Codependent

Summer 2023

Dear Leland and Everett,

In retrospect, I’m surprised I took so long to learn the word. The first I remember hearing it said was by a dear friend who grew up the child of an alcoholic. I never asked him what the word meant, and was never curious to look it up. Your mom introduced me to a fascinating podcast between Tim Ferriss and Jim Dethmer where Dethmer offered a definition; my recollection is that he defined a codependent as someone who assigns themselves responsibility for another’s happiness or emotional wellbeing.

Somehow I like the word (and Dethmer’s definition of) ‘codependent’ more than the world ‘enabler’. For whatever reason, ‘enabler’ feels like a loaded word to me, as if the enabler is being blamed for the actions of the enabled. I’ve always imagined an enabler as someone who ignored or tolerated unacceptable behavior, and/or shielded others from the consequences of their unacceptable behavior. I don’t think I do that. But I definitely make myself responsible for others’ emotions and wellbeing, especially those I love.

Your Grampa was an alcoholic. I think the preferred phrasing in alcoholic parlance is present tense: your Grampa is a recovering alcoholic. I think of it as a past-tense phenomenon, because he’s been sober for almost 20 years.

My grandparents marked evenings with a single cocktail. Both my mom’s and dad’s parents would, somewhere around 5pm, mix whisky in with Coke (eventually I think Diet Coke replaced Coke), and have their evening cocktail. That was most of the drinking I ever saw any of them do, but they had their daily drink, as far as I recall, every day.

I assume my dad started the same way, though I’ll admit I don’t remember. He also mixed whisky (Ancient Age was the common brand across the family) with Diet Coke, so perhaps I just assume he was modeling his parents and in-laws.

I don’t precisely remember when my dad’s drinking became problematic; my perception is that I was around 8 or 9. But somewhere along the way my dad had too many drinks. And then he did it again. And again. So started a cycle that came and went for almost two decades.

My dad was a ‘high-functioning’ alcoholic: he maintained a successful career, and carried out all his traditional roles as dad and husband. For years, I don’t think anyone outside of the family had any idea. He would drink too much at home, at night, and for the first several years rarely drank in public or during the daytime.

Mostly what I remember is that, when he drank, my dad got stubborn, obstinate, and kinda mean. He would say something meant to provoke, usually directed toward my sister or me. When we objected, he would often anchor on whatever he said that agitated us. We would profess or argue why he was wrong, and he would just repeat the thing that upset us until we were enraged. My sister and I didn’t have the tools to regulate our responses, so this cycle repeated. At the time I didn’t really understand alcohol or alcoholism; all I knew was that my dad acted differently sometimes, in a manner out of character from what I typically encountered and anything I knew before.

As I got older, I began to understand that it was the drinking that made my dad mean. And I learned not to react when he tried to get me upset. I remember my younger sister took longer to learn that lesson (she was younger, after all), and so she got upset more often than I did for awhile. In retrospect I remember just being sad at how often my dad, or the person I knew to be my dad, wasn’t around. He was too often represented by this seemingly soulless, mindless, mildly malevolent avatar.

The most painful experience I remember was on my birthday. Our family went to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. It might have been on a Sunday: I vaguely recall that we arrived wearing church attire. Also, my dad usually didn’t go to church with us, so that would explain how I would have been surprised when he arrived drunk. Dad’s drunkenness on this occasion was surprising partly because it was daytime, and partly because it was in public. The surprise merely added to my shock, anger, and frustration; I distinctly remember feeling like my dad didn’t even bother showing up for my birthday celebration. I was utterly disgusted to share my birthday celebration with this grotesque likeness instead of the real thing.

I confronted my dad on occasion. I remember writing him a letter and putting it on his pillow after that birthday. Later, when my dad came drunk to one of my baseball games, I told him if he ever showed up drunk again, I would quit the team. I loved baseball, and my dad loved coaching me playing baseball. While I had learned to tolerate my dad’s drinking at home in private, I wasn’t willing to be humiliated in public. I was willing to give up something I loved to avoid being humiliated, and I think my dad knew it and believed me when I said it. Each time I confronted my dad, he reduced his drinking, usually dramatically, usually for a period of months.

The last time I confronted my dad was shortly before he stopped drinking. While I don’t think my confrontation was the primary reason why he stopped, I’m still glad I said what I said. My dad had just retired, and his mom had just passed away. He was serving as the executer on his mom’s will (selling her house, giving away her things, dividing up her assets with his older brother). He was stressed and grieving, and drinking more than ever before. He was drinking from the time he woke up in the morning until he went to bed at night.

