#81 Do I have to be nice to my boyfriend's family? / Am I enabling a victim?

Dear Annie: I am a sophomore in college and have been dating 'Andrew' for nearly six months. He lives with his father and stepfamily. There are several legal problems involving abuse in Andrew’s family. Social Services visits their house often to check up on things. Along with that, his family has no sense of financial responsibility, and much of the burden falls on Andrew. Bills have been placed in his name because the adults in this household have not paid them.

Andrew cannot currently afford to move out. All his money goes toward college tuition and car payments. His father helps with nothing. His mother, who lives in another state, tries her best but cannot afford much.
I know and adore Andrew’s mother, but I cannot bear to be around his father and stepmother. I do not approve of how they do anything in their house, because I feel it endangers the young children who reside there. I rarely visit them, and apparently, they have noticed. They told Andrew I needed to be more "friendly."

I care very much for Andrew, but why do I have any obligations to his family? He feels I should "make nice" so as not to cause any problems. What do you think? - Reluctant Girlfriend

Dear Reluctant: Is this relationship serious? If so, you must find a way to get along with Andrew’s family, whether or not you approve of them. He obviously wants to remain close to his father. Social Services is handling the abuse issue, which means you can choose to be a stabilizing influence in the family or a source of stress. You don’t have to like these people, but you can be polite and civil, and show Andrew that you care enough about him to make the effort. —Annie

Gabby's Reply

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Gabby's Reply:

Hi Reluctant: Your use of the word “care” indicates that you are stuck in controlling your emotions. A person who is whole and complete starts a relationship from love. It's no accident that you attracted someone equally emotionally challenged from a dysfunctional family. Of all the men on the planet you attracted someone who supports, rewards, and enables abuse of his siblings—for a roof over his head no less. Worse yet, the both of you are unaware that the reasons he's given you for his condition hide the truth.

It's clear that you needed someone who would mirror your need for counseling. You were supposed to have learned from your family:

1) To be able to experience the karma, the aura, of someone whose integrity is out.

2) To not engage in extended or significant conversations with people addicted to abuse.

That you didn't learn these important assessment skills indicates that you also have some incompletes with your parents. A daughter who is whole and complete in her relationship with her parents selects promising dates with her parents in mind—would they, and their family, treat my parents with the love and respect they deserve? Will they compliment the clan or will they generate unwanted problems ? I doubt your parents approve of your choice; for certain your choice is abusive to them. Perhaps you're reaping the consequences of thwarting (abusing) your parents;

You’ve revealed that you don’t have the leadership-communication skills it will take to have your relationship with Andrew be anything other than what it is. You'll definitely need an entirely different set of skills to create/find your ideal partner. To create and have (recreate daily, to sustain) a magnificent relationship you must be willing to communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously, through to mutual satisfaction, at all times within your intimate relationships.

You are addicted to abuse and to withholding. You've submitted yourself to his family's abuse (not once but repeatedly) and you have self-righteously withheld your experiences and thoughts about his family from them.

As you've noticed, being polite and distant causes upset and keeps everyone stuck in producing more of the same. You already know that if you shared your experience of his family with them it would generate upset, both with them and Andrew. No significant conversation with his father or step-mother could be mutually satisfying. You don’t yet have permission to communicate your experience (to share what you're experiencing at any given moment) and we already know that it won't work to dump judgments, criticisms, or even recommendations in his space.

For example:

Father: “Shut up you kids!”

You: “I'm experiencing uncomfortableness.”

Father: “It’s none of your business. If you don’t like the way I talk to my kids then don’t come over, etc. argue, argue, justify, justify.”

Even your nonverbal judgment of his abuse gets communicated. It comes across as self-righteousness.

