ERP 057: How To Avoid Enabling Your Spouses’ Destructive Behavior

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Welcome to the Empowered Relationship Podcast, helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success. Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach who shares valuable tips, tool and resources for your to dramatically improve your relationship. This podcast is 100% ad-free. To support this show, please subscribe and write a review today. Here is your host.

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Hi, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for joining me today, it’s such a pleasure always. I just want to say a special thank you to the people that have the courage to reach out to me and take me up on my offer for a free strategy session. I don’t have any more of those spots available, but I just want to give a special thank you to the people that reached out to me and that spent some time with me. It was such a pleasure to meet you, it was such a pleasure to support you, and I am excited about the people that are wanting to continue to deepen in their learning and work with me. So it was just a great, great opportunity for me to meet some of you.

And also, since my last podcast I’ve had a few people just really reach out and say they loved the last episode, episode 56 with Alison Armstrong. The title of that episode is Secrets to Sex When No One’s in the Mood. I highly recommend you checking it out. I also have the person that I answered their question on podcast 55 write: “Thank you so much for this podcast. There is finally something out there covering the topic of how to deal with being criticized and feeling just grateful to have that ingredient.” I’m feeling like it was missing in some of the literature, and particularly on my website, so I’m happy to have offered that.

Also, a couple of things before we get started today. For the last five episodes, I have the transcript up on the show notes. You can find that on my website, https://www.drjessicahiggins.com. You can click on PODCAST and find whatever podcast episode you’re looking for between episode 52 and episode 56, and you’ll have those transcripts. I don’t know, if you guys want me to have somebody transcribe the first year, I am totally willing to do that, it just hadn’t even occurred to me until now. So if you’re wanting previous podcast episodes’ transcripts please e-mail me, I would love to hear your feedback and we’ll do that for you if you are interested.

Also, I just want to alert you to an opportunity coming up in May. May 19th and 22nd, Bruce Van Horn, who is the host and founder of the Life Is a Marathon podcast and he also has a coaching company, and just a wonderful man – him and I are going to be leading a group experience, kind of a retreat on a cruise to Baja, Mexico. So if you’re looking for a little bit of a vacation, break, we’re going to have a lot of fun and really just deepen in the experience of how to transform your life, particularly in the area of a relationship.

One of the things that I love about Bruce is he is super focused on helping you identify and recognize your beliefs, particularly limiting beliefs and thinking patterns that restrict you and that keep you stuck in your life. He’s more interested in helping you be the fullest expression of who you are. The name of these workshops that he is leading are “Transform Your Life”, and I have a relationship focus, so we’re going to really focus this retreat experience cruise on transforming your life particularly in the way of relationships, or relationships across the board: with your significant other, with your family, friends, colleagues, you name it. If you like the idea of taking a cruise and also developing yourself on a  much deeper level, having some personalized attention from Bruce and myself, I highly recommend you checking out the details of this Transform Your life Baja Cruise – May 2016. So again, this is May 19th through to 22nd, and you can find the link to this, all the details and how to register on my show notes, episode 57. So if you go to my website, which is drjessicahiggins.com click on PODCAST, you can find the episodes listed there.

Today’s title is How to Avoid Enabling Your Spouses’ Destructive Behavior. This is in answer to someone who left me a voice mail. So I would love to move towards people who leave me a voicemail on my website. I want to actually play the audio on the podcast episode, I think it would be really great to hear other people’s voices, so I’ll make sure to put a little instruction piece on that on my website. This person didn’t leave their name, so it’s anonymous and she says:

“Hello Dr. Jessica Higgins,

I’m really enjoying your podcast. Thank you very much for all the insight you give us. I am interested in hearing about addiction, particularly gambling addiction. My husband has been gambling for probably seven years; I discovered it about three years ago. Gambling seems to be one of those addictions that people don’t really talk about so much. He is gambling about $30 a day, so it doesn’t seem like a lot, but at the end of the year it adds up. So I really would like to know how to figure out what to do about this, how I want to proceed in my relationship, how to assess whether this is a deal-breaker for me, because I have a lot of issue with it. So any information you can give on the effect of gambling on relationships and how to deal with it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!”