He asked me to come home (I had moved away at this point) to decide what things of my grandmother’s I wanted before he gave the rest away. At some point on that trip, I told my dad I really valued being able to come to him for advice on my career, and was starting to realize I would want his advice on how to be a husband and eventually a father. I was genuinely worried he was going to drink himself to death; I don’t recall if I said so directly, but I do think I expressed what I intended. I’m still proud of that conversation, although I’m not entirely sure why.

I’ve since developed a lot more understanding and compassion for my dad’s drinking. When I had you two, I began to feel an entirely new level of pressure. Suddenly the pressures of trying to be a good father, good husband, good breadwinner, and having a successful career seemed like a lot. I found myself wishing I had better tools or outlets to let go of the stress I was feeling, and realized that my dad had probably felt the same way when my sister and I came into the world. I don’t know for sure, but I think drinking too much was a way for my dad to numb himself, and not feel all the stress and pressure he was experiencing when he was sober. So while I don’t condone or approve of my dad’s excessive drinking, I no longer hold anger toward my dad. I’m also hugely grateful he’s maintained his sobriety, and been the type of dad to me and grandfather to you two that I knew he could be. I love my dad dearly and think he is a genuinely remarkable person, father, and grandfather.

Up until a few months ago I would have told you that my dad’s drinking hadn’t really impacted me. With a few embarrassing exceptions, he was only drunk at home. He never hit us, he never exposed us to financial insecurity (in fact, quite the opposite, he provided for us quite well). He mostly just got belligerent or was just merely emotionally absent, and I eventually learned how to deal with it.

My first inkling that my dad’s drinking had lingering effects came a little over a year ago. I got pretty burned out at work during the Covid pandemic: my workload increased both at home and at work, but my outlets to decompress (especially connecting with friends in person) decreased. Eventually I hit a wall where I just couldn’t function at work, and asked my boss for some time off. I’ll never forget my first day off: I went to the grocery store and did a load of laundry, and I was completely exhausted and overwhelmed. I had become so overwhelmed that I could no longer handle even trivial levels of stimulus.

During the time off I started seeing a therapist. I don’t remember how it came up (funny how the mind works) but I divulged that my dad had been an alcoholic. My therapist encouraged me to attend an Al-Anon meeting (Al-Anon is designed for family members of alcoholics, especially spouses, to get help). I attended a meeting, and felt deeply uncomfortable. I really, really didn’t want to be there, but I decided that was a sign I was precisely where I needed to be. For better and worse, that was the only meeting I attended.

More recently, when reading about my new diet, Dr Ornish referenced in passing something to the effect that sugar consumption was not linked with heard disease. This triggered me: I know I have read the exact opposite conclusion from other doctors. Seeing different facts stated by different doctors outraged me. I could sense, in real time, that my nervous system was going haywire. I asked myself why, and the answer came back almost immediately: because these ‘experts’ disagreeing reminded me of my dad’s drinking. My parents always, always, always presented a united front at home. They always gave my sister and me the impression that they were aligned. Except when Dad drank. That was the only time I could sense division between them. Somehow, seeing experts disagree reminded me of that division.

Additional realizations came quickly. I had always feared division or misalignment between authority figures. This fear of division between authority figures hampered my career. In many ways, wading into the division between leaders and securing alignment is the job of aspiring leaders. But instead of wading in, I instinctively ran away, and in the process left it to others to drive alignment. As a result, despite plenty of technical competence, I was routinely passed over for career advancement precisely because I was unwilling to embrace tension and drive resolution. I simply couldn’t handle the conflict.

Suddenly I saw how much of my adult life had been shaped, or at least influenced, by growing up with an alcoholic. More importantly, I was forced to acknowledge how I had been unaware of a major driving force in my adult life for almost two decades. Put most simply, I have been living my adult life for others, attempting to please my parents, your mom, my friends, and my bosses and coworkers. In the process, I neglected my own wants needs so consistently that I lost awareness of what my wants and needs even were. And in the process of neglecting myself, I allowed my soul to wither. The joyful, creative, energetic child and adolescent I was would barely recognize the person I became.

I then realized how many codependents fill my life. I don’t think my mom was an enabler, but I do think she is a codependent. Your mom is a codependent who, to her great credit, is working very hard, with help, to become more aware, nurturing, and protective of her own wants and needs. My two closest friends are children of alcoholics. As I think about my closest relationships and those to whom I feel most naturally connected, I mostly (now) see people who focus on others to the detriment of themselves.

To be clear, I do not label my loved ones as codependent in insult. Indeed, codependency is intrinsically linked to all the things I love about them: they are deeply empathetic, they genuinely care for others, and they help put some focus on me when I do not. We codependents can intuit what others are feeling, and can on some level even feel what others are feeling. Part of why I have surrounded myself with codependents is that we understand each other, we empathize with each other, and we try to look out for each other.

