Toxic Parents (5 page)

Les, 34, the owner of a sporting goods store, came to see me because he was a workaholic and it was making him miserable.

My marriage went to hell because I never did anything but work. I was either gone or I was working at home. My wife got tired of living with a robot, and she left. Now it’s happening again with the new lady in my life. I hate it. I really do. But I just don’t know how to loosen up.

Les told me he had trouble expressing emotion of any kind, particularly tender, loving feelings. The word
fun
, he told me with considerable bitterness, wasn’t in his vocabulary.

I wish I knew how to make my girlfriend happy, but every time we start to talk, somehow I always steer the conversation back to work, and she gets upset. Maybe it’s because work is the only thing I don’t screw up.

Les continued for the better part of a half hour trying to convince me of how badly he messed up his relationships:

The women I get involved with are always complaining that I don’t give them enough time or affection. And it’s true. I’m a lousy boyfriend and I was a really lousy husband.

I stopped him and said: “And you’ve got a lousy self-image. It sounds as if the only time you feel okay is when you’re working. How come?”

It’s something I know how to do . . . and I do it well. I work about seventy-five hours a week . . . but I’ve always worked my tail off. . . ever since I was a kid. See, I was the oldest of three boys. I guess my mom had some kind of breakdown when I was eight. From then on, our house was always dark, with the shades drawn. My mother always seemed to be in her bathrobe, and she never talked much. My earliest memories of her were with a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and glued to her goddamned soap operas. She never got up until long after we were off to school. So, it was my job to feed my two younger brothers, pack their lunches, and get them to the school bus. When we got home, she’d be lying in front of the tube or taking one of her three-hour naps. Half the time while my buddies were out playing ball, I was stuck in the house cooking dinner or cleaning up. I hated it, but somebody had to do it.

I asked Les where his father was in all of this.

Dad traveled a lot on business, and he basically just gave up on my mother. Most of the time, he slept in the guest room . . . it was a pretty weird marriage. He sent her to a couple of doctors, but they didn’t help, so he just threw in the towel.

I told Les that I ached for how lonely that little boy must have been. He dismissed my sympathy with the reply:

I had too much to do to feel sorry for myself.

Robbers of Childhood

As a child, Les was often weighed down with responsibilities that rightfully belonged to his parents. Because he was forced to grow up too fast and too soon, Les was robbed of his childhood. While his friends were out playing ball, Les was home performing his
parents’ duties. To keep the family together, Les had to become a miniature adult. He had little opportunity to be playful or carefree. Since his own needs were virtually ignored, he learned to cope with loneliness and emotional deprivation by denying that he even had needs. He was there to take care of others.
He
didn’t matter.

What makes this doubly sad is that in addition to having been the primary caretaker of his brothers, Les also became a parent to his mother:

When Dad was in town, he would leave for work at seven and lots of times he wouldn’t get home till nearly midnight. On his way out the door, he would always tell me, “Don’t forget to do all your homework, and be sure to take care of your mother. Make sure she has enough to eat. Keep the other kids quiet. . . and see if you can do something to get a smile out of her.” I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make my mother happy. I was so sure there was something that I could do and everything would be okay again . . .
she’d
be okay again. But no matter what I did, nothing changed. It still hasn’t. I really feel rotten about that.

In addition to his housekeeping and childrearing responsibilities, which would have been overwhelming for any child, Les was expected to be his mother’s emotional caretaker. This turned out to be a recipe for failure. Children who are caught in these confusing role reversals are constantly falling short. It’s impossible for them to function as adults because they’re
not
adults. But they don’t understand why they fail; they just feel deficient and guilty because of it.

In Les’s case, his driving need to work many hours beyond what was necessary served a dual purpose: it kept him from confronting the loneliness and deprivation of both his childhood and his adult life, and it reinforced his long-held belief that he could never do enough. Les’s fantasy was that if he could put in enough hours, he could prove that he really was a worthwhile, adequate person, that
he really could get the job done right. In essence, he was still trying to make his mother happy.

When Does It Ever Stop?

Les didn’t see that his parents continued to wield their toxic power over him in his adult life. A few weeks later, however, the connection between his adult struggles and his childhood moved sharply into focus.

Boy, whoever said “the more things change, the more they stay the same” really knew what he was talking about. I’ve been in L.A. for six years now, but as far as my folks are concerned, I’m not supposed to have a life. They call me a couple of times a week. It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid to answer the phone. First, my father starts in with: “Your mom’s so depressed . . . couldn’t you just take a little time off and come visit? You know how much it would mean to her!” Then she gets on and tells me I’m her whole life and she doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be around. What do you say to that? Half the time, I just jump on a plane . . . it beats dealing with the guilt of not going. But it’s never enough. Nothing is. I might as well save the plane fare. Maybe I never should have moved away.

I told Les that it was typical for children who were forced to exchange emotional roles with their parents to carry into their adult lives tremendous guilt and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. As adults, they often become trapped in a vicious cycle of accepting responsibility for everything, inevitably falling short, feeling guilty and inadequate, and then redoubling their efforts. This is a draining, depleting cycle that leads to an ever-increasing sense of failure.

Driven as a little boy by the expectations of his parents, Les learned early that his goodness was judged primarily by how much he did for the rest of his family. As an adult, his parents’ external demands were transformed into internal demons that continued to drive him in the one area where he could feel some sense of worth—work.

