An enabler is not your friend. An enabler actually makes it easier for you to continue in the progression of the disease, allows you to continue your unacceptable behavior, and cripples your ability to stand on your own.
Enabling can be as little as buying someone’s cigarettes, clothes, or as large as buying someone’s alcohol or drugs. Until you get rid of your enabler, you will never face your own problems, fend for yourself, accept the consequences of your actions and be part of society. Do not let life just pass by. Do not confuse “a family that cares, and standing back until you get life figured out” with an “enabler who is carelessly enabling” — one love is healthy and the other is neither love nor healthy.
Codependent/enablers may appear to be loving, kind and giving but seek out or “enjoy” relationships with “victims.” If the victim gets better, it does not really meet the codependent/enabler’s needs, so they continue to enable the victim so that they remain in their unhealthy situation. Until the victim stands on his/her own, gets rid of the enabler or the codependent stops enabling, the victim, family members, society continues to suffer.
Bette Ford
Vancouver
