Recovery begins when we channel the energy formerly spent on our disease into our recovery.
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ROBIN NORWOOD
TITLE PAGE
EPIGRAPH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
ONE
LETTERS FROM WOMEN WHO …
TWO
… HAVE YET TO RECOVER
THREE
… ARE BATTERED
FOUR
… HAVE EXPERIENCED SEXUAL MOLESTATION AND/OR SEXUAL ADDICTION
FIVE
… HAVE OTHER ADDICTIONS
SIX
… ARE INVOLVED IN THERAPY
SEVEN
… ARE IN SUPPORT GROUPS FOR RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION
EIGHT
… HAVE QUESTIONS, SUGGESTIONS, COMPLAINTS
NINE
LETTERS FROM MEN
TEN
LETTERS FROM WOMEN WHO ARE RECOVERING
LIST OF RESOURCES
INDEX
COPYRIGHT
Women Who Love Too Much
Why Me? Why This? Why Now?
Daily Meditations for Women Who Love Too Much
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Arrow Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Robin Norwood 1988
Robin Norwood has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The actual letters in this collection were sent to the author in response to her book entitled Women Who Love Too Much. The names and other identifying characteristics have been changed to preserve the anonymity of each writer.
First published in UK by Arrow Books in 1988
First published in paperback by Arrow Books in 1989
This edition published by Arrow Books in 2015
www.randomhouse.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781784751616
A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “History”
THIS BOOK, LIKE Women Who Love Too Much (hereafter WWL2M), has been a birthing process, and two invaluable “midwives” assisted its emergence. First, my editor, Laura Golden Bellotti, whose skills so vitally shaped WWL2M, again brought her talent and discernment to bear on this project. With the recent birth of her own son and her consequent plunge into the consuming demands and delights of parenthood, she nevertheless has lost none of her editorial “Golden” touch, the ability to guide softly, firmly and reassuringly all at once. What a blessing it has been to work with her again.
And second, Victoria Raye Starr, whose being carries as much light as her name. As she converted these many letters and my handwritten comments on them to typewritten manuscript pages, she communicated her own richly personal and deeply honest understanding of much of the book’s material through innumerable notes attached to freshly typed pages. Often I’d be compelled to go back and rewrite in the light of her cogent comments and probing questions. Our countless conversations helped give me an invaluable perspective on the topics addressed in this book.
While I alone am responsible for its flaws and shortcomings, these two women have contributed immeasurably to whatever is worthwhile in this book, and they have my deepest thanks.
“SO, ARE YOU going to write another book?” It seemed that people began asking that question from the moment Women Who Love Too Much was completed, and my reaction was always the same. I felt like a new mother, tired and spent, lying in bed trying to recover from a long and difficult labor while cheerful bedside visitors repeatedly asked, “So, are you going to have another baby?” Somehow the very question seemed to vastly underrate the magnitude of the last effort, and I usually answered a little crossly, perhaps as that imagined new mother might have, “I don’t even want to think about it right now!” Privately, I was sure nothing would induce me to go through that painful birthing process again.
But the seeds from which this book would grow were sown with the first letter I received in response to WWL2M. Even before the official publication date, someone had found the book, read it and been moved enough to write. Her letter follows in its entirety:
Dear Ms. Norwood:
Never in my life have I been so moved by a book to put pen to paper to write to the author. Finding, discovering your book came unexpectedly as I was searching for business texts to assist me in my burgeoning new life. I must say your work affected me so profoundly that I am certain it was the key in fostering an entire positive direction out of so many years of ceaseless pain and confusion. There were times I felt this book was written just for me alone. It was indeed powerful for me. I remember one night sitting on my kitchen floor poring over each page; at times I had to close it and put it by my side until my weeping lessened. God bless you for your clarity, sensitivity, eloquence, and most of all your decision to write it!
I was married to a very powerful man, and I had to leave for my own survival—although he loved me dearly in his way. I see now, through your gifted writing, so many dynamics I never understood.
Beth B.
As I read this letter, I cried. Giving birth to WWL2M had taken three years and much sacrifice, but now I knew it had all been worth it. There had been heated moments during the book’s gestation when persons who knew the publishing business far better than I insisted that in order to sell, the book needed to be lighter, more positive, less depressing and with far less emphasis on addiction. But I was committed to describing what it had really been like for my clients, my friends and myself as we struggled with the men in our lives. My aim was to depict the frequency with which addiction and co-addiction appeared in so many of our stories and to clarify how very dangerous it was for us to continue our unhealthy patterns of living and relating to men. And I wanted to emphasize what a tremendous piece of work we faced when we decided to change those patterns. Because I had attempted to describe truthfully the often very painful lives of women who love too much, my book did not turn out to be the light, easy-to-read self-help book some people expected; but it was the book I wanted to write.
