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| Image credit: Photo by mydearDelilah on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
During the first year after I discovered my husband's sex addiction, I attended S-Anon, 12 Step meetings for friends and family members of sex addicts. At the beginning of each meeting we would read "The S-Anon Problem." I hated "The S-Anon Problem." I hated it so passionately that I used to skip the beginning of meetings, coming in late each week to avoid hearing it. And when I did have to hear it I would seethe and writhe. I wanted to get up and punch someone. I wanted to tear out the hair of the people who wrote it. I wanted to yell, "This is a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with me! I'm not like these other people and I'm not codependent!" Yes, you could say that I was experiencing some resistance.
Of course, I thought this was totally reasonable. The problem was that damn document. Me? Nothing to see here. I was pissed because I had a right to be pissed at people who try to invalidate me and deny my experiences and tell me I don't know who I am. Because Someone was saying that these words about this "problem" must describe me, just because I happened to be married to a sex addict. And Someone was saying I was not allowed to refute any part of it or say it didn't apply to me because then I would be "in denial." Wouldn't anyone be angry? Isn't it normal? I mean nameless, faceless Someones out there are accusing perfectly normal wife-of-a-sex-addict me that I have some kind of problem that I don't feel I have. What an outrage! How dare they!
Six years in, I can read that document and say, "I do have codependent behaviors and experiences, some of which are documented here, others of which are not. Some of what is described here doesn't apply to me, and a lot of it still doesn't resonate. I still think it could be written in a way that is more inclusive of the wide variety of emotions and experiences people have when coming in to recovery." But it the resistance and the outrage are gone. I know what I know and where I am right now, and I don't need to get angry of feel threatened because someone who authored "The S-Anon Problem" may disagree with me, even if those who have strong opinions about what codependency "should" look like would disagree with me about me.
I've learned that when I feel secure and a perception of me seems way off, I can let go and laugh about it. When I'm not sure of myself or when a perception hits close to things that may or may not be true about me, but that I worry about, I still feel the anger rising up; I feel the impulse to argue and convince people that they are wrong for having a different view of me than I have of myself. But now I can usually recognize that resistance as a familiar signal. I try to remind myself that my off-the-charts reaction to someone (or some document) as a sign that it has hit a sore spot. If it hadn't, I'd be able to laugh and move on. And I need to take a look at that sore spot rather than stewing in anger and expending all of my energy rattling my sword at someone else.
This post was originally published at The Second Road on August 28, 2009.
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