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:
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/enables abuse of his siblings—for a roof over his head no less.
It's clear that you needed someone who would mirror your need for counseling. You were supposed to have learned from your family not to engage in conversations with people addicted to abuse, that you didn't suggests that you also have some incompletes with your parents. A daughter who is whole and complete in her relationship with her parents selects friends with her parents in mind—Would they, and their family, treat my parents with the love and respect they deserve?
You’ve revealed that you don’t have the leadership communication skills to have the relationship with Andrew be anything other than what it is—one of many it will take to create/find your #10. 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 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 and we already know that it wouldn’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 cause someone addicted to abuse to remove himself 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 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 him again?
Now here’s the rub: Your letter turned me off about Andrew. 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 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 condone him in staying in that house reveals that you also would rationalize staying in an abusive relationship—for good reasons of course.
He has enrolled you in thinking that he’s 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 hid 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 around and therefore to you. He was thinking 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 hanging out in this 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 50 hours of therapy or counseling and haven’t interacted with any of them for six months in a row.”
For you to have been so unconscious as to attract him indicates that you are in denial about your own addiction to abuse. It means that you need as much therapy as he does, else, 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 50-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 stuck. —Gabby