Church discipline

[Anonymous]

Poppyseed wrote:

I wish I could adequately show you the compassion in my heart for someone who finds themselves in this perdicament — even those on both sides of it.

It’s very apparent to me the compassion you have for others. And, I know you’re close to this which makes your insight invaluable. Thank you for sharing that.

Poppyseed wrote:

In fact it is the other way around as the addictive fog causes addicts to make excuses and blameshift and manipulate to stay in their destructive patterns and shake off all the loving efforts to help them.

From my limited experience, this is exactly how it goes down. I’ve had moments of unbelievable frustration with someone close to me that is in recovery. Even when I, myself, am feeling very emotionally healthy.

I guess you nailed where our divergent thoughts happen: the “loving efforts to help”.

Obviously, for a spouse of an addict, this is oftentimes beyond the scope of possibility. From my perspective, unconditional love seems to work best. Again, it’s not our job to judge or punish the addict. Yes, there has to be boundaries, but there also needs to be compassion. The addict is literally two different people: the real person and the addict.

When my brother disclosed his addiction to me and some of the things that he had done, it was like he was talking about some other person that I’d never met. But that wasn’t because he was making an excuse. In fact, he was adamant about taking responsibility. It was my perception of what he was saying. Someone I’d known intimately, literally my entire life, was like a completely different person. In time, I recognized that his addict was not him. It was a “sickness” or “brokenness” that took over his consciousness when he felt trapped, worthless, or suicidal.

And that’s where the hope lies. If the addict can keep from getting in that place of feeling worthless or “what’s the point”, they can manage their behavior and, more importantly, be themselves. The good person they are, the loving, funny, caring, helpful, loyal, kind soul that they really are.

This is why the “loving efforts to help” are so tricky. To the person trying to show love to the addict, they may have the best of intentions. But, it’s so insanely difficult to stay present, not take things personal, not feel betrayed, and, maybe most importantly, not have expectations. The NYTimes article that Ray shared is a perfect example. I can’t imagine that I could do what that woman did, but that is the right way. She showed unconditional love with her own boundaries, which were shared openly and honestly, and, seemingly, had no expectations. If she did, she overcame them and did not let them affect her perspective or love.

I’ll share what I imagine is the most difficult thing. An addict is in recovery but has a relapse. The spouse cannot accept this and demonstrates disappointment to the addict. The addict may take this sense of disappointment as validation for the feelings that caused the relapse and then the vicious cycle of addiction roars into full effect.

So, how does the spouse react? They can’t say, “Oh, that’s okay, I accept your behavior, I know that was just your addict, not really you. I still love you more than ever”.

Or can they? What’s wrong with saying that? Ultimately, they are not the judge of their spouse. God is. Why can’t you accept that behavior? If it’s not your problem, why make it your problem?

If the spouse knows that the addict is really a good person, deep down, and recognizes that the addiction is a consciousness controlling illness, then there is hope. A ton of pain with it, but still, hope.

The spouse of an addict must set appropriate boundaries but they can’t be attempts to control behavior, punish behavior, or set ultimatums. The concept of “living up to a standard” may be the exact thing that triggered the addiction in the first place.

But the spouse also has to take care of themselves. They must have internal boundaries, wherein they can maintain emotional health in a relationship with an emotionally unhealthy addict. And that’s the Mt. Everest of the process.

It’s probably the ultimate test of love, true, unconditional love. In my mind, Christ did not tell the adulteress, “Go, and sin no more, or else I will be withholding love and blessings”. In my mind, He said, “Go and sin no more. I will love you no matter what and bless you with all that I have. I know you’re a good person, and through the struggles of life, you will make mistakes but I have paid for those so that I can love and bless you unconditionally”.

Sometimes, good people are just broken. That doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them broken.

[Anonymous]

swimordie wrote:

Sometimes, good people are just broken. That doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them broken.

Your message of unconditional love is an inspiration to me. Something I have been trying to work on and understand. I think you are on to something with your approach that there are 2 things to look at, the addict and the person. You love the person, you don’t accept the addictive behavior. I think you still hope the person will shed the addictive behavior, not become defined by that behavior. I think you have to be careful you don’t accept them as they are, if they are being harmful to themselves or others with addictive behavior, or else you are just enabling them to justify their actions and not try to change. True love is lifting them and helping them, not leaving them in their unhappy state.

From personal experience, that is extremely difficult to delicately do that and not make them feel your disapproval of bahavior is not loving them as a person.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

From personal experience, that is extremely difficult to delicately do that and not make them feel your disapproval of bahavior is not loving them as a person.

Right. Nothing harder than ‘tough love.’ Sometimes being truly loving means we’ll be hated. But ‘true’ love is ALWAYS for the recipient’s spiritual growth. Navigating through that is (you used the perfect word) delicate.

swimordie wrote:

Sometimes, good people are just broken. That doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them broken.