You don’t yet have the communication skills to inspire someone addicted to abuse to remove him/her self from the abusive relationship(s). That is to say, rather than inspire Andrew to opt for health, happiness, and abuse-free personal and familial relationships you reward and enable Andrew in empowering abuse within his own family. They cannot begin to heal until he removes himself (to including his financial support) from the equation. Until then he cannot be absolutely sure that it’s not his leadership-communication skills that are causing the abuse. What do you suppose would happen if he insisted that they complete 50 hours of therapy before he talked with them again? In other words, he doesn't even have the respect of his father.

Now here’s the rub: Your letter turned me off about Andrew. I never met the guy and already I don't like him based upon how you described your problem. You also caused many readers to think less of him for putting up with that crap. You have covertly unconsciously badmouthed him to us. You have revealed that he has mastered being a victim but you cleverly didn't mention your cause in the matter. What is it about you that’s causing this in your life? That you support him staying in that house reveals that you also would rationalize staying in an abusive relationship—another 24 hours—for good reasons of course.

He has enrolled you in thinking that he is generously sacrificing himself for his family, helping them. What he calls help keeps them stuck. He gets to look good and they look so bad that you don’t even want to interact with them. Notice that he hid his family's condition from you until after he hooked you. This is sneaky and irresponsible. What have you hidden from him?

Although it looks like you’re writing about his family’s addiction to abuse, in truth, you are revealing your own. You unconsciously selected a man addicted to abuse, to empowering, to covertly blaming his family. How they interacted with you didn’t feel good. He set you up knowing full well they would communicate abusively to you. He was thinking (hoping) you were a conscious person, that you would say,

“Hey Andrew, I should have asked you about your family. I’m simply no good with these kinds of relationships. I’m having a hard time respecting you for interacting with them for any reason. What I do around abuse is I remove myself from it, in that way I’m clear that I’m not addicted to creating it. If I continue interacting with you then I become responsible for the abuse of your siblings. Let me know when you have completed 25 hours of therapy or counseling and haven’t interacted with any of them for six-months in a row.”

Wow! He'd experience shock, upset, anger and hurt. Then he would argue, trying to justify, plead, and beg you to reconsider. All this and more would come up for him. When the smoke cleared he would have had an experience—of just how bad it is and a sense of his cause in it. He'd also get what a handicap it is for him socially unless he insists that they get therapy, and, if they refused, that he would have to estrange himself from them for life. Most importantly, he would get that it was unethical of him to submit another, ostensibly someone he cares for and admires (you), to such abuse, to such a dysfunctional family. Now is not the time for him to be dating. He needs the courage to disconnect from them with a firm clear ultimatum on how they can return into his life. Perhaps it's time for him to serve his country and set academic education on the back burner?

For you to have been so unconscious as to attract him indicates that you are in denial about your own addiction to abuse. If after reading this you continue interacting with him it will reveal that you need as much therapy as he does. If you complete the relationship with him and then don't clean up the relationship with your parents you will attract yet another similar relationship. And, because your abuse is so unconscious, so covert, hurting their feelings without communicating verbally to them exactly why you don’t want to interact with them, indicates that you will teach your children to withhold, eventually from you.

It speaks well of Andrew's mother for her to have moved and to send what money she can. But, I'm concerned that you can't see that whom you "adore" has conned you into thinking that she's not as abusive as Andrew's father. She's still committed to being the victim, supporting Andrew in empowering his father to treat her and his siblings abusively. For her to heal she also must estrange herself from those who refuse to comply with her own 25-hr therapy ultimatum, to include Andrew. Andrew has unconsciously taken his father's side simply by living under the same roof. He has yet to get that both parents are equally damaged and cause for the divorce and that to interact with either until they get extensive therapy keeps him and them stuck.

Very important: You might be tempted to help Andrew get away from his family by loaning him money. I don't recommend it; it would reward his con (his poor choices to date). If you must, get a receipt with payback date and agreed upon collateral he'll sell rather than dump a "poor-me" story on you if he loses his job, has an "accident" (can't make the payments), etc. In other words, you're up against your own addiction to enabling as well as his. —Gabby

PS. Show Andrew these coms.

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