my monolith

okay, i think i have figured out what the blog silence is caused by. the things i am working through right now are so personal (like anything could be more personal than blogging about your sexual addiction??) that i feel silenced by them. it's really because this stuff is "one flesh" stuff with liam and i, and not just my stuff. i have had, and do have, his permission to blog about/talk about all of this for months - but it is so intimate and deeply tied into the "us" of the one flesh that i struggle to put it into words and fear that i am not just telling my story, but his.

i am just so desperate to untangle all of it, that i've decided silence isn't working for me right now, so maybe blogging will. or i might just write it all out here and hit delete, i don't know.

the cartoon below this post is a good representation of how i've been feeling. AA talks about the big pink elephant in the room that the family pretends isn't there. i can imagine if you're read here long enough you know that living with me is hardly silent or that i allow things to go untalked about. so there is no elephant that we avoid, but there is this monolith that seems immovable and i have grown weary and disheartened pushing against it, bashing my head against it and stubbing my toes on it.

i have admitted before that i am codependent and co-addicted. both liam and i have admitted we are both addicts and our lives are unmanageable. he has also admitted that he is depressed. he hasn't done anything about either of those things, but they say admitting it is the first step. the problem is that i have not realized before the level and depth of how enmeshed i have been into his life and non-existent in my own.

the psychic surgery required for this kind of amputation is brutal and i am not navigating it well. i remember jeff writing of his recovery in alanon that he wanted to learn to care about deb, and not for her. me too. i just have no idea how.

it would be easier to hate him, to be apart from him, to sever everything and have distance. years ago i became very enmeshed in my sister's life. i stepped into the role of 'mom' after our mother passed and our relationship became very unhealthy. she married and i was able to disengage myself from the codependency by totally removing myself from the relationship. i can't do that here. i don't want to do that here.

but i don't know how to make better, healthier, consistent choices that are lasting. i have moments of strength, decisions made and steps taken to remove myself from his gravitational pull, but then i get weak, he gets needy or i am just plain old lonely and i get sucked back in. it's like there isn't time for the wound to heal before we re-attach and have be to surgically removed again - the pain is excruciating.

and it's now come to the point where it is affecting my own addictions and abstinence. food has become a comfort again and i am so afraid. the frustrating part of 'dysfunction' is that it 'functions'. it is sometimes attractive and seems necessary to keep the rest of life moving forward. it's like settling for the lesser of evils just to keep the others at bay. does that make sense?

i can see here how and why couples divorce to solve the enmeshed issues. i know it isn't any less painful, and probably more, but it seems like the distance would make getting healthy a bit easier.

the familiar signs and red flags of liam's addiction have been waving in the past month and i am in panic mode. i am like an acrobat waving my arms back and forth, trying to figure out what it is that i can do to restore the lovely balance we had found. i am always the compensator. the one who levels off the teeter-totter trying to make sure i don't get dropped on my butt or end up hanging in the air all alone.

gosh i'm tired. and confused. and lost. and sad. and so very, very sick of it all.

the good thing is we are still talking about it. it's not happening unknowingly. it's not going to sneak up and bite me in the ass next month, but it doesn't seem to be making it any easier.

the other good news is that i have found support. well, actually support found me. one of the women at our church heard my sermon on cd and knew the 'lingo' i used probably meant i had once done OA. she screwed up the courage to email me and we met last week to talk. we meet again tonight to talk and pray. and next week we begin a support group to talk about our food addiction. ironically she lives in the apartment downstairs. god's sense of humor still astounds me sometimes.

so all is not lost, but dang i'm tired. writing has helped. i know we'll find our way through this, it just seems so dark sometimes.

the law of gravity

kristen at unveilings has a blog post about finding and maintaining your own sense of self. she writes:

I’m learning slowly this week (read: lifetime) about how to love people without bearing too much of their weight. I’m not sure how to get my mind around this one, though, because I believe we’re all interconnected, and that lives don’t have definite starting and stopping points so far as the space we each take up. We’re not paper dolls. We’re more like, maybe…universes.