This is very beautiful. And this sentiment is essential, I believe, in not just loving addicts, but addressing almost all ‘sin.’ In fact, addiction can be seen as a paradigm for almost all human frailty (though there’s debate in psychiatry on how specifically to define non-physical addictions). We’re ALL sinners. Christ sees the goodness potential in all of us, and we’re called, I believe, to see the same. Labeling people as ‘bad’ keeps things simple but renders us useless in reaching out to people in pain. We’re all ‘savable,’ and so much (if not all) of our mistakes are fruits of our insecurities.

[Anonymous]

Well, I think my remarks are getting characterized inaccurately here. I am not sure, Swim, you are understanding me fully. I didn’t say all addicts were bad or that simply having an addiction automatically makes one bad. Please understand what I am saying here and what I am not. And I am right there with you on the two people inside them thing. I often have had to learn when it was the addiction talking. And I think what you are saying is right on the money……to see the good and help the addict remember the good too. Love it. Try to live by it.

I meant to make the point that sometimes because we love our addicts and see good in them that we lose our balance and sometimes do things that are enabling instead of pointing them towards responsibility. I am saying that sometimes the hard wake up call does more than all the softer more patient actions. Sometimes we give too many chances or we excuse things that should not be excused. Sometimes we even look the other way in acceptance or denial. I had many priesthood leaders even go so far as to call me a liar because all they could see was the goodness in my H. My H is the guy you describe. Salt of the earth. Best man you’ll ever meet but with a really nasty hurtful destructive problem. (which he has almost completely recovered from, I might add. Cudos to him and all his hard work!) But I have met women in my shoes who weren’t that lucky and needed to run far far away from their H’s. There is a giant range of behavior here and as I said before, how one should react to an addict is very very individual.

This is what I meant by my Christ statement with regards to conditions. I don’t believe that Jesus ever stops loving us or seeing our potential/individual needs and I certainly don’t think he ever gives up on us. If I conveyed that, I am sorry. What I meant to say is that sometimes He sets boundaries too and that the setting of boundaries is a loving thing. He loves us AND tells us the truth about ourselves AND lets us feel consequences. He doesn’t stop inviting us to come to him because he knows he can’t save us unless we do. He may love a person very much but still not allow them into his presence. “How oft I would have gathered you, but you would not.”

This is what I meant by what I said. I love my addict husband very very much, but I didn’t allow him to live with me for a time until he got on board with his own recovery. If you wanna call that an ultimatum, you can. If you wanna say that I was being mean and unloving or even wrong, you can say that too. But I did it for me and my well being and it was the most loving thing I could have done. And because I had the courage to stand up and make the decision, it opened the way for healing in a way that my 9 years of gentleness didn’t. I actually think you and I are saying very similar things. I hope you can see that. If not, its all good.

[Anonymous]

Poppyseed wrote:

If you wanna call that an ultimatum, you can. But I did it for me and my well being. And because I had the courage to stand up and make the decision, it opened the way for healing in a way that my 9 years of gentleness didn’t. I actually think you and I are saying very similar things. I hope you can see that.

I agree, poppy. We are saying the same thing. You had to take care of yourself and you did that. It may have actually been the catalyst for recovery. And, I think that’s the point I was trying to make. The spouse has to take care of themselves. It’s just hard to delineate what is “taking care of yourself” and what is “manipulating to get what you want”. There’s a very fine line between those things.

In the same way, the addict has to take care of themselves. What makes this tricky is, especially in the lds community where marriage and family are so important, the idea of taking care of oneself. One has to define oneself completely independently of the spouse. That feels backward to what we are taught. Always being of one mind, the endowment ceremony, where spouses are “dependent” on each other, etc.

If the spouse of the addict is defining themselves in part by the “marriage”, it would be impossible, in my mind, to love and support appropriately. Because the addict is now defining the spouse, or part of the spouse. Which the spouse has no control over. Except, and here’s the key, to try to coerce change of behavior through manipulative or abusive methods (withholding love, withholding sex, cold shoulder, silent treatment, judgment, blame, etc.).

So, the spouse must be able to define themselves as an individual. “Separate, but equal”. It’s such an emotional thing, and expectations are a killer, as are image-conscious feelings. “I’ve wasted 12 years”. “What am I going to do the rest of my life?” “What will people say/think?” “What example are you setting for others?” “How can you do this to me?”

These are all possible responses if the spouse is defining themselves by their marriage relationship. And, I agree with Jordan, this concept should be applied to all of us. We should all have this type of emotional health wherein we are not affected emotionally by things that we have no control over. That seems so callous and cold on the surface but, as Rix said in another thread, it’s key to being able to fully love and love unconditionally.

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