S2 EP338 – Relationships: When Love Becomes Enabling

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul, and today we’re going to explore one of the most misunderstood aspects of love, which is that what you might think is loving is actually enabling, which ends up being controlling rather than loving.

Many people believe that if they truly love another adult, they should always be kind, understanding, forgiving, accommodating, patient, and available. I’m not referring to babies or young children, or ill or elderly people who you’ve agreed to take care of. When talking about enabling I’m referring to being in relationship with people who are capable of taking at least some responsibility for themselves. 

Do you believe love means never upsetting anyone or giving someone the benefit of the doubt and always giving them another chance? Do you believe that love mean putting another capable adult’s needs before you own, or that it’s loving to sacrifice yourself for the relationship? Or do you try to protect others from pain, or try to keep the peace at any price?

What if these behaviors aren’t actually loving? What if they are enabling? What if what you might call love are actually controlling behaviors coming from fear rather than from love?

What if you are confusing compassion with caretaking, kindness with compliance, forgiveness with the absence of boundaries, and generosity with self-abandonment?

From an Inner Bonding perspective, love does not requires abandoning yourself.

Love supports growth while enabling supports dysfunction.  Love encourages responsibility while enabling enables irresponsibility. Love is compassionate with yourself and others, while enabling is controlling.

One of the most loving things you can do—for yourself and for someone else—is to stop participating in patterns that keep both of you stuck in a dysfunctional relationship system, where both of you are trying to control with caretaking and taking.

Let’s begin with a definition. Enabling is any behavior that protects another person from experiencing the natural consequences of their choices in ways that interfere with their growth and responsibility.

Even if you think you are being loving, if you are not feeling peaceful in giving, then it’s likely that you are abandoning yourself, which is never loving to yourself or to others.

Do you find yourself making excuses for the other person or lying to protect them? Do you often clean up another’s messes? Are you constantly rescuing? Do you walk on eggshells? Repeatedly give money? Are you accepting repeated abuse? Do you often do for others what they can do for themselves, and then shield them from accountability?

Many people engage in these behaviors because they genuinely care. But caring isn’t enough. The question isn’t: “Do I love this person?” The question is: “Is what I’m doing helping them become more responsible, more loving, and more emotionally healthy?” If the answer is no, then what you might believe is love may actually be control coming from false beliefs and the resulting fear.

Take a moment to think about why you might be enabling someone – a partner, friend, family member, or one or more of your children. What are the fears your enabling behavior is coming from? Is it a fear of conflict, or of rejection or judgment or someone’s anger? Is it a fear being seen as selfish if you don’t give yourself up? Is it a fear of someone leaving or withdrawing from the relationship?

Or is your wounded self judging you and making you feel guilty if you don’t caretake? Do you feel responsible for someone’s pain? Is your wounded self telling you things like: “If you don’t rescue them, something terrible will happen.” Or “If you say no, they’ll hate you.” or “If you stop helping, they’ll fall apart.” Or “If you don’t fix this, you’re a bad person.”

Can you see how enabling becomes an attempt to control others and outcomes? You think you’re helping another person, but the real motivation is to protect yourself from your fears.

The loving adult asks: “What is truly loving?” but the wounded self asks: “How do I avoid anxiety?” Those are very different intentions.

A very important distinction is the difference between compassion and caretaking. Compassion comes from caring deeply about another’s pain, while caretaking comes from the intent to fix the other person’s pain so that you don’t feel anxious or fearful.

Compassion comes from love while caretaking comes from a false belief that you are responsible for another’s feelings, and that you can control another’s feelings. The loving adult is supportive, encouraging, and listens well, but knows that you can’t do another’s inner work for them, because you have no control over their intention to love themselves or abandon themselves. You can’t choose for them and make them grow, or prevent the consequences of their choices, Real love respects another person’s capacity to choose. But you do have control over the intention you choose moment by moment.

Parents often struggle with enabling, which can result in demanding children.

Demanding children – children who have entitlement issues – seem to be common these days. Like the obnoxious child, Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, who was constantly demanding that her father get her whatever she wanted (“I want an Umpa Lumpa! Get it for me NOW!”), we hear many children today uttering the fairly constant refrain, “I want …! Give it to me! Get it for me!” They seem to be masters at instilling guilt in their parents through phrases such as “It’s not fair!” or “You don’t love me!” or “What about what I want?”, or by getting angry, shutting down or crying piteously.

My client Olivia grew up with a self-centered demanding critical mother who never let her have her feelings. Olivia learned early to take responsibility for her mother’s feelings by being a good girl. Now, as a parent herself, and not wanting to do to her children what her mother did to her, she has gone the opposite way. Rather than being demanding and self-centered, she is compliant and self-sacrificing. Rather than being an authoritarian parent like her mother was, she is a permissive parent, giving in to her children’s demands rather than setting appropriate limits.