After reading that first letter from Beth B., I knew WWL2M had been of value to at least one person. But there was also something specific in Beth’s letter that touched me, aside from the fact that WWL2M was accomplishing its purpose. Just like Beth B., I had known so well that experience of sitting on the floor sobbing with pain and relief and gratitude because another woman had honestly described her struggle—a struggle so like my own. In my case, that experience had come after reading a magazine article in the early 1970s in which the author described how it felt to be a woman in this culture—to wake up and finally allow oneself to see and hear all the many ways that women as a class are insulted. When I read that author’s words, I knew, with almost a shock, that I wasn’t alone anymore. Her writing spoke so deeply and truly of my own need to be unaware and unawake in order to avoid feeling the pain, anger and humiliation that are a part of simply being female in a male-dominated society. But that choice to disregard so many of my experiences and reactions had been costly, and the author of that article spoke to my latent desire to awaken fully, to see and hear and feel everything I experienced, and to no longer silently participate in my own debasement. What was true for her was also true for me, and through her example I was able to set free the feelings I had previously kept hidden even from myself. Her truth had helped me on my way to becoming bigger and braver and more grown up. Now, as I read Beth’s letter more than a decade later I was vividly remembering that particular metamorphosis. WWL2M had touched another woman to the depth that I had once been touched, and she was now sharing that experience with me. A widening, deepening, brightening circle had been created between us.
That letter was the first of what before long began to feel like an avalanche of responses to the book. By phone (until, because of the sheer volume of calls, getting an unlisted number became an unavoidable necessity) and by letter, women, and some men, too, wanted to connect, to talk about what the book had meant to them. They wanted to pour out their personal experiences, and very often to say thanks. But many also wanted answers to specific questions or had problems they felt weren’t addressed in the book.
These questions were important. Some I had heard over and over throughout my career in the field of addiction. Others were raised specifically in response to issues explored in WWL2M and came up repeatedly not only in letters but during the lectures and workshops I was giving. As the mail spread beyond my desk to nearly every flat surface in the house and the demand for responses from me weighed heavier, I began to search for a more efficient yet still personal way to answer them all. Though time factors and the sheer volume of letters made it impossible, I longed to answer each of them in detail from my own personal perspective as a woman who has loved too much, indeed who has been a relationship addict most of my life, and also from my perspective as a therapist with many years’ experience dealing with addiction and recovery.
But I also knew that the people sending those letters needed much more than a letter from me. They needed each other. These women and men who were sharing so much of themselves with me needed to hear each others’ stories, to discover together how the disease of relationship addiction had operated in their lives. I wanted to be able to create for those who had never known it, or had not yet felt its power when applied to relationship addiction, that life-changing experience of hearing how it is for others who share the same problem.
As a therapist, and personally, through my own ongoing recovery, I am convinced of the tremendous value of peer support groups. These groups, made up of people dedicated to speaking honestly with one another about a common problem, and self-led according to simple guidelines and spiritual principles, are in my opinion the most powerful and profound sources of healing available. They provide the basis for recovery from every kind of addiction, chemical and behavioral. These kinds of groups are the hope of every addict for a new, better way of life.
Letters from Women Who Love Too Much is written, then, for two purposes. First, as a practical way of responding in detail to the many, many letters that have common themes and questions. And second, to create an opportunity for those who share the problem of relationship addiction to hear from each other what that struggle has been like and, if there has been some recovery, how it has been achieved.
Obviously, in order to gain the most from this book a reader should have already read WWL2M slowly, carefully and hopefully more than once. I highly recommend rereading it before beginning this one. Until that book is thoroughly digested this one won’t be of much help, as it is not intended to further explain the principles outlined in WWL2M. Rather its goal is to explore, through readers’ questions and experiences, the implications of putting those principles into action.
When we are lonely and lost we don’t yearn simply for company but for our own kind. I am convinced that the advice columns that are so popular are not read for the answers but for the questions. We want to know that we are not alone, that among all those other people whose lives are hidden from us, there are those who struggle as we do. I am grateful that in writing this second book I, too, am not alone. As has always been the case through the years of my own recovery, I have so many of you sharing your stories with me, helping me through the struggle and into the light. Now hopefully, through the vehicle of this book, you will be sharing with each other as well.
