By Ox Drover
Someone sent me a forwarded e mail the other day that I had seen before, but this time, as I read the sweet story about how to tell the differences between heaven and hell, I started to think about my own life in relationship to this story. You may have heard it before, but here is the story.
A man was walking along with his dog one day down a pleasant road and he realized that both he and the dog were dead. The road was nice but he began to be tired, hot and thirsty. He came around a bend and saw the most beautiful golden gates, with a kindly looking person standing there. The gate was surrounded by flowers and he thought how beautiful it looked. He approached the kindly looking man and asked where he was. The man softly touched his arm, reassuring him, and then said, “Step into Heaven my friend, you are safely here.” The man started toward this wonderful golden gate, but just before he stepped through., the kindly stranger at the gate said, “Oh, your dog can’t go with you, he has no soul.”
The man looked at his dog, standing faithfully beside him in death as he had in life, and sadly turned away from the entrance to Heaven and started walking down the road again. Soon he came to a very plain looking, rustic gate with a rustic man sitting by the gate.
He approached the man by the gate and said “My dog and I are very thirsty and we would love a drink of water if you could provide us with some.” Of course the rustic man invited the man into his lane, gave him and the dog both a bowl of water and said, “welcome.”
When the man asked “Where am I?” The rustic old man said “Well, son you’re in Heaven” The man was confused and asked about the glittering golden gates he had passed because they wouldn’t let his dog in with him, and the rustic old saint said, “Oh, yea, that’s Hell, we use him to screen out the riff raff. We don’t want anyone here who would desert his dog or a friend for what appears to be the golden gates.”
I got to thinking of that man as an analogy of my life, and I realized that so many times I have deserted my best friend (myself) for what appeared a “golden gate” of the easy path. I have gotten off the Road to Healing long before I even approached taking care of myself. I have entered into the false Heaven because it looked so easy, so wonderful, and I have left my best friend — myself–standing alone out side while I entered into this wonderland of deceit and self deception—again and again.
This time, I am determined to bypass the “quick and easy” solutions and to stay on the road to Healing and to take my best friend with me, to care for her ”¦ she deserves my love and nurturing. No one who will not recognize that my best friend is valuable, that I cannot do less than respect her, deserves a place in my life. No one else can take responsibility and make me happy without her. She is ME.
Dear Greenfern.,
When you have (as I was) been involved in enabling relaitonships with your family (especially) it is difficult to break out of these roles because the other members are ACCUSTOMEND to you being their “victim, persecutor and rescuer” and they yours. They want to keep the STATUS QUO and will “up the ante” to make you get back into the “games.”
When I started to try to set boundaries (and boundaries go along with refusing to enable) with my egg donor, she immediately became enraged!
The situation was pretty simple really, and I HAD NEGLECTED MYSELF due to her and my step-father’s critical illness. After his death, she was where she no longer NEEDED my attention 24/7, but she had grown accustom to me “entertaining” her, I KNEW I needed to take care of some urgent financial business which had been neglected, so I attempted to set a boundary by telling her that I was going to take some time for myself that I urgently needed, BUT assured her that in event of emergency, like taking her to the ER I would be there for her, but that I needed to schedule her trips to town and other NON-emergency things so that I could take care of my business.
She had become so entitled to ordering my time, that she raised her eyebrows and indicated that she didn’t like that arrangement and wanted my time when SHE wanted it, not at my convenience. LOL So I suggested that if she wanted to go to town on a day it was inconvenient for me to take her that she hire someone to drive her that day. (she was quite capable of paying someone and had someone available that would have done so).
Her attitude and anger about this “rebellion” on my part (her view) eventually percipitated her finding my X-DIL (a P) and the Trojan horse psychopath more appealing because they would “dance to her tune” (for money and the chance to steal money from her of course). This led to my eventual D & D because I SET A BOUNDARY she didn’t like.
