Disentangle. Nancy L. Johnston

and feel very lost and fearful that our relationship was certainly over.

      I was always sure he would leave me.

      I got to feeling so bad and off-center. I would feel like the bottom was dropping out from under me. I would feel agitated and unable to concentrate. Things that generally brought me pleasure were unimportant and cast aside. I would pursue arguments for hours, hoping that we could come to some point where I again would feel sure he was not going away. I would feel compelled to say some things to him and to seek his reassurance. As I approached such conversations, I would know that they would likely not produce the results I desired. But I pursued them anyway, wanting to hold onto this man.

      And about “this man”: This book is about me and will remain so. But it is important to make a few general comments about him that enrich this picture. This man did not shower me with gifts or verbalizations offering me the reassurance I sought. He had his own issues with work and intimacy and, as I’ve already hinted, alcohol. I had finally found the rebellious sort I sought out in the seventh grade. But this one was cloaked in intellect and social class that made our being together seem more appropriate and okay. He seemed hardly emotionally available to me, and this drew me in like a magnet.

      And he knew this.

      So it should have not been a surprise to me several years into our relationship when we were walking by a bookstore in a mall that he pointed out Robin Norwood’s book Women Who Love Too Much to me. How insulting! How insightful! How correct!

      This is how I handled the situation: A big part of me wanted to please him. So of course I showed interest in the book and the topic. I even bought it on the spot. A small part of me was bothered that he would even suggest that something was wrong with me, needless to mention with our relationship. And an even smaller part of me thought perhaps the help I knew I needed was to be had in that book.

      And, in fact, it was. It was the beginning of the way out at last, the way out of my lostness, anxiety, and despair. A year or so prior to this I had entered psychotherapy to help me with these same issues. I had been feeling so bad in the relationship that I had seen a psychologist for the first time in my life. I had also done this because I thought my husband would like me to do it. He did.

      The psychotherapy had been pleasant, comforting, and somewhat revealing, but our work had not really helped me with my entanglements with my husband. I don’t think I shared the depths of those issues with this male psychotherapist. I was too ashamed, in part. I had an image of competence and togetherness to maintain. After all, I was a psychotherapist too, so I should know better. I should have it all together. It didn’t help either that my therapist moved to another state before we finished our work. Nor did it help that the presence of alcoholism was never raised. So, insight I had gained, but my pain remained.

      This was somewhere around 1985 or 1986. I started to get a clue that the way out of my entanglements involved getting my focus on my self and not on the other. But this was only a clue. Years of learning to disentangle were ahead of me.

      Somewhere around this time I made a decision that was both healthy and unhealthy. For some reason I decided to apply to return to graduate school to complete my Ph.D. To my surprise, I was accepted into the program I sought. I was stunned and on the spot. I had not really thought about what I would do if I was accepted. To be in the program required moving to another part of the state. I waited until the very last day to give them my answer. And that answer was “No, thank you.”

      I declined this wonderful opportunity for two reasons. The healthy reason, or so it seemed to me, was that I was good at school and lousy at relationships. So I decided that rather than run away from this relationship, I would stay and work on it and me.

      The other reason was the unhealthy one: I feared that if I went away to graduate school I would lose this man. I was sure of this and could not bear the thought of it happening. It felt like a great risk that my abandonment fears could not tolerate. So I said, “No, thank you.”

      I have not regretted that decision. I have in fact stuck with the course I picked at that time, which was to work on my intimacy difficulties and to increase my capacity for a healthy relationship. Consider this book my dissertation. It is the document that captures my experience, strength, and hope gathered through this educational path I chose in the mid-1980s.

      In September 1987 we were married in a service on the front lawn of our home with our friends and my family present. In August 1988 our most wonderful daughter was born. In November 1988 my husband entered treatment. His diagnosis: alcoholism.

      Finally, we had a name, a label, a way to conceptualize the craziness we had been living with. And we both took it seriously and embarked on our paths to recovery.

      That was 1988. I started attending Al-Anon meetings almost right away, though not for particularly the right reasons. I saw the meetings as interesting and fun. I enjoyed hearing people’s stories and intellectually absorbing the steps and traditions of the program. But I did not bring my emotional pain with me for a while. I had lost touch with it temporarily. My husband’s diagnosis and treatment had given me some relief by showing that at least not all of this awfulness had been on me. That was good to know. But for a while, I lost touch with my insanity. Now that I knew he had been insane, I felt quite sane.

      Thank heavens I continued to go to my meetings, because it wasn’t long before my insanity was back. In my periodic journal I wrote:

       “I feel depressed . . . a feeling of dread . . . a feeling that I have been/am doing something very wrong.”

       “I am consumed by my disease. I am anxious and depressed and my thinking is obsessive. . . . I am trying to lay low and hang with my higher power. Every which way I turn my thoughts are catastrophic.”

      My husband’s being in recovery was vital, but it did not cure my insecurities, abandonment fears, or anxieties. It did not result in excellent communication between us, in improvement in our ability to work together, or in comfort with intimacy. All of those energy-sapping difficulties were still there. And this time we each had identified people and resources we could use to help us. My twelve-step program became a major influence for me.

      In one of my twelve-step meetings a member said, “My therapist does not like for me to come to these meetings. He says they brainwash you. But you know, I think my brain needed washing.” Yes, my brain needed washing as well. The ways I thought about my self and relationships and how to get what I thought I wanted all needed remaking. I needed to learn to think about me and not the other so much. I needed to learn when I was forcing solutions and to stop this. I needed to learn what I could and could not control. I needed to learn that insanity was continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. I needed to cultivate my spirituality. And the rethinking goes on and on.

      In fact, the body of this book describes in detail what I have learned from this program and from my experiences as I have tried to apply this program, as Step Twelve suggests, “in all my affairs.” I have been on this path for twenty-two years. I have had the help of many excellent members from my twelve-step fellowship, an incredible sponsor, and several good and knowing friends outside the program. They have offered me inspiring thoughts that have helped to guide me to new places:

       “One person drinks and the rest of us go crazy.”

       “I abandon my self.”

       “Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions.”

       “What I need to know will come to my attention without any effort on my part.”

       “We keep the focus on ourselves and not the alcoholic.”

       “The evidence that my higher power is going before me is so strong.”

      I also had the wonderful help of a therapist and mentor who has a deep and experienced understanding of these issues of losing your self to another. She offered me insight after insight about my self