To you this book is dedicated.
THE LETTERS IN this book really do exist, and each is quoted by permission of its author. Many of those whose letters are used herein have expressed gratitude for what they have received from reading WWL2M. These thanks, while gratefully acknowledged here, have been consistently edited out to avoid redundancy for the reader. Some further editing has been done for the sake of clarity and conciseness as well as to protect each author’s identity.
The letters and responses have, of necessity, been sorted into chapters dealing with specific subjects. However, many of the letters contain multiple questions and problems. Since diseases of addiction, including relationship addiction, tend to overlap in real life, they do so in the letters as well. For instance, the topics of alcoholism and coalcoholism, sexual addiction, incest, compulsive eating and recovery may all be addressed in one letter. Thus any arbitrary sorting of these letters is just that—arbitrary. For this reason, do not expect the content of each letter to be either as narrow or as unequivocal as the chapter headings might suggest.
In answering each letter, I am drawing on fifteen years’ experience in the field of addiction and nearly a lifetime of loving too much, thankfully including nearly seven years’ recovery. But by no means does that imply that my answers are the “right” ones. They are simply that—my answers: incomplete, subjective and biased. I make no attempt to be all-inclusive in my responses. Rather, each letter is answered from the perspective of regarding addiction as a disease and each response or comment incorporates my very strong viewpoints on treatment, developed over years of making mistakes and learning from them. The reader may not like my response to any given letter, nor agree with it. That there are many other ways of responding, perhaps more helpful or insightful or to the point than the replies contained in this book, I readily acknowledge. We will each read these letters with our own eyes and our own hearts, like a series of Rorschach ink blots to which we bring our own perceptions, colored by our unique personal histories. The letters will absorb our experiences and reflect back our own projections so, of course, what each of us sees in them, feels from them, will vary. I believe that it is not the answers that matter so much anyway. What counts are the letters themselves, with their pain and pathos, lessons learned, slips backward, progress forward and sometimes even triumphs.
We all want answers to our questions, our fears and doubts and struggles. But the answers must eventually come, not from someone else’s advice to us, but from their example combined with our own commitment to changing our life. Setting ourselves upon a path trod by others who have faced the same problems and known the same fears and doubts and struggles, yet who are finding their way, helps us achieve our own recovery. As others share their stories, through their mistakes and victories they help us find our way, too.
Finally, I must state as strongly and clearly as possible that this book is not intended to be a general treatise on love, on how to find the right man or on how to make a relationship work. Quite the contrary, like WWL2M, this book is written primarily for heterosexual women who are addicted to relationships. Its purpose is to aid women whose lives have become progressively more unmanageable due to an increasingly debilitating obsession with either a particular man or with the latest of a series of men or, if in between involvements, with finding a man. By thus focusing this book I do not mean to imply that only heterosexual women become addicted to relationships, as this is absolutely not the case. Many men are also addictive in their relationships, just as addictive relating is very much a theme for great numbers of homosexual couples. I have chosen to focus on heterosexual women because their experience of relationship addiction is the one I understand best, both personally and professionally.
Although this book primarily contains letters from women who are obsessed with men, it also includes letters from homosexual men and women, straight men, parents who are obsessed with their children and children who are obsessed with their parents. I hope Letters from Women Who Love Too Much will be of value to all these populations, as well as to those whose relationships, while troubled, are not addictive. It is, nevertheless, aimed at the woman whose mental and physical health are either at risk or have already begun to deteriorate, whose work performance is potentially or actually suffering, who is likely to be experiencing money problems, whose children, friends and other family members are neglected or abandoned as are her other interests, who is potentially or actively suicidal—who is, as the years go by, becoming sicker and sicker from her dependency on men and on what she chooses to call “love.”
As was stated in WWL2M, I regard relationship addiction as a definable, diagnosable and treatable disease process, akin to other diseases of addiction such as alcoholism and compulsive eating. It shares with these other diseases of addiction the fact that it is naturally progressive (it gets worse) without treatment but that it does respond to specific treatment that addresses its physical, emotional and spiritual components. It is my conviction that a treatment approach that neglects any one of these aspects will not, over time, prove effective.
All this needs to be said in order to explain the uncompromising approach to recovery that I believe is necessary. The most effective approach to addiction in terms of recovery is that taken by the Anonymous programs, and this approach is, in my opinion, the best one for addressing relationship addiction as well. It is the only approach I personally can advocate.