It is difficult to set boundaries and stick to them, because peo0ple we have enabled don’t like for us to stop. People who have victimized us also don’t like us to stop playing the victim role and being their “slaves” and doing for them things they don’t want to do for themselves. Even if it is, like Rune’s X, just washing up the dishes. A person with a healthy relationship would have said to her, “Hon, I know it is midnight, so let’s go to bed now and get some rest, and I’ll do these tomorrow.”
Actually, a HEALTHY parent would not have let the kids make the mess in the first place….
Because we have established long-term patterns with our intimates of enabling them, or letting them victimize us, then becoming resentful of them for victimizing us, it is a “whole nuther mind set” for us and them to get out of that RUT and start being HEALTHY. Our improved mental health and functiong in a health way THREATENS THEIR WORLD.
My egg donor is not a P, but she functions as a “P-by proxy” and has a life-long pattern of behavior that she is NOT ready, not able and not willing to change. She lives her life by “pretending that none of this (bad behavior) happened.”
Yet, she bears grudges for years and years and never forgets OR forgives any slight to her status quo. Yet, she demands that I forget and forgive and PRETEND THAT NONE OF THIS (whatever nasty thing she has done) EVER HAPPENED.
I am no longer willing to do that. I have set boundaries, tried to talk “reasonably” to discuss our problems, but she raises up the wall of ‘I JUST WANT TO THINK ABOUT GOOD THINGS, LET’S JUST PRETEND NONE OF THIS HAPPENED.”
She refuses to acknowledge the TRUTH, the REALITY and discounts my worth and my feelings, in order to protect her own twisted sense of her own perfection and saintlyness.
Since she will NOT respect my boundaries, the ONLY option I have with her is to distance or cut off the relationship. (NC)
When all this started, it was UNTHINKABLE, to me to NC my egg donor or my P-son, no matter what. I might “not speak to them” as way of punishing them for a while but ultimately I came backk to the “game” and PRETENDED NONE OF THIS HAD HAPPENED until the next time one of them stabbed me in the back in a large or small way.
My two adult sons, D and C and I have a healthy relationship. At least NOW it is healthy. I’ve always had a healthy relationship with D, but C had the “enabling” games, and had picked up this way of life from watching my egg donor and me. He married a woman who played those V-P-R games and continued the pattern.
When she tried to kill him, and went to jail, he “snapped out of the FOG” and he and I have been working on our relationship in a HEALTHY WAY. He moved back home (he had been out of state for a year and a half after the attempted murder) and we are living together, the three of us, in a quite nice way. We are learning to set boundaries for each other in a HEALTHY WAY.
I don’t pick up their dirty laundry, and they don’t expect me to. I speak to them with respect, and they speak to me with respect.
C has pretty bad PTSD and from time to time he gets a bit depressed and irritable. If he speaks to me in a way that I find offensive, then I will confront it then and there and say something like, “I realize you aren’t uup to par today, but I really don’t appreciate your words (tone of voice etc).” Then walk off and discuss it later, or discuss it then depending on the situation. There is NO build up of resentment or anger, no blow ups, etc. each problem is addressed at the point it happens.
I don’t “hint around” about what I need or want from my sons, but speak plainly. The same with them to me. I dont keep secrets from them. I don’t expect them to read my mind about what I want. We compromise on things when there is a conflict of needs or wants. Since we live together in the same house there will be little irritations, but it is amazing to me how FEW there are. Son C forgets to rinse off his dishes before he puts them in the sink sometimes, but I remind him to do it, I don’t DO it for him. I also keep in mind that because of his PTSD and my PTSD that we have some short term memory problems and I cut both him and myself some SLACK for that. Things that I frequently forget to do, he also reminds me to do. That is a COOPERATIVE “helping” each other, not enabling or “nagging.” We are making slack for the deficits we both know we have and understanding.
BEfore all this chaos, I would have been as irritated as crap about him “forgetting” to rinse his dishes before putting them in the sink. I would have told him ONCE, maybe twice, and that would have been the end of my “reminding” before we had the “You are responsible and I am not going to continually remind you” lecture (I think it is in the parent mannual page 104, paragraph 2 LOL)
Over all,, I could not imagine better housemates than my two sons. We have a reasonable division of the house work and no one shirks, we have a reasonable division of the outside work, taking into account each person’s abilities, knowledge and physical abilities.