I just want to say I so honor what you’re going through. I know that many people feel really alone when they’re struggling with these types of issues, or these types of concerns, and it’s extremely painful and challenging, so I want to let you know that part of the reason why – so I did have many questions that I’ve been answering, so I had people on the docket, but one of the reasons too why I haven’t been able to get to this question sooner was I was actually looking for an expert in this particular topic. Someone that’s very skilled in couples work, but also is an expert in one partner having a gambling issue, and I just was having difficulty finding someone that I could interview on this podcast. So I say that to say I’m not an expert in gambling, but I feel like I do have some tips to offer, I do have some links to provide you, and I do feel like this is something that generally everybody could relate to. Because in a life partnership we all have to set boundaries and decide what’s not okay and what is okay. And even if we’re thinking to ourselves – some of the listeners out there might be thinking, “Well, I don’t have an addiction, and my partner doesn’t have an addiction, so I don’t know that this podcast is going to be that relevant.”

Well, let’s just broaden the definition of addiction. Some of us cope with life through certain substances – that could be alcohol, marijuana, sugar, caffeine, even using TV, shopping… There’s certain things that we do sometimes as a crutch, to cope with life. So I don’t know that we would actually call them an addiction in the most classical sense, meaning we have a physiological addiction to it, but I think addiction can cover physiological addiction, as well as habitual, like habits. So if we just recognize when we’re in a relationship sometimes one partner or both partners are going to be doing things that maybe are not ideal, or maybe are destructive. So how we relate to them is very important. That’s what we’re going to talk about a little bit more today, and then I am going to offer you some specific feedback as well, for this specific person that posed this question.

Again, I just want to empathize with the type of pain that you might be feeling. Because, as you know, I’m sure you know, and intuitively know, you cannot change your husband. You can’t do this for him, you can’t make him recognize this behavior as destructive, you can’t do his healing work for him. You could say the perfect thing, you could be the perfect wife and do everything right, and he would still have this issue. So it’s not anything that you need to do differently… Maybe you could be doing things differently on your own accord, but in regards to his addiction, I want to set you free of the pattern of “What could I be doing different to make it better or to change it?”

So I was thinking about this podcast episode and what I might want to share, and it reminds me – I think I might have mentioned this in one of my podcasts a long time ago – I have a family member who’s pretty close to me, and I struggle with her communication sometimes. I experience her to be very emotional, volatile at times, pretty provocative and attacking at times. So when she’s upset, I don’t experience a lot of tact, I feel that she can be pretty dramatic and it doesn’t feel rational, it feels pretty intense and I feel scared, uncomfortable, a little embarrassed, I feel like I have to fight or kind of get trampled over. So it’s not anything that I’m attracted to or interested in, and yet this person is a very close part of my life.

One time I was visiting and we were having some conflict. She had asked me to go to this event that meant a lot to her, and I didn’t actually understand what it meant to her. I thought it was just something that she wanted me to go to, but really wasn’t here nor there. So I had no idea what it meant to her, and then the next day she pretty much went off on me, and I just felt totally taken off guard. It was like “Had you told me, I would have loved to have gone, and had I know what it meant to you, I absolutely would have been there”, and yet the interaction I felt so uncomfortable with. It kind of felt abusive even. So we had this exchange, and there was yelling, I’m trying to defend myself, I’m trying to rationalize with her and it’s just dramatic, I’m like “Why are you doing this?!”

I was really struggling with how to move forward with her. I want a relationship with her, but I’m not okay with this dynamic. I’m not okay with being yelled at, being attacked – I’m not okay with it, at all. So yes, I can set limits and all of these things, but I’m still struggling with what to do when it gets to this emotionally volatile place. I have known her long enough to know that she’s probably going to do this again, it’s not something that I feel like I can change, and I can’t rationalize with her, I can’t try to explain it, make it better, I kept trying to clear the misunderstanding – none of that works; I kept trying to do my part of it. The only thing that I could come to, that I felt like “Okay, this is something I can move forward with” was to simply say “You know, if we were to ever enter into this territory again, I don’t feel safe. I can’t continue this conversation.” Basically, stay completely with myself, because if I tell her my experience of her it’s going to sound very judgmental, it’s going to sound like I’m trying to control her or tell her what she should be doing or not doing, and she’s just going to get defensive and even probably more volatile. So the only thing that I can do is really say “I don’t feel safe. I cannot continue this dialogue.” That was the only thing that I felt like I could say. “I feel comfortable moving forward, and this is the only thing that I’m going to be able to do and how I can feel comfortable continuing a relationship with you.”