Dear Robin Norwood,
I hated your book.
I hated Women Who Love Too Much.
I hated this book so much that it took me months to read it.
Sometimes I could only read a page a day.
I hated the women that you wrote about. I hated the stories.
I hated what you said.
And then I finished the book.
And then:
—I went to my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting.
—I found Al-Anon.
—I joined ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics).
—I got into group therapy.
—I found VOICESfn1 and for the first time in my life talked about having been sexually abused.
—I stopped binge-eating.
—I got a new job.
—I made a budget for the first time (I’m thirty-three).
—I have begun a new life.
I was crazy and out of control. I am five foot three inches and I weighed ninety-nine pounds due to my bingeing and purging syndrome. Now I cannot imagine that there will be a day when I do not have WWL2M on my coffee table and a second copy in my “personal” drawer at the office.
I thank you.
Wendy D.
For me, Wendy’s letter just about says it all. Simply reading a book, no matter how deeply it affects us, is never enough in itself to bring about the changes we desire in our lives. At best a book can be a signpost, an arrow pointing out the direction in which we need to travel. It is up to each of us to decide whether or not we will put our feet upon the path. But her letter brings to mind a very important point. When does recovery from any addiction actually begin?
Recovery begins when we channel the energy formerly spent on our disease into our recovery.
Recovery begins when we become willing, as Wendy did, to channel the energy and effort formerly spent on practicing our disease(s) into instead pursuing our recovery. Wendy’s recovery requires a lot of time and work and dedication, but then being actively addictive cost her a great deal, too. So she made a choice to go to whatever lengths were necessary to get well—and she is continuing to make that choice each day. Thus, she has begun to recover, and her recovery will continue as long as she continues to make that choice.
Where do those of us who have yet to take the first step toward recovery from relationship addiction begin? We begin by becoming willing to channel the energy and effort that we formerly spent on trying to bring about a change in someone else into instead changing ourselves. Our initial steps in this new direction may not come quickly or easily, and they may at first seem very small, but we must learn to respect their importance. As we move toward recovery, no step we take is really small, because each one changes the direction of our life.
The next letter is a good example of what a first step toward recovery might be. Taking just this small step and sticking with it already has implications for the rest of this woman’s life. She has begun the process of change.
Dear Robin Norwood,
Valentine’s Day has always been a tradition I’ve looked forward to with hope and yet dreaded at the same time, fearing the letdown of a day meant for love when none was received.
Two days ago I was thirty pages into WWL2M. In my desk drawer was a Valentine’s card—sweet, suggestive—for a man who has basically not participated in our relationship for several weeks now. Not sending that card seems like such a little thing, yet it could be the first time I have actively chosen to stop giving to a man and a situation where the feeling of caring is not mutual.
I am not finished with the book yet. In fact, it is difficult for me to read because it speaks so clearly to why I have been in one failed relationship after another. This could be the tool that finally begins to liberate me, though.
I still have the card. I will not be sending it. Maybe Valentine’s Day will become my Victory Day.
Theo P.
In Theo’s case continuing recovery requires that she not only refrain from sending an amorous message to a man who isn’t interested in her, but that she do something nice for herself to fill the void she has now created. We cannot simply stop an addictive behavior without substituting another (hopefully more positive) behavior to take its place. Otherwise the addictive behavior will only reassert itself. This is because Nature seems to abhor a vacuum as much in the areas of human behavior and emotions as in physics.
Since Theo has the power both to give and receive the gift she has been yearning for from someone else, she doesn’t have to wait, empty, until a man comes along to fill her life with pleasure and love. She can become her own supply of love if she is willing to do so. The more lovingly and generously she treats herself the less likely she is to allow anyone else to treat her badly or indifferently.
All this is easy to see but not so easy to do, because nothing challenges us more than having to change the ways we think, feel and act, especially regarding ourselves. Theo admits that she hasn’t yet been able to finish WWL2M because looking at her own patterns of relating is so uncomfortable for her. And yet recovery demands that we change, and the possibility of change begins with awareness. We must be willing to look honestly at our lives, which requires courage; we must be willing to admit that we are not perfect, that we need help, and that we cannot do it alone, which requires humility. So courage and humility are absolutely essential in order for recovery to begin.
In the letter that follows, we’ll look at what is necessary, after one has begun the process of recovery, for that process to continue.