It is an amazing thing to live in peace, love and calm with two people you love and respect and that love and respect you. That treat you with kindness and consideration, that give you slack where you need it, and “BOINK you with the skillet” if you need that too, BUT ALWAYS WITH LOVE AND CARE.
There is so much laughter here, so much fun, that I never knew life could be this good again. Before my husband died, our house was filled with laughter, good humor and love, and now it is again! Plus, there are no STRESSES FROM OUTSIDE THIS HOUSE going on with my egg donor or my P-son, and we do not intend for there to be any creep under the door either!
We are disassociating ourselves for those people who were in our lives (not just the Ps) who wanted us to enable them, and we STOPPED doing it, which these people resented, because they had come to DEPEND on us enabling them, but we have SET BOUNDARIES, and are enforcing those boundaries. If the relationships continue at all, they will be in a HEALTHY manner or as far as we are concerned there will be no relationship. I realized (finally) that I don’t want any relationship in my life where I am having to do somethign for someonen else that I RESENT and that is making me “walk on egg shells” to keep from “hurting their feelings” AT THE EXPENSE OF MY FEELINGS.
I am going to be my OWN BEST FRIEND from now on. ONLY people who treat me with love and respect will be within my “circle of trust.” I JUST RAISED THE BAR.
Jen – I think the reason Rune’s dishwashing story is different from your average guy is he told her to stop enabling and let someone else do the dishes AFTER the kids had left, when there was no one else but him to do the dishes and she knew he wasn’t offering to do them. An “average” guy might say, “well, next time the kids come over make them wash their own dishes,” but he didn’t say that.
Oxy – The first seven years of my relationship with my husband I was completely a codependant enabler. He came from a family of alcoholics (his mom is also a drug addict, he’s NC with her), the issues he brought with him were boundaries so distant it would take a siege tower to breach them, trust issues, depression, and a dark brooding sense of entitlement. I was less than six months out of my relationship with the S, weeks out of the S’s suicide attempt, and brought with me issues of depression, fear of abandonment, low self-esteem, and more. My husband quit jobs often when he got bored, or a new video game came out, relying on his roommate (who is now my brother-in-law) to pay the bills when he was unemployed. He and his roommate lived in an ok apartment with absolutely no furniture in it except his roommate’s armchair, a tv, and two beds. When I asked him why he had nothing but two suitcases and a mattress on the floor he said “I want to be able to pick up and leave any time I want.” When his roommate married my sister and moved out, my husband had been out of work for awhile and was planning to move into his car and live on the streets. Instead, I rode in on my white horse, moved in, paid the bills with my savings until I could get a better paying job. I was going to college full time, working part time in the evenings, while he sat at home, depressed, playing games on the internet. He got into roleplaying online in these fantasy games where he could be a hero, he spent more time online than he did off, his character even got married online to another character on my 21st birthday (he now remembers this as his lowest point of shame). All the while I rescued, then raged at him when I persecuted, then felt sorry for myself as the victim. Things got better for awhile when he got another job, he also started opening up after we had been living together for awhile. He confessed that he had assumed I would leave him because he was a loser without a job. Over the years things got better and better between us, but at a very slow pace, he still didn’t hold any jobs for long and spent at least half of each year unemployed, meanwhile he didn’t help out around the house at all. I had taken over responsiblity for everything. By the time we were in our own townhouse I had stopped nagging and just accepted that his job was to watch movies and play games with me, we joined our other friends in playing Dungeons & Dragons each Saturday, and he lived as a kept man, not happy, but not willing to change. It wasn’t until I told him I was leaving that anything changed. You already know he woke up and joined the rest of us in reality as an adult, but something in me changed too. I not only stopped enabling him, but all of my friends too, it was very drastic, but very needed. It’s so refreshing now when my husband takes the trash out on his own because it needs to be done, or if I ask him to call for a repair person I don’t leave step by step instructions, and he actually does it. I still have to mentally slap myself sometimes when I try to step in and control things, and sometimes he has to remind me to back off when I start nagging, but I think life without enabling is what is letting me be happier these days.