welcome to my world (or universe?)!!! liam and i have been navigating this cosmos in detail this past 12 months.

what i have realized through much of this struggle is that if i don't hold on to my gravity i become a satellite, or a moon to his universe. and i've awakened, sadly, to the realization that i have done that for the past 20 years. it was bred into me. i was created and nurtured to be a 'help-meet' - that distorted word that smacks of satellites and anti-gravity. i found that i had never even explored the dark side of the moon.

reversing this and it's magnetic pull is such a procedure that i'm sure it's what rips most established marriages apart.

we both know the way it has been is damaging to us both, but these ruts in our lives have been worn deep, and we revert to them so mindlessly.

to break this cycle and re-write these interactions we are trying hard to put up markers, red flags, if you will, along the way. we need to identify those familiar impulses and reactions as a flag - an alarm to remind us that our gravity is off balance and we're doing it again.

i truly believe this is why long established marriages dissolve or become lifeless and loveless. it's very hard work. both spouses must be fully invested and committed to the process. too many times one (or both) falsely believe it easier to begin anew, start over. or my guess is that one (my fear is it's usually the wife) gives up and reverts back to the old ways. it is truly so much work.

liam and i know that those temptations are lies, the better way, that so few actually ever attain is to continue on, push through, each step is a tiny victory, but a victory nonetheless. the real struggle is that so few ahead of us have truly chosen to walk this path and walk it well. honoring our diverse universes and each becoming fully formed into what god has created us to be.

YOU CAN DO IT! and i highly recommend doing it now before the ruts become too well worn. before the responses become so natural that you forget, forget what anything else ever felt like. exploring the dark side of the moon can be terrifying, and rather depressing. not much has been allowed to grow there and it's work to find 'booster rockets' (friends & vision) that realign the planets into the sun so that things can grow again.

a couple of years ago i was introduced to the image of the mandorla by anj & connie. it is an ancient symbol and it represents for liam and i our goal. two fully formed lives, planets, orbits that exist separately but choose to dwell in connection, alike yet distinct. similar but not the same. equal yet very different. together but not combined.

the website i've gone to for research on this is here - kyrie.com

they define mandorla as:

the symbol of the liminal space in which we are called to "remain"

it is such a visual reminder to use as our guide. we know that an eclipse in either field brings unbalanced life and an overshadowing of another's world. having seen the spectacular image of the sun blotted out, or the moon disappearing - it is such a graphic image that cautions us to remember that the choices we make each day will model one of these metaphors - do we honor each other's orbit or return to the distortion of the eclipse?

the almond shape in the center of the mandorla is where intimacy lies. emotional, physical, spiritual intimacy. it is where liam and i meet as one flesh and true, honoring intimacy happens. to find this place, in balance, is usually a mystery of sorts, but when it does happen it is unlike anything else in the world and it's the most beautiful thing.

i find this supremely important, especially now as our children are at the ages of individualizing and launching into their own new worlds. what does it look like to honor their gravity? how can we model this so they see our mandorla and not an eclipse? how do we keep from eclipsing them? or in reverse, their gravity becoming so strong as to throw off our own?

such big responsibilities and questions. i know this is why so many don't bother. why so many give up. allow another's planet to rob the resources it needs to survive. blot out the sun so that nothing can grow and sustain life on it's own. sometimes i fear that the pull of another's gravity is so much stronger than my own.

god help me to keep my feet firmly on the ground of my own planet today.

trigger happy?

finally having some silent time this past week has allowed my brain to percolate through a lot of different areas, i'm kind of on blog fodder overload and choosing where to start to process any of this online becomes difficult because it's all really linked together (in my brain) but may not make sense when i finally put it on paper, so to speak.

one of the most successful stepping stones i've found in my recovery is identifying my triggers, what is the bell that rings that causes pavolov's dog to salivate?? compulsive behavior is not as unattached (at least originally in my thinking) to surroundings as many may think. i know for myself loneliness and shame are two huge triggers for me and i really have to change loneliness to solitude to keep myself on track.