Dear Robin Norwood,
My parents have a drinking problem, and though I don’t drink or use drugs I now realize I have been addicted to men who are self-destructive. I have tried to control the three men I’ve lived with by threats, bribes, praise, lectures and every other manipulation I thought might work.
I now see that I am equally as self-destructive as they are because I seem to pick only those men who are needy and deficient. I can never stay interested in men who are healthy and competent.
My current boyfriend just called me from the Army brig where he is spending a forty-five-day sentence for possession of pot. He says he is learning a lesson and will stay out of trouble forever now. I told him I was happy to hear that and I hope he takes care of himself. I realize I can only take care of myself and am attending my first Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings in a couple of days.
I don’t know if he and I will ever get back together and it doesn’t really matter, because I’m learning how to be okay on my own.
Best wishes from a recovering man-addict.
Britt J.
As Britt detaches from her boyfriend’s problem, focusing instead on her own unhealthy patterns of behavior and seeking help to change these, she exemplifies the first stage of recovery from relationship addiction. How diligently she continues to pursue her own recovery will determine whether she moves beyond this first stage. As you read the other letters from relationship addicts in this book you will learn that there is no specific amount of pain that guarantees a person will make a wholehearted commitment to recovery. For some individuals, incredible degrees of personal humiliation and degradation do not bring about the surrender that is required in order for recovery to begin. Instead, much like a gambler who cannot stop playing because so much has already been lost, these relationship addicts use their abasement to justify their ever more desperate attempts at controlling another person and salvaging a progressively deteriorating situation. In other words, as the consequences of relationship addiction worsen, some people continue to get sicker. But others “hit bottom” and become, at least temporarily, willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to get well.
It is sometimes difficult to understand that a person can recognize the destructive power of addiction in his or her life and become willing to address it for a time, yet later lose that willingness completely. But this is the case more often than not. This is why distinctions must be made between three phases of recovery: beginning to recognize the disease process that is operating in one’s life (this could occur through reading a book such as WWL2M); becoming willing to address it as the life-threatening addiction it is (by going to a meeting of an Anonymous program that addresses the particular addiction); and continuing to make one’s recovery one’s first priority on a daily basis (through regular attendance at meetings and daily reading and prayer). As difficult as it is, launching into recovery is only a first step and is no guarantee that recovery will necessarily continue. Many, many more alcoholics initially become sober than are able to stay sober, and many, many more relationship addicts begin recovery than stay with it.
It is an inexplicable feature of every kind of addiction and every type of addict that no one, no matter how great that person’s experience or expertise, can predict who will truly recover from a given addiction and who will not. All that can be safely predicted is that most addictive people will not get well. Yet those who continue daily to want recovery more than they want anything else and who make it their first priority will eventually, little by little and step by step, and often with the guidance and support of others who have been through the same struggle, achieve it.
In order to sustain recovery, in addition to the requisite willingness, courage and humility so necessary to begin the process, we must develop two more qualities: a capacity for rigorous honesty and self-examination, and a reliance on a Power greater than ourselves. This Higher Power certainly doesn’t have to fit anyone else’s definition of what it is or should be. It can be called God. It can be without a name. It can as likely be found in a support group of peers as in a church or temple. It is a highly personal, individually formulated principle that, when called upon, provides an unfailing supply of strength and solace.
Cecilia’s letter exemplifies how necessary this source of strength is as the life-changing process of recovery reshapes us.
Dear Robin,
I want to tell you about some of the things that have been happening for me since I read your book two years ago. From reading WWL2M I realized my family was alcoholic and that it is truly the whole family’s disease. I went to a couple of Al-Anon meetings and began to understand myself and my choices much better. I felt “cured.”
It was truly just the beginning.
Having had an unhappy early marriage and then a disastrous affair with a man who had a long and sordid criminal record, I was able, with what I had learned, to make a healthier choice for myself. Now I am married again, this time to a wonderful man who treats me like gold. Sometimes I get angry when he tells me he loves me. Sometimes I pick a fight. I am more comfortable being angry. I don’t yet know how to be loved.
Something in my past has been buried for years and now, with the help of God, I have recently been allowed to remember it all. Five months ago when the memory came back I thought at first I’d die from the pain. I remembered that when I was four years old my Dad molested me. When I could finally acknowledge that, suddenly so much made sense to me. I have always hated and pitied my mother but now I have begun to understand her. Of course she drank. What else could she do? Face the truth? Hardly. There was nowhere to go with it.
