“Diane, your book, My Resurrected Heart, enlightened me. Your stories were so honest. You fooled a lot of people into thinking you had the perfect, fun-filled marriage.”
I tried to hide my smirk, and thought, Yep, that’s what enablers do. We trick friends, family, but mostly ourselves into thinking we can control the uncontrollable—the addict we love.
After years of believing my husband’s out-of-control drinking was my fault, I caused it, and it was up to me to cure his addiction. If not, I could at least try and control it. When my efforts failed, I began to cover up his shortcomings.
I was in denial.
At work, my husband was a high-functioning manager, at home a hands-on dad who coached his son’s soccer teams and helped his teenage daughter buy her first car. He was a loyal friend, and a loving son, who just happened to suffer from an alcohol use disorder. When he abused alcohol and his behavior embarrassed us, we covered for him pretending it wasn’t “that bad.”
We are all in denial.
Today, denial is front and center on our TV screens. Friends sitting on a couch—enablers coming to the defense of their colleague, explaining, “He’s a Harvard guy, a Princeton guy,” as if that gives him a Hall Pass to misbehave.
Another proclaims, “He’s got the vision.” Perhaps, an effort to shore up his good points—when he’s not drinking.
From personal experience, I get what they’re doing. As well-intended as we try to be, it is still . . .
Denial, denial, denial.
It’s not by chance that the First Step of AA and Al-Anon reads the same:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
The alcohol abuser and the enabler/codependent are powerless over alcohol, and our lives have become unmanageable.
So, when you say I was honest, remember true honesty for enablers and addicts comes when we take the step out of denial and allow our Higher Power to restore us to sanity. Now that’s the first honest step we can all take.