Unfortunately, with codependents it’s somewhat inevitable that we also try to control each other. We lean into our empathetic capacities, and begin to avoid the hard work of introspection. We convince ourselves that we prioritize others from a place of selflessness, when in fact we increasingly come from a place of avoidance. But we come to resent our our needs not getting met, and become bitter and frustrated. And so we begin to attach unnecessary significance to the actions and wellbeing of others. We come to believe that because we have sacrificed so much of ourselves, others owe us in the form of following our advice and in doing so achieving happiness.

I came to understand all of the above observing myself. But once we see what we have avoided seeing in ourselves, we cannot help but see the same behaviors in others. Which helps explain why this summer has been so challenging for your dad.

We’ve had a wonderful summer together. You enjoyed summer camps focused on sports, chess, and learning to code, among other topics. Your days ended early, and so I was able to spend much more time with you than normal. And we travelled extensively, spending weeks with my family and closest friends.

And yet, precisely because these were my closest relationships, the timing of interacting with all of my favorite codependents precisely as I came into awareness of and attempted to heal my codependent tendencies, made these trips confusing and challenging.

In my meditations, I came upon a metaphor of a relationship between two codependents being like two people holding ropes tying us together. Each participant holds one end of a rope tying us to the other. In the meditations, I found myself letting go of my end of the rope, understanding that I was letting go of my attempts to control others, and letting go of my tacit acceptance of responsibility to be controlled by them. And so, when I spent time with my closest friends and family, invariably I found myself confused by the state of flux: in letting to of my end of the rope, I was unilaterally changing the terms of my relationships. But those ropes, and those relationships, tethered me. They weren’t just restrictive; they were also stabilizing. These relationships have been my anchors, my pillars, my sources of stability and strength throughout my adult life. Letting go of the rope felt deeply destabilizing. I spent the summer feeling untethered, floating, chaotic.

Of course, the temptation is to pick up the rope and resume the relationship as it always has been. But that would be inauthentic. And on some level I know that by letting go of the unhealthy aspects of these relationships, I am making space for healthy relationships to grow in their place.

But what a terrifying prospect! What if my friends and family cannot accept this journey that I am on? What if they reject a transformed, non-codependent version of your dad? If I am not trying to help/control them, and I am not implicitly accepting their attempts to help/control me, will our relationships survive? Or am I saying goodbye to all of my closest relationships? What a sad and scary thought! Sad because these are people I genuinely love, and so I find myself grieving the end of my closest relationships, at least in their current format (and the only format I’ve ever known). And scary precisely because these relationships have been my anchors, my pillars, my sources of strength; what would I do without them?

This relationship struggle is, I find, part of a deeper pattern of healing and of death and rebirth this year, via the simple act of letting go. First, as is reasonably documented in prior letters, I processed and let go of lots of fear. More recently, I have processed and let go of lots of sadness. The letting go has been liberating; I feel lighter and freer. Now I find myself letting go of things that I take to be, on balance, healthy and good. My relationships might not be perfect, but they have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, my relationships have been my most valuable adult possessions, by far. But my meditations predicted this: I came to realize that the process of letting go started with those things that were painful and unhealthy, but would move to include things that were good and brought me joy. I’m coming to understand that surrendering to God means being willing to surrender everything. Which is not to say that I expect to live a life without loved ones, friendships, and family. But I do think it means surrendering those things, even those you think you cannot live without, that need to be renewed. I am coming to understand that God has infinite capacity to bring love and joy and fulfillment into our lives, but that we must first make space and stillness for God to operate in and through us.

Everett, you will want to watch for codependent tendencies. You are deeply empathetic, almost entirely relationship driven, and feel your emotions deeply. Already, you seem to define yourself in relationship to others. You enjoy bringing joy to others (and are gifted at doing so). You dislike negative emotions in others, to the extent that you take actions to make those negative emotions go away. I anticipate you will need to cultivate awareness of your wants and needs, so that you don’t lose sight of yourself in a relentless prioritization of others.

Leland, bless you, you do not seem to share your brother’s, dad’s, and mom’s codependent tendencies. You seem to have an intuitive understanding of who you are, a full awareness of your wants and needs, and a willingness to take care of yourself as a priority. If anything, I suspect you will need to practice empathy toward those you care about and awareness of their needs and how you can help those you love take care of themselves.

As we start the new school year, I find myself looking forward to prioritizing self care again. After a summer spent interacting with loved ones, I sincerely look forward to a fall focused on exercise, meditation, and writing. But I’m also grateful for this summer, for time spent with my favorite people, and for exposure to and a deeper understanding of the introspective work I need to do next. I’m still just taking one step at a time, but I’m grateful to know where to take my next step.

I love you both. Thank you for a wonderful summer, for being my teacher and a catalyst and source of motivation for my healing journey.

Love,

Dad