I have lived in a state of denial for so long. I want to tell you how strong denial is. As the true circumstances of my childhood have surfaced, I have experienced some physical ramifications. I began having “heart attacks” during which my chest hurt and I felt as though I was going to lose consciousness. I had an EKG/treadmill test and the doctor told me I had no indications of heart trouble. To the contrary, I have a very strong heart. So that wasn’t the problem. But the panic attacks continued to happen even when I wasn’t thinking about my Dad or Mom. I was still trying to push it all down. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to know. It felt like everything I had believed about my family was a lie. I thought I was losing my mind. Growing up in my house you learned to lie even though the truth was hitting you in the face. Now I believed nothing, I knew nothing.
During this horrible time, God asked me in the most gentle, loving way not to drink. With all my agony over my parents’ craziness, I was resorting to a very fine pinot noir to take away the pain. I had already decided I was not ever going to be like my parents, so I didn’t catch on to the fact that I was an alcoholic too, just like both of them. Now I am grateful that I was delivered from three generations or more of alcoholism.
Not drinking left me naked. I had used alcohol, sarcasm, dirty fighting and staying angry so that I wouldn’t feel the hurt inside me anymore. Now God asked me to give up those other tactics as well.
Throughout all of this my heart palpitated and I began to have migraine headaches three to four days a week. The desire to deny my past created a war in my body which left me tired and sad.
I have cried so much lately, something which I could never do as a child. Getting in touch with the tears and the grief has been frightening. Sometimes I’ve felt as though I would never stop crying.
I’m writing to you, Robin, because I think it is important for you to know what some people may be going through from reading your book. The pain of true change is the most immense agony I have ever known or ever hope to know. It hasn’t come over me all at once and it isn’t healing overnight either. It will probably take me years and the love of God to come to terms with this devastating family secret, accept it, heal from it and forgive everyone involved. It is such hard work and the cost of looking at these things is high. But the cost of not looking is even higher.
Please let people know that.
I am doing very well right now. I hurt and I cry and I’m healing. I have given up that mindless “Gidget Gets Remarried” image I was trying to portray. My need for approval from every living, breathing soul is slowly lessening, and I am setting realistic goals and loving boundaries for myself. I no longer have to save every damaged person I run into. It is becoming okay to take care of myself first. It is even becoming okay to be loved!
I always thought I just wanted to be loved and the reality is I chose only people who weren’t capable of loving me. I have chosen better this time and am learning how to hold still and accept that love.
God has taught me so much in such a short period of time and has told me He will hold my hand the rest of the way no matter how long it takes. The heart pains are lessening and the migraines are going away, and I am accepting what happened to me and mourning for my lost childhood when I need to.
My most wonderful husband holds me and hugs me and even understands why it is so hard for me to receive his caring. I see him struggle with me and I wish it were over and I were healed for his sake, too. So you see, your book was only the beginning—a very helpful, gentle, loving beginning …
Cecilia
If self-honesty were easier, more comfortable, perhaps we wouldn’t need help from a Power greater than ourselves in order to achieve it. But as Cecilia’s letter demonstrates, looking honestly at ourselves and our lives can be so excruciatingly painful that most of us cannot face the task with only our limited human resources.
Trying to recover without faith is like walking up a steep hill backward and in high heels.
Trying to recover without faith, for someone who has none and wants none, is not impossible, but it is more difficult. It means doing recovery the hard way—kind of like walking up a steep hill backward and in high heels. You still may get where you’re headed, but there is a faster, more efficient, less strenuous way to make the journey. But faith itself is surprisingly easy to cultivate if a person is willing to do so—willing to act as if there is a greater Intelligence than one’s own operating in the universe. However, nothing, nothing could be more personal than a quest for faith, and none of us can tell another how to conduct that quest. We each discover our God alone and in silence.
There would be no point in assembling letters from women who love too much unless, taken together, these letters can help promote recovery in those who read them. Yet recovery from relationship addiction is a far more subtle, less definable achievement than recovery from most other addictions such as alcoholism, compulsive spending, compulsive gambling and even compulsive eating. Throughout this book you will need to evaluate for yourself what constitutes recovery from relationship addiction, what promotes it and what prevents it, why it happens for some and not for others. All these questions and their answers will matter deeply to you if you want to recover yourself.