The point I’m trying to make here is that when we can’t control someone else, the thing we can control is ourselves, and it’s extremely important to set boundaries, so I’m going to talk a little bit more about that today, particularly how it relates to the situation you’re describing for this listener. So first of all, I just want to say, can you take an honest look, bigger picture – sometimes when we’re in these very painful scenarios it’s easy to kind of turn the other way, turn the blind eye and not really look at the full impact. But just doing the math, you’re saying $30 a day isn’t that much, but it adds up over the year. So $30 a day is actually $10,950 in a year, and you had mentioned he’s been doing this at least seven years, so that’s $76,650. And what’s the impact on your relationship, your emotional bond, because it sounded like you said you found out three years ago, so I’m assuming he wasn’t telling you and somehow you found out. So there was some dishonesty perhaps, or even avoiding, so how is the emotional connection, how is the bond, how is the trust?

This might be incredibly painful to look at, and I want to encourage you to do that difficult work, because it’s real and it’s a part of your true, authentic, genuine experience. So if you’re operating trying to get by, this true, real, authentic experience is still with you, so it’s going to fester, it’s going to rear its head, and it’s going to be impacting your relationship, as much as you don’t want it to. I would highly encourage you to really look at what’s going on here, and with honest eyes reality checking what’s the impact of this. And it sounds like you already are, so I’m just encouraging you to continue doing that.

If you’ve listened to my podcast in the past, you have heard me talk about how much I believe in boundaries. Most of us don’t always like setting boundaries. We think it’s rude, we think it’s mean, it might be rejecting, and we really want to be positive. We want people to like us, we want to feel loving, we want to feel kind. Well, the tricky thing about not setting boundaries is most of the times people who are in our lives are doing the best that they can, and they’re operating based on their belief systems. So this family member of mine, she absolutely believes it’s completely appropriate to express her anger and express  her frustration as completely and as fully as she would like, and she references other cultures where that’s very acceptable, and she’s got a lot of beliefs around why that’s okay. Without going into her story, that’s something that she is okay with. So people are mostly operating based on their belief system.

Now, I’m not in an intimate relationship with her, so when we’re in an intimate relationship we definitely want to consider our partner, right? We live with them, we’re sharing our life with them if we’re married to them, or have a partnership, they’re our closest person usually. So we want to go that extra step to be very mindful of we’re sharing a home together, we’re creating a relationship together, so you want to be considerate, but that does take a certain level of maturity, to get outside of one’s perspective to really consider the other person, especially in times of difficulty. So we are able to consider our partner when things are good, but when things are challenging it’s a little harder to do. One of the reasons why boundaries are critical…

In the scenario that I’m sharing with you personally, if I let this person yell at me and in my mind verbally, emotionally attack me, I’m going to be upset, hurt, resentful and really unhappy and not liking them. It’s going to be very difficult for me to want to trust them and be in a relationship. That’s the thing I was contemplating – how am I okay being in a relationship with you when I feel this way, when you treat me this way? Boundaries allow me to have a standard, they allow me to have a structure of what I’m okay with, where I’m taking care of myself. Where if I’m expecting other people to take care of me and they’re not, then I’m easily going to blame and shame and be upset with them, like I just said. So I’m not gonna feel able to really participate in the relationship in a constructive way. So in some ways, by me setting boundaries and taking care of myself, it’s actually allowing me to be in the relationship.

For this example of gambling addiction – I don’t know, it’s going to be a question for you to discern, but I’m going to offer you some tips here for you to gather some information for you to make that decision. Because if we set boundaries and we’re taking care of ourselves and the relationship is still really problematic, then there’s more to look at. But if we take care of ourselves and we set boundaries and the person adjusts and it’s a different way of operating and things start to shift, then there’s an opening. We’re no longer enabling, we’re no longer participating in the behavior that we have a problem with.

It reminds me, a few years ago my husband was visiting a family and he was sharing just observing some of the relationship dynamics, and there’s a young toddler, probably around the two-year-old range, and the toddler was hitting and pulling his aunt’s hair, and was hitting his aunt. His aunt was like “Stop hitting me, stop hitting me, stop pulling my hair”, very passively, and the child kept doing it. My husband was just observing that there was really no boundary. It was like an attempt at redirecting, like “Stop doing that”, but there was no real assertiveness, and the child kept hitting and pulling the hair. It just kept going on and on, and my husband was like “I don’t know how this child is going to learn what’s okay and what’s not okay.” So if we’re participating and we’re allowing people to treat us in a particular way, in some way we’re enabling that behavior. We’re making it okay, meaning we’re participating, we’re going along with it to some degree. We’re not putting a boundary and stopping, and not participating. And I get that this gets very complex when you talk about a marriage and sharing a home. I don’t know if you have children together, but I’m sure your finances are blended, and a lot of the complexities here make setting a boundary difficult, but I don’t want to underestimate or underemphasize the importance of boundaries.