figuring out my codependency triggers has not been as easy for me. i finally clued into one yesterday. liam is a self-admitted workaholic and one of the less known id's of that addiction is retreat mode. at times the workaholic gets sick of the rat race and withdraws, sometimes to lick wounds, sometimes to punish others, sometimes because of burnout or exhaustion. the push from august to thanksgiving left liam pretty drained, it was intense. i only realized yesterday that he is in 'withdraw' mode. unidentified this causes alarm bells to ring in my codependent state. this time i was able to identify them and talk with liam about it. he agreed that he was in shutdown mode and understanding that helped him through this process too.

it was a missing piece to the puzzle that both of us really needed. so, no, i'm not happy that i get triggered into codependent craziness, but i am happy that we were able to identify it and resist the temptation to do anything other than observe it for what it was, evidence that the crazy pace is draining us dry. december is really a gift in the youth ministry calendar. a couple of banquets and no real duties in the christmas holiday, it's a good slow down time, now we just need to know how to enjoy it!

permission slip

bobbie (insert real name here ) has my permission to be herself. she doesn't have to play, pretend, create or construct what she thinks she should be or others think she should be anymore. she can make her own choices, declare her own needs and set her own goals. she is a participant in a family and a community, but not responsible for the life or growth of either of them. she is responsible for her own and to be who i created her to be.

signed god.

searching for answers

i have had some searches on my blog for things lately that make me wonder if the person searching has found what they are looking for.

one of the searches was just the word 'codependency', another was for 'spouse has problems with pornography'. both searches brought those people to my site and it's sparked some thoughts about both, i think i'll blog a bit on the subjects to see if anything pulls together.

for most of my life i have known i was an addict. i stopped drinking alcohol early in my college years because i knew i was getting very near the danger zone. i don't touch it now because i know what sugar does to me, i can't imagine how comforting alcohol would be. i've blogged often that i can switch and trade addictions and compulsions, and it's less about the actual fix for me then it is about the numbing effect that that behavior brings.

but it was the day that i realized i was a codependent, a co-addict, that a light bulb turned on in my head. i truly began to understand this baffling concoction that addiction brings to relationships, namely my marriage.

my therapist kept trying to address my codependency in our sessions. i argued with her for months. i am the addict, liam is the codepenent. nice, neat and tidy. she knew that one addiction doesn't exist in a vacuum, and she could see the signs of codependency in my life. so she kept challenging me to face the things i didn't want to face.

i kept insisting 'no, i am the addict.' she'd disagree and challenge me. i thought i had it all figured out. but finally what she was telling me rang true, my denial started to crack. i started to see that there was evidence that it wasn't as neat and tidy as i was trying to make it.

it was then that i started to look at the issue of time when the the ah-ha moment came. the penny dropped. liam is a work-a-holic (now self admitted). how i never figured that out is beyond me. the clues were right in front of my nose. he finished his bachelors degree in 3 years instead of four, overworked in every position he had and was killing himself in his pastorate. and i (we) never 'saw' it. afterward things came into focus.

this was also hard to spot because my co-dependency doesn't fit the books at first glance.

because of my conservative christian heritage a 'help meet' for my husband was 'all' i was ever supposed to be. so i became the best damn help-meet anyone could ever ask for. i am not the compliant, meek helpmate though. i am the challenging, inspiring, sharpening help-meet (read 'pain in the ass' here). it wasn't until i realized that it was fulfilling a huge amount of need in my life that i could admit and face my co-dependency. i was living vicariously through liam. i had no life of my own. the church raised me well. i was the 'woman behind the man', and shriveling and dying because of it.

one of the concepts that i now teach our youth comes from this realization. i call it 'new math for relationships'. teen age relationships are usually intense and very co-dependent. like two ticks, and no dog. our culture tells them 'you are not complete unless you have a boy/girl friend.'

i try to help them understand that 1/2 + 1/2 does equal a 'whole', but those two 1/2's will never be 'whole' by themselves. taking that math analogy one step further, '1 x 1 = 1' and the magnification that happens is what god intended in the 'one flesh' idea. i try to encourage them that instead of spending all of their time trying to find their 'other half' they should concentrate on becoming whole in and of themselves.