Theo and Britt are just beginning to explore recovery. Wendy and Cecilia are well on their way because the steps they are taking to promote their healing are now an established part of their daily lives. But starting the journey and then continuing on it is up to each of us, alone. No one, nothing can do it for us. We must find the courage and the humility, as Wendy has, to take the necessary first steps and then the honesty and a source of spiritual strength and guidance, as Cecilia has, to face the specific issues that are on our path.
Throughout this book women (and men) who have read WWL2M will describe their lives, their situations, their relationship addiction and very often their other addictions as well. Sometimes, as with these four women, we’ll hear about the steps they’ve taken in order to begin and sustain their recovery. Hopefully, the steps taken and the progress made by those who are recovering will be a source of inspiration and guidance to those of you who are beginning that journey yourselves.
fn1 VOICES: Victims Of Incest Emerged Survivors—see the List of Resources at the end of this book.
THE ROOTS OF relationship addiction can inevitably be traced to emotional traumas in childhood—loss, pain, abuse and abandonment—and the patterns of relating developed in consequence of these traumas. The details of these traumatic experiences vary among individuals, as do the corresponding “styles” of addictive relating that are developed and later practiced in adulthood as relationship addiction. For instance, women who come from violent homes tend to choose violent partners, women who grew up in alcoholic homes tend to choose chemically dependent partners, and so on. But one dynamic is always present and operating in relationship addiction: the unconscious drive to re-create the struggle from the past and, in confronting it again in the present, to emerge triumphant. Stated more simply, it is a compulsion to play the game again and this time to win. The struggle to prevail over what defeated us in our past becomes an obsession. As long as this motive is still active, relationship addiction is still present, whether or not there is a current partner.
This chapter comprises letters from women who acknowledge their relationship addiction and also recognize some of the contributing factors from their childhood experiences. But awareness of the conditions and events that predisposed one to developing a pattern of addictive relating is by no means tantamount to mastery over that behavior pattern.
Each of these women believes herself to have recovery more firmly in hand than is, in my assessment, actually the case. In order to understand my reservations regarding these particular reports of progress, keep in mind the factors that promote recovery. Courage and humility are required, as is the development of a capacity for rigorous honesty. One must be willing to go to any length to get well. In order to maintain the healing process it is usually also necessary to surrender to an Intelligence greater than one’s own for guidance and comfort.
Awareness by itself is not enough to promote and support the massive changes necessary for recovery to take place. When that awareness is coupled with self-willed determination to overcome addictive behavior, the possibility of recovery becomes even more remote, because the addict is bringing to bear on her disease the same unhealthy attitudes and behaviors she has used for so long on other people. Nothing has truly changed. She is still operating from the conviction that she, of herself, has the answer to her problem and the power to force herself to change. It is natural at first (and comforting) to believe that merely making up one’s mind to change will end the problem, but if that were all that were necessary there would be no such thing as addiction. Self-willed control doesn’t work in the face of addiction of any type because all diseases of addiction are diseases of control. We try and try to control what we cannot and we get sicker in the process. Addiction is not amenable to self-will, only to surrender, to admitting it is bigger than we are and that we cannot overcome it alone.
The following letters are presented to help you more readily recognize relationship addiction as well as to help identify self-will in operation. Self-will is always a feature of relationship addiction and presents a tremendous impediment to achieving recovery.
Dear Robin Norwood,
Your book was so difficult for me to finish. I actually put it down several times and told myself that I couldn’t continue with it—it hurt too much to read the truth about myself. Every time I would try to put the book in a bottom drawer, face down, I would turn to page four, where I had underlined the words “you will change from a woman who loves someone else so much it hurts into a woman who loves herself enough to stop the pain.” I would then persevere and continue to read. I know I cannot stop my pain overnight, but to finally admit that I am indeed in pain is a beginning.
I am thirty-three, have two children, have had two husbands and just this evening ended a year-long relationship with a married man. Reading WWL2M gave me the strength to end the relationship. All of these men have needed “fixing” and I have even carried my “fixing” into my career. I teach severely emotionally disturbed senior high school students. I have received many awards and so much praise for working with these kids, but now I have a new perspective on what I’ve really been doing all these years. When people used to ask me why I chose to work with crazy kids I told them that I didn’t choose my work, it chose me, almost like a calling. How wrong I have been! What better profession for a compulsive “fixer”! I am not going to run away from my job, but when I return in September, it will be with a new awareness and a healthier attitude.