Les had neither the time nor the appropriate role model from which to learn about the giving and receiving of love. He grew up without nourishment of his emotional life, so he simply turned off his emotions. Unfortunately, he found that he couldn’t turn them back on again, even when he wanted to.

I assured Les that I understood how frustrated and bewildered he felt about his inability to open up to anyone emotionally, but I urged him to go easy on himself. He hadn’t had anyone to teach him those things when he was young, and they’re pretty tough to pick up on your own.

“It would be like expecting yourself to play a piano concerto when you didn’t even know where middle-C was!” I told him. “You can learn, but you’ve got to give yourself time to pick up the basics, to practice, and maybe even to fail once or twice.”

“If I Don’t Take Care of Their Needs, Who Will?”

Dear Abby:
I’m in a crazy family. Can you get me out of here?

—Hopeless

This was written by one of my clients, Melanie, when she was 13. Now a 42-year-old divorced tax accountant, Melanie came to see me because of severe depression. Although she was extremely thin, she would have been quite pretty if the recent months of erratic sleep hadn’t taken their toll. She was open and talked easily about herself.

I feel utterly hopeless all the time. Like my life is out of control. I just can’t get on top of things. I feel like I’m digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole every day.

I asked her to be more specific. She bit her lip, then turned away from me as she replied:

There’s such an emptiness inside me . . . I don’t think I’ve ever felt connected to anybody in my whole life. I’ve been married twice, and I’ve lived with several guys, but I just can’t find the right one. I always pick either lazy bums or total bastards. Then of course it’s up to me to set them straight. I always think I can fix them. I lend them money, I move them into my house, I’ve even found jobs for a couple of them. It never works, but I never learn. They don’t love me, no matter how much I do for them. One of these guys hit me in front of my kids. Another took off with my car. My first husband played around. My second husband was a total lush. Some track record.

Without realizing it, Melanie was describing the classic behavior of a co-dependent personality. Originally, the term
co-dependent
was used specifically to describe the partner of an alcoholic or drug addict.
Co-dependent
was used interchangeably with the term
enabler
—someone whose life was out of control because he or she was taking responsibility for “saving” a chemically dependent person.

But in the past few years the definition of co-dependency has expanded to include all people who victimize themselves in the process of rescuing and being responsible for any compulsive, addicted, abusive, or excessively dependent person.

Melanie was attracted to very troubled men. She believed that if she could just be good enough—give enough, love enough, worry enough, help enough, cover up enough—and get them to see the error of their ways, they would love her. But they didn’t. The kind of
needy, self-centered men whom she picked were incapable of love. So, instead of finding the love she so desperately sought, she found emptiness. She felt used.

I discovered that the term
co-dependent
was not new to Melanie. She had first come across it when she attended a meeting of Al-Anon (a Twelve-Step program for family members of alcoholics) during her marriage to her alcoholic husband. She was certain that she wasn’t a co-dependent but just had bad luck with men. She certainly had done everything she could to get Jim to stop drinking. She had finally left him when she learned he had spent a night with a woman he’d met in a bar.

Melanie once again had begun looking for Mr. Right. She blamed her problems on the men she’d been with, but she saw each one as a separate Mr. Wrong. She didn’t see that the overall pattern stemmed from the way she chose her men. She thought she was looking for a man who could appreciate a giving, caring, loving, helpful woman. Surely there was a man out there who would love a woman like that. She thought co-dependency was noble.

Melanie had no idea that what she called “giving and helping” was wiping her out. She was giving to everyone except herself. She had no idea that she had actually perpetuated the irresponsible behavior of the men in her life by sweeping up behind them. When she talked about her childhood, it became clear that her pattern of trying to save troubled men was a compulsive repetition of her relationship with her father:

I had a really weird family. My father was a successful architect, but he used his damn moods to control everybody. He’d come unglued by the slightest thing . . . like if somebody parked in his parking place or if I had a fight with my brother. He’d just go into his room, shut the door, throw himself on the bed, and cry. Just like a baby! Then my mother would fall apart and go soak in the bathtub, and I was the one who had to go in and deal with my dad. I’d just sit there, with him sobbing, trying to figure out what I could do to make him feel better. But it didn’t matter what I did, it was always just a matter of waiting it out.

I handed Melanie a checklist I had made up and asked her to tell me which points described her feelings and behavior. It was a list of the major characteristics of co-dependency. I’ve found it very useful over the years in helping clients determine whether they are co-dependent. If you think this term may apply to you, please go through the list.

C
O
-D
EPENDENCY
C
HECKLIST

I use “him” as a universal pronoun to refer to a troubled person of either gender. I realize that many men are in co-dependent relationships with deeply troubled wives or lovers.

1. Solving his problems or relieving his pain is the most important thing in my life—no matter what the emotional cost to me.
   

2. My good feelings depend on approval from him.
   

3. I protect him from the consequences of his behavior. I lie for him, cover up for him, and never let others say anything bad about him.
   

4. I try very hard to get him to do things my way.
   

5. I don’t pay any attention to how I feel or what I want. I only care about how he feels and what he wants.
   

6. I will do anything to avoid getting rejected by him.
   

7. I will do anything to avoid making him angry at me.
   

8. I experience much more passion in a relationship that is stormy and full of drama.
   

9. I am a perfectionist and I blame myself for everything that goes wrong.
   

10. I feel angry, unappreciated, and used a great deal of the time.
    

11. I pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t.
    

12. The struggle to get him to love me dominates my life.