Oxy said: Even if it is, like Rune’s X, just washing up the dishes. A person with a healthy relationship would have said to her, “Hon, I know it is midnight, so let’s go to bed now and get some rest, and I’ll do these tomorrow.”
Actually, a HEALTHY parent would not have let the kids make the mess in the first place”….”
…………….In an ideal world, yes. But we don’t live in an ideal world, unfortunately. We live in a world where even “normal” people are flawed and sometimes behave in a less than stellar fashion, but that does not make what they did or said necessarily abusive or sociopathic or psychopathic.
Tough day today- my 55 th birthday. The past two birthdays ,when the SP was pretending to be my best friend, were so happy. He called me many times during the day, took me to a nice lunch and gave me beautiful earrings. I really did not expect to hear from him at all today, however he sent an e-mail this morning saying only “Happy Birthday”. I’m not sure what SPs think when they do something like that after making it pretty clear that I was long ago devalued and discarded. Sadly, for me, it keeps my sick hope alive that he will realize he made an awful mistake, dump his new “love” ,and return to me. I’m still working on why I still hope that- why do I want someone back who lies constantly; cheats; falsifies work time sheets ( and who knows what else); and dumped me without a backward glance. I did resist the urge to reply to the e-mail. I get a little stronger each day but still have a long way to go. Happy St Patricks Day everyone.
blindsided31:
Happy birthday.
Today one of my siblings asked me if I had heard from my ex-S. I said I hadn’t. My sib said “You will. If his landlord starts evicting him again, he’ll realize how well you treated him and come around for money. Or when he realizes there are no nice vacations this year because you’re not paying for him. Or when he gets arrested again and needs legal help. Or it may just be your birthday. Whatever it is, you will.”
Then I read your post.
MY S is a liar, and a thief and a cheat. I don’t want him back in my life. But, there is still that little part of me that keeps hoping he’ll realize he made a mistake. Then I realize it’s never going to happen. He will go to his grave blaming every one of his exes for every one of his problems.
Don’t respond. You’ll feel better tomorrow.
Thanks Matt. I’ve stayed strong and have not responded. My daughter and I are going out to dinner soon- I need to focus on her and how wonderful she is. I WILL get through the rest of this day.
Hey, I’m back at it. Hopefully it’s not too late to comment on Oxy’s original post:
It’s easy to trust the guy with the nervous tic, the social nerd, the grumpy old fart… all that “rusty” normal human stuff. Normal folks have a hard time not showing the world that they’re normal, and what you see of them is not that far from what you’re getting.
But those “golden gate” / follow-me-and-all-of-your-wildest-dreams-will-come-true sociopaths… You buy the snake oil and find out later you’ve also got the whole venomous snake that wants to eat you.
Too friendly, too flirtatious, too caring, too generous… often means trouble ahead.
Akitameg, I think the ultimate anger over an ex song is “You Ought to Know” by Alanis Morissette. I actually auditioned for a rock band with this song several years ago. I had never sung it before, but knew every word and sang it perfectly. I had just gone through a break up with the emotionally unavailable man, and every word in the song resonated in my bones. Have you tried singing this one? It’s a good one.
Stargazer — My sister came over one night several months ago — honked her horn outstide of my house — til I came out. She told me to get in and to listen.. She turned up the volume and we got it out of our system like there was no tomorrow!!!! That song is a great “turn it up and let every lyric rip through you and out of you” song. We laughed and cried …or wait I think I cried and she laughed.. and then I laughed with her!!!! 🙂
Wow – The entertainment is gonna be awesome at the LF Party! Solo song performances by Stargazer and Akitameg – singing our favorite “S” tunes!!!