You write about dysfunctional families and alcoholism. My own family was dysfunctional, not because of alcoholism, but because of the death of my only sibling, a brother, nineteen months younger. He became ill at the age of five, with a terminal brain tumor. He died a little bit every day for three years, and my mother, my father and I all died with him. He died in January, my parents divorced in February, my mom remarried in November and my father in May. I have spent the last twenty-five years trying to “fix” all of us up again, but never realized this until I read your book. In the meantime, I have hurt two good men and my own children as well. If you write another book, please write about what the death of a child does to a family. There must be so many others like me who have lost a brother or sister and don’t recognize what it may still be doing to them. The parents of the dead child receive the sympathy but the siblings know only that they can never “fix” that loss for the family that is left—they can never be good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or strong enough to fill the void. They can never love enough or be perfect enough to justify their own existence and the fact that they are still alive while their sibling is dead. Please try to help the unwitting survivors of a sibling’s death who may feel these same feelings I have. You can reach so many people and I cannot.
I graduated from college with a cumulative average of 3.98 and remember thinking how proud my parents would have been if only I hadn’t gotten that one “B” which kept me from a perfect 4.0. Somehow I was sure I had let us all down.
I hope that I have cried the last of my tears for a while, that I will wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Moira, you are loved so much, especially by yourself.” Then, I will go ahead and have the courage to mail this letter.
Moira D.
Moira’s first letter describes so well one of the many ways children can be damaged enough to develop into serious relationship addicts in adulthood. The loss of a child through death inevitably delivers a deep and lasting blow to the remaining family members and will to some extent always affect their continuing relationships with each other. The surviving family members are very fortunate if they are able to explore their guilt and pain and fear of yet more loss and to use their shared grief to forge deeper and more honest bonds with each other. All too often instead there is a shutting down, a closing off of feeling due to the very natural fear of loving and losing again. When this happens, the burden assumed by the remaining child(ren) for restoring the family’s well-being can be a tremendously heavy one.
Moira’s feelings of guilt for surviving, along with her need to be perfect in order to recompense the family for its loss, are both common reactions in children whose sibling has died and tend to be exaggerated to the degree that the family is unable to confront the pain of a child’s death. But in Moira’s case the loss she suffered was far greater than even her brother’s death accounted for. Her family, her entire support system, in essence died right along with her brother. The agony of his long, slow dying stressed her parents’ relationship to the breaking point. Unable to mourn both their son’s illness and his death, Moira’s parents each sought solace and relief in relationships outside of their marriage. Their divorce from each other and quick remarriages left Moira emotionally abandoned. She tried to stifle her own desperate feelings of loss and grief by focusing on remedying her parents’ pain. When her efforts to be perfect in order to save them all and restore all that had been lost inevitably failed, she redoubled her efforts out of her own pain and need … and her sense of failure grew.
Alcoholism doesn’t cause problems; it just exaggerates the ones that are already there.
There is a very wise saying in the addiction treatment field that “alcoholism doesn’t cause problems in a person, a relationship or a family. It just exaggerates the ones that are already there.” This axiom applies not only when alcoholism is present but when any profoundly stressful condition occurs in a family and cannot be openly recognized and discussed. It certainly applies to Moira’s family and to Moira individually as well. I think it can be safely assumed that her family had difficulty with intimacy and honest communication even before her brother’s death. These events simply exaggerated the effects of their inability to be genuine with one another. And I would guess that Moira already had a highly developed need to be “good” before her brother’s illness. His death exaggerated this need from a characteristic into a character defect. Her perfectionism was an attempt to control the uncontrollable (in this case, the deterioration of her family). She inevitably carried her fear of uncontrollable situations (and her accompanying attraction to them because of her need to fix them) into every area of her adult life. She brought her repertoire of tools for tackling this old, familiar struggle to her relationships with men, her friendships, her parenting and her career.
Moira’s next letter (written in response to my request to use her first letter in this book) begins with a concern, so common to women who love too much, for her daughter’s possible predisposition to relationship addiction. When not focused on a partner, relationship addicts will very often turn to a child and do their (to use Moira’s word) “fixing” there.
This next letter quickly makes clear that power and control issues have long been themes in Moira’s family history and that, under the guise of “helping,” she has adopted these approaches to relating to those close to her. Indeed, her letter is a study of a will of iron operating in interpersonal relationships. It also demonstrates that this iron will can be concealed, at least from oneself, by assuming alternately the roles of helper or victim.
Moira is caught in what is by now a very old pattern of relating. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t bring the happy results she longs for, yet she cannot stop. The pattern itself creates pressure, and under pressure it is all she knows how to do.
Dear Robin,