Olivia tends to give way too much credence to her children’s feelings. All they need to do is be upset about something and she stops what she is doing to attend to them. They have learned to use their feelings of hurt, irritation, and anger as a means of control. Olivia thinks she is being loving when she makes it “safe” for her children to express their feelings. The problem is she is not discerning the difference between having feelings and using feelings as a means of control. Because she gives her children’s feelings so much power over her, her children have learned to use their feelings against her.

Olivia’s children need to learn to care about Olivia instead of just trying to get her to give herself up to meet their demands. The only way they will learn to care about her is if she starts to practice Inner Bonding and learns to care about herself.

Demanding children are difficult to be around. They have a hard time keeping friends and as adults they create chaotic relationships.

There may be many negative consequences to enabling parenting. Are you paying your adult child’s debts? Is your adult child living with you but doing nothing to help, and keeps making excuses? Are you making excuses for them, or continuing to rescue them from crisis?

What actually happens when you enable? The child never develops confidence. Responsibility never grows and dependence deepens. You feel increasingly exhausted and discouraged while you child feels increasingly entitled, and both of you feel trapped.

Children develop resilience not because life is easy. They develop resilience because they experience loving support while learning responsibility.

Often the most loving response that can promote growth is allowing discomfort, frustration, and natural consequences.

I recently had a conversation with my friend Joyce. Her son had been in and out of jail due to drug addiction. Each time he was home, she enabled him, giving him money without him having to work for it, and constantly dumping her worry about him onto him, which felt controlling to him, leading him to be resistant, which meant for him going back to drugs. It became apparent to me in speaking with her that it wasn’t loving to herself or to him for him to live with her and the rest of the family. Both she and her husband were very controlling with him, and I helped her to see that her enabling was part of the problem. She saw this and agreed to let go of trying to control him with her enabling the next time he was out of jail.

Let’s take a hard look at what we need to do to support caring in children rather than self-centeredness.

Authoritarian parenting often creates compliant/caretaking children, while permissive parenting often creates narcissistic children. Neither authoritarian nor permissive parenting is loving parenting – parenting that supports the highest good of both children and parents. Let’s break the cycle of creating caretakers and takers. As parents, we need to practice Inner Bonding and learn to:

• Take loving care of ourselves rather than constantly give ourselves up to our children’s needs and feelings.
• Set appropriate limits rather than always complying with our children’s demands.
• Care about our own feelings as much as we care about our children’s feelings.
• Not allow our feelings and needs to be invisible to our family.
• Accept rejection from our children rather than give in to them to avoid being rejected.
• Discern the difference between children’s feelings that need to be attended to and feelings that are being used to manipulate.
• Expect to be appreciated and respected rather than accept being taken for granted.

It is not a matter of swinging back to authoritarian parenting. It is a matter of expecting to be treated with respect and caring. Your children will learn to treat you the way you treat yourself. If you allow your feelings and needs to be invisible because you are not attending to them and not making them important to you, your children will learn to see you and others as invisible. Children who see themselves as important and others as invisible because this is what their parents are role-modeling, may become narcissistic, self-centered and demanding.

It is not easy to move out of caretaking and into caring about yourself and others. Caretaking others was likely a form of survival when you were growing up. Yet to truly be a loving adult, you need to have the courage to behave in a way that fosters caring and consideration in your children and in others, and this will never happen if you consistently put yourself aside for others.

Learning to love yourself goes a long way in terms of being able to raise healthy children and create healthy relationships.

Before I move on, this is why I created my 30-Day Love Yourself video course. If you’re looking to stop enabling, learn to love yourself and be able to create loving relationships, then this course is for you. You can learn more in the description below.

Romantic relationships create endless opportunities for enabling. Perhaps your partner abuses alcohol, or overspends, or avoids work, or becomes emotionally abusive, or blames you rather than takes responsibility for their own feelings, and refuses therapy.

Do you keep hoping that if you love enough, or are patient enough, or explain again, he or she will finally change? I did this for many years in my 30 marriage, and it wasn’t until I started to practice Inner Bonding that I stopped enabling him and started to take loving care of myself. Of course I was hoping that he would step up and do his inner work, but this didn’t happen and I finally realized that change would never happen. That’s when I knew that if I wanted to continue growing, I would need to leave the marriage.

Many partners become so focused on changing the other person that they just keep abandoning themselves and then wonder why they are miserable.

One of the misunderstandings that is sometimes part of enabling is believing that consequences are punishment. Natural consequences are teachers. If you spend beyond your means, hopefully you learn from the consequences – unless someone bails you out and then you likely learn nothing. If someone