — “I choose your injustice as my proper lot.”
They cast injustice and filth at the solitary one: but, my brother, if you would be a star, you must shine for them none the less on that account!
And be on your guard against the good and the just! They would rather crucify those who create their own virtue — they hate the solitary ones.
Be on your guard, also, against holy simplicity! All that is not simple is unholy to it; it likes to play with fire and burn — at the stake.
And be on your guard, also, against the assaults of your love! Too readily does the recluse offer his hand to any one he meets.
To many you may not give a hand, but only a paw; and I want your paw to have claws.
But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you ambush yourself in caverns and forests.
P.S. note the difference in terminology.
Ladies: Your boundaries are weak! You must look deeply within yourself to find the reason, and admit your powerlessness! You must say it is all your responsibility, that you brought this upon yourself! Woe is you!
Emeritus Professor: That person has a bad situation, it is true, but he is still way out of line. Defend yourself!
Zara I.17. Gorgeous. Perfect. Thank you. I really must study that Zarathustra.
http://praxeology.net/zara2.htm
Also, I don’t really see what the point is of crowing, “See! It was an internal battle!”
At the time it was really brave to set out in writing that I had goals and agendas which had nothing to do with that relationship and that the Person had no interest in, despite his putative need for my presence. And that I still had them and could still state them, and could find a way to state them TO THAT PERSON in a way which, because it cast the whole thing as MY problem, would not provoke a reaction more problematic in a practical sense than coldness or silence. It was liberating to say THIS IS WHAT I WANT to someone who kept insisting upon telling me what I needed. It was brave to write something which, when I read it, showed me clearly how poorly I was allowing myself to be treated.
And so, three years later I unveil it and some Melody Beatty driven speech comes to say parasitically, see! It was all within you! Like, I invented the bomb threats, the suicide attempts, and all the verbal abuse this person had visited upon me so that I was terrified.
Al-Anon at the time, which I went to because I wanted something like Diabetics-Anon (he kept having these diabetic crises and it was like dealing with a drunk, except that it was life threatening every time), helped me see that he really was out of line. But it was also was freakin’ Al-Anon ideology which taught me to frame things in the way you criticize and think of myself in this weak way, to the extent that this is weak.
Without the burden of having to constantly “take responsibility” I could much more easily have said wait, this is unpleasant, and this person shows no real interest in me, and I have things to do, so I am outta here. But with Al-Anon and all, one had to constantly question oneself, constantly take responsibility upon oneself for possibly hurting people, be really kind to the “qualifier,” realize that they were “ill,” and on, and on. It wasn’t set up to imagine that one might have one’s own job and house — I did — and not have children with the person or some abiding or overriding love and commitment. It did not want to admit that one did not have to talk and commit, but was free to go. And it CERTAINLY did not want to admit that one was not a larger problem than the “qualifier.” It had a great deal invested in the idea that to get free would not be to get free but possibly to get worse. And this is TERRIBLY antifeminist for one thing. For another, it does NOT take into account an abusive situation.
With these 12 steppers and self helpers one is d-d if one does, and d-d if one does not. Wait three months because a judge or someone tells you to, and 12 steppers will say you are procrastinating. Do something now because you’re ready and there is nothing to stop you, and 12 steppers will say you are impulsive. All of this is just ridiculous and heartless, not to mention its lack of intellectual rigor and scientific merit.
So dry up, commenter in question! You’re being mean, insulting, and utterly out of line right here! That is all I should have said in the first place except that where I am codependent is on being nice to women who aren’t necessarily — so I went into all these contortions instead — and yes THAT is dysfunctional, if you’d like me to “take responsibility” for something or accuse myself of something or recognize that I “have a part in it.”
BUT: this is my personal weblog. I don’t go to other peoples’ and say weird things at them. And I would speak more diplomatically on neutral ground. But here, I am defending my barricades.
in relation to internal battles and having to acknowledge one’s part in the battles of others, I have just been working on this paper, but my brain is frazzled and I think I must still have jetlag or something (although drowsy-making antihistamines do not seem to wear off quickly, either, during the day.)
And finally Changeseeker: there is some issue about basic respect. This is a post about a really painful and scary circumstance. And you jump in and say CRAP that you KNOW ALREADY I do not like!!!!!
And yes, I am being chaotic, and I know you will say oh dear, she is chaotic, but once again this is MY weblog and I get to process things here however I need to.
OK Jennifer, COOL, this paper is what I’ll read in the morning along with my student’s which I should have read instead of write all of this ridiculousness today!!! 🙂
P.S. Jennifer – Excedrin (or your aspirin of choice) in the PM version is what works. Antihistamines can give hangovers and don’t really do the job in the first place.
I was just using them to make me sleep (tired of the whole jetlag thing and not sure that I have it anymore, but just in case.) Mike bought them by mistake for me.
Yes — people think antihistamines make you sleep but it is Excedrin PM which does it. We have recently retested this hypothesis…
More on internal battles: it’s an inane comment. Everything involves internal dialectics and the dialectics of inner and outer worlds.
I think the Changeseeker’s crowing on all of this is part of the 12 step motivated idea that the average person has no interior/no introspection and is always “blaming” and oppressing others. So this crowd jumps up and down in discovery and says look, it can be internal, too, it can be you, too!
But regular people already know this. I declare once again that the mentality of the people who go into 12 stepping is just NOT typical of my friends or of people in the places I am from. Sure, you see it on television and it is the typical Ugly American attitude, but it is not normal human nature. I find it REALLY strange how it has been sold as standard, universal, the baseline model for humanity, and so on.
Also, on Melody Beatty style self help: note that one of the main lemmas of 12 stepping is KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). But when I listen to the theories on life of these women fans of self help books on “codependency,” what I notice is now convoluted and circular everything they say is. Not simple at all, and contraindicated therapeutically, as the GOOD shrink I finally went to pointed out, because it is designed to impede progress / maintain holding patterns. (I guess that’s OK if the alternative is a downward spiral, but what if one has potential to move up???)
And there are so many things one can do and interactions one can have that beam one up instantly, precisely by removing weight. And reading in these books the 12 step / self help types like so much, though, I get depressed and feel that huge weights have been loaded onto me. It is the weight of all the assumptions and projections, I really do believe, and the inappropriate placement of responsibility.
And one more thing, Changeseeker: to insist upon encouraging people to stay in situations where they feel unsafe is really PERVERSE.
I have gone through that so many times. “They don’t mean it, and you can take it, and look at the advantages, and aren’t you exaggerating, and if you just life your life and do so in a way so as not to provoke them, or if you just tell them to stop interfering with you, which obviously you must not be doing…”. I’ve stayed at jobs because of that kind of advice, in friendships, and in a whole profession, for Heaven’s sake.
Where the abuse comes in is precisely when people come and say “no, don’t leave, you aren’t strong enough, you must prove you are strong enough by getting strong in this destructive situation before trying to get strong in a better one, and in any case it isn’t any better out there, or at least it won’t be for you….”
THAT is abusive, and your Melody Beattie is not on the side of women. If I were as presumptuous as you were, I would say you also have a lot of work left to do, and you should focus on yourself rather than lecture poison at me. This would be a taste of your own medicine and it might help put you in your place … and it is perhaps not all that presumptuous, and is in fact perhaps ALL I should have said here in the first place.
P.S. I repeat:
Note that the body of this post *was* written with the help of Al-Anon and all the common advice on “how to communicate,” and so on. It was carefully phrased so as not to put any responsibility on the other person and all responsibility on me.
It was done precisely because I had been advised I should not leave because I would only get into the same situation or a worse one. It was also done because this person had so guilt tripped me about the degree of pain my leaving would cause him. And it was done in these ways because I feared the violence of his reaction.
It was done INSTEAD OF what I would have done, namely, say “You know, this relationship is not working out for me, and I am leaving. I am sorry. I still think you are a wonderful person and I hope we can remain cordial as colleagues and perhaps, at least at some point in the future, friends.”
I *really* think my only errors were in not having just done that, in having been talked out of it by him the first time I had tried, and in DELUSIONALLY having believed that, since it was he and not I who wanted the relationship, he could be convinced to at least be pleasant enough so that I WOULD stick around.
And no, there was NO way to stay in the relationship AND just lead my own pleasant life around it, the way the Al-Anon people want you to. The relationship was poisonous, and dealing with this man is like being the attendant for someone twice his age (and many people who deal with him realize this). The ONLY way to handle it rationally was to end the putative romance. There was nothing to BE saved, despite what so many people said and despite the assumption so many people made that I had to want to be in this relationship.
I am not sorry I got into it because it taught me what abuse really was and thus gave me the tools I needed to begin undoing Reeducation. So in a way you’re right, Changeseeker, I stayed in it until I learned certain things, so that I would not get into such a relationship again. BUT what irritates me is the idea that I’d been in a string of abusive romances and would only get into another — NOT true, my string of abusive relationships is actually composed of friendships with women resembling yourself and Reeducation, and you of course fall within both groups, so if I believed in PROFILING I would profile you as dangerous.
And yet I don’t. So call me a dysfunctional risk taker if you want, but I still actually like, trust, and respect you. I only refuse to have truck with a certain set of ideas, and I am no longer willing to be polite about them. You can say them about yourself if you wish, and I won’t say anything about it, but I will not listen to you pontificating them at me.
Also: here is a good explanation of why it is not just weird, weak women who get into abusive relationships — or maybe two — and NOTE that these are not just with romantic partners. And note that the author of the post has credentials: is from down here, has a Ph.D., and it is on Frederick Douglass. So.
http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/2009/06/daddy-issues.html
psychological traps are set. if you fall into them you are considered a right ninny. But the traps continue to be set.
Of which one major trap in my view is not just the universalization of “codependency” theory but the way in which it has seeped into common sense and into what passes for serious clinical thought.
Yes. But “common sense” is generally just another expression for lazy thinking.
Yes — but it also goes unquestioned, and is considered as neutral as cleaning your teeth.