if i am only 1/2 without liam i am unable to magnify our relationship, the converse is also true. if liam is only a 1/2 person (who i complete) we can't function apart and there is no depth to the relationship, or our personhood. only when two whole people enter the relationship can wholeness truly occur.

therefore a working definition of co-dependency could be when 1/2 a person is trying to find a matching 1/2 person to fill the void in their life. like velcro 'loops' looking for the 'hooks', 1/2 people spend their time searching for fulfillment from another person, instead of from life, or god.

for most of my life i have been 1/2. liam has been 1/2. our marriage has been this struggle to suck the sustenance out of the other, and not finding enough there, we then turned toward our own addictions to fill the void left from the dissatisfaction. it was only when we started to become whole as separate entities that our marriage could magnify, be deeper, fuller, more than it ever was. instead of expecting liam to meet my every need i became able to self-nurture and care for myself emotionally, spiritually and socially.

it has not been an easy road. the path is bumpy. much is out of my control. i hate that. i like to be in control. most of the problem that comes from this fact is that it's usually one person in the relationship who finds wholeness and healing first. this upsets the balance and causes a lot of friction and stress in the relationship. recovery of wholeness is a personal journey. i can only do my own work, recover my own wholeness. i cannot do this for liam. he must desire it and do the work for himself.

in the beginning this was excruciating for me. 'if you loved me you'd...' 'can't you see how this is hurting us???' 'why can't you...' 'if you'd just...' our walls echoed with my pleas for movement but it only placed distance between us.

during this phase of our marriage i heard fil anderson (another self-admitted workaholic) talk about running on empty, and spending a day alone with god. after the session i raised my hand and asked how once we experience wholeness do we motivate those around us to desire wholeness. his answer first pissed me off, but about a month later i 'got it'.

he said that the other day he was at krispy kreme and there was a man enjoying a fresh glazed donut, he was savoring it, enjoying it more than anyone ever should. it wasn't long before fil found himself joining him with his own donut.

i thought 'that's your answer? sit there and don't do anything?' i was angry, i wanted to 'do something', to control or force the issue.

what fil was saying was that i needed to live whole, savor my own recovery and eventually those around me would see me savoring life and find themselves hungry for it. it hasn't been easy. i wanted to force liam into recovery, to drag him there. i didn't care if he wanted it for himself - i demanded it now, on my time.

it didn't work, i couldn't fathom not doing anything because i wasn't really whole at that point, i wasn't able to savor my wholeness, i still wanted to fill the missing parts of me with him.

living whole is like irresistible grace. rules and legalism (forcing someone into recovery) only shames and proves to them how far they are from the mark. grace says it doesn't matter and draws them close. wholeness is like a magnet, it radiates health, healing and grace.

once i was able to step away from my codependent behavior with liam and savor my own wholeness (it is fleeting, and i haven't arrived, please know that i don't think i have) i became able to set down the remote control i had tuned onto liam. the grace that stepped in allowed for conversations and healing. not forced 'i'm gonna tell you what to do' conversations, but questions, give and take, real communication that lead us into couples' counselling.

it was/is healing great amounts of issues that kept us from relating and accepting each other as we are. it brought/brings healing to wounded areas that we didn't even realize were baggage from our families, it has brought levels of intimacy to our marriage that we never dreamed were possible. we worked through the 12 steps in a format called open hearts, again by patrick carnes. i highly recommend it for bringing a gentle healing to relationships and marriages.

i also tell my students that 1/2 people only ever attract 1/2 people. whole people avoid 1/2 people like the plague. if they are only 'the loops' looking for that other 1/2 of velcro to stick to that is all they are ever going to find. wholeness draws wholeness. like i said above, it's a magnet. 1/2 + 1/2 does equal a whole. you can manage a life long marriage with that kind of math. but god desires magnification. he longs to have marriage be a picture here on earth for us that mirrors the trinity, that brings community, communication and wholeness. magnify those around you, multiply wholeness.