On social media I just saw a friend post a video of Brené Brown talking about boundaries, and I think she does a really great job of describing – actually based on her research – the importance of boundaries and how it relates to empathy and compassion. Essentially, she is saying, by setting a boundary you’re going to be much more likely to be empathetic and caring, because you’re taking care of yourself, so then you’re allowing yourself to engage. Where if you’re hoping the other person will take care of you and they don’t, you’re not going to like relating to them, you’re not going to feel compassionate because your needs are not getting met. You’re gonna be upset, you’re gonna be resentful, you’re gonna be hurt, you’re gonna be pissed, and you’re not gonna be able to really be opened and empathetic. So she does a great job talking about the dance of those, the empathy, the boundaries and the compassion.

I just want to encourage you to consider, in your marriage, what’s not okay and what’s okay for you. Again, this might be looking at what is the impact of this gambling addiction having on you on all levels. What’s your underlying need – is it about trust, is it about financial security, is it about your marriage and your love life? It could be many things, so really being honest about the impact and also what your needs are, what you’re really wanting, and what’s okay with you and what’s not okay with you. This information is going to set you up to be able to change the rules, so to speak. So anytime in a family system, even if you don’t have children, you’re still a family; you have the two of you, the husband and yourself, so you have a dynamic in your home, and I call that your family.

So in any type of family you have explicit rules, meaning you actually talk about them and you say “Okay, we’re going to have dinner at a particular time, let’s say seven o’clock. We have an agreement.” That’s explicit, we’re both really talking openly about that. But we also have implicit agreements, and those are things we don’t talk about, are kind of assumed, it’s the way it’s always been, and it’s kind of hidden. Well, with his addiction, I don’t know if he knows that you know, but there’s a way in which you guys relate to that, and there’s a way that I don’t know if you’re enabling him…

One of the articles that I’ll post talks about three different types of enabling. One is covering up, and covering for your husband. So if there are certain bills that are late, do you call whoever you guys owe money to? Maybe your electric company or your gas company and you give some type of reason why the bill is not on time, and you’re actually covering up and you’re doing work for your husband. Another type of enabling is attempting to control his behavior, trying to help him manage his issue and trying to help him improve or try to control the amount that he is gambling, and getting really mixed up in that. Or even number three, cooperating with him to some degree or another.

So I even think not setting a boundary, ignoring it is even a form of enabling, because in some way you’re relating, you’re participating in some dance with him, and somehow it’s okay. He is gambling, and you’re in a relationship, and at some level you’ve been participating in that being okay. I hesitate here a little bit, because I don’t want this to sound like blaming the victim. So if you feel very much like your husband has been doing things that are not okay, I’m not interested in making you at fault for that, but I do want to empower you to have boundaries and set your limits. Because again, the result of you not setting limits – you feel overextended, you feel taken advantage of, again, feeling resentful, feeling hurt, and all of these painful experiences and feelings. So if you’re going to change the rules, meaning “I’m not longer going to participate in this, I’m no longer going to let this be okay, I’m no longer going to ignore this, then I’m going to do things differently. Here’s the way that I’m going to operate.”

So in my story earlier, I’m in an agreement with myself, knowing that I could not change this person, but I could only really change myself. So I made an agreement with myself – if we enter into this territory, I’m gonna call this as soon as I can and say “I don’t feel safe, and I’m not having this conversation.” That might mean me leaving, it might mean a lot of things to separate myself, but it means calling it, so to speak. I think I might have mentioned in past podcast episodes I do do parent coaching, or have done a lot of parent coaching in the past, and I encourage parents to be consistent. Because if their child is learning that if I whine, or if I complain, or if I push back enough and I end up getting what I want, the child is learning “Oh, I just have to stick with it long enough and eventually my mom or my dad will give in.” So essentially, it’s reinforcing that behavior, ironically.

So in this instance you want to choose things that you’re going to actually stick with. So what are some new ways of operating that you can set a standard, hold the bar, hold the standard for yourself, and there’s another article that I’ll post and it gets a little more specific about how to take care of yourself, and I don’t know to what degree your husband and his gambling, where he’s at, but there are people that share, they open up their personal account, they talk to an attorney, they take their name off of credit cards, they talk to their bank and let them know what’s going on.

There are a lot of ways that you can take action. I’m not recommending anything in particular, but just for you to check out in your own being what limits, what new ways of operating, so you can take care of yourself, so that you can then be in a better position to be empathetic, to be considerate and understanding to your husband. Because the next point I want to make has a lot to do with communication. So I don’t know what attempts you’ve made to communicate with your husband, but if you are committed to taking care of yourself, you’re going to be that much more likely to express concern to him, rather than blaming and shaming him for his behavior. So if he’s got an addiction, it’s his addiction that’s the issue. Him and who he is in his essence, I know is a very beautiful person. It makes my heart hurt to think he is in pain in some way, that he is resorting to this gambling addiction.

With gambling, addiction can have many purposes and I do provide some links on these show notes for you to kind of get some more information about gambling, what it means, what are the developmental processes of gambling and all the impacts. But there is something in there about often times 70% of people who gamble also have some type of mental illness, or mental disorder going on. Maybe depression, or there’s something maybe that he’s hurting, that he’s struggling with. So if you’re committed to taking care of yourself, you’re going to be much more able to be empathetic to him around “Well, this seems like it’s been a really big issue and I’m really concerned about the impact that it’s having.” You can share, like “This is the amount of money that we’re out, over the last seven years, and that’s hard.” Or “I want to feel close to you, and I feel sad that I can’t trust you.” Or “I can’t imagine that you’re feeling good about this, about lying to me” or about whatever else is going on for him in the way that he’s negotiating his gambling.

The communication is also about letting him know, like “I’m going to do things differently here, and I don’t know if you know what a big this is for me. This is serious.” Letting him know that you’re actually considering this being a deal-breaker. Not to threaten him, but to let him know, like “I’m in a lot of pain here, I don’t know how to keep doing this, so here are some things I am going to try.” So if you communicate, “Here are my new boundaries, here are the things I’m going to be doing”… And again, I don’t know how far along he is at his addiction, if he can actually rationally hear this – he might not be able to hear this, but for a lot of people there are attempts to discuss and people don’t want to go there. So you could consider getting help, like “I would like us to go to a counselor”, or “I would like us to get some support around this”, or “Have you considered a treatment program?”

Again, I have some links to offer you, and the next point that I would really recommend is just taking action, and really sticking with whatever it is you do decide, and getting support. One of the resources – you know how with Alcoholics Anonymous, there is Al-Anon, which are the partners of the alcoholics, or family members go to Al-Anon, and there is this support system for how to not be co-dependent, how to not enable, how to take care of yourself, how to set limits, how to have self-love and not take it personally, and all of these things. There’s something called Gam-Anon, which is a version of Al-Anon, but it’s for people who are spouses of people who have a gambling addiction. There are forums, there is the ability to have a trusted support system and even a therapist. I would encourage you to also get support, to not be alone in this. I was doing some Google searching, and there is a ton of forums around people and their stories, and how real, legitimate, there are a lot of people struggling with this. So you are not alone, and really getting support.

So again, the biggest takeaway that I really want to encourage you is just the importance and how loving it is for you to set boundaries. Because honestly, if you’re not setting boundaries… You know, there is this concept of “Don’t ask permission, ask for forgiveness”, so  on some level he’s doing what he wants, and just hoping that you’ll forgive him, or hoping it’ll be okay. And again, I don’t really know the ins and outs, but he doesn’t feel good about the way that he is treating you, I’m pretty sure of that. I’m sure he feels a lot of shame, a lot of guilt – I don’t know all the things he’s feeling, but I’m pretty sure he does not feel good about it. So again, you want to contribute to relating in the best possible way.

You don’t want to let people hurt you; that’s contributing to something that’s negative, right? You’re feeling hurt, he’s feeling hurt, and there’s nothing positive in that. So if you set a boundary, you’re going to be taking care of yourself, you’re going to feel more empowered; he is also going to feel more accountable, and he’s not going to feel the ability to hurt you. I mean, he’s also hurting himself and there are a lot of other things he’s going to have to contend to, but he doesn’t have that added layer of my wife, and the shame and the guilt around that.

Again, there are resources on the show notes page, the Brené Brown video and several articles that are more specific to gambling. But more than anything, the importance of setting boundaries and how critical it is for our well-being and the health of our relationships. Setting boundaries can be on smaller scale issues and also larger, more severe issues.

If you’re interested in getting more support and how to set boundaries, feel free to reach out to me. My website is https://drjessicahiggins.com/ I am available for coaching or offering some resources and tools for you to strengthen this muscle, setting boundaries so that you can engage in a more positive relationship.

If you have a question you would like me to speak to in an upcoming podcast, please e-mail me at [email protected] and tell me a little bit about what your question is and a little context, and I would love to offer you support in an upcoming podcast. Until next time, I hope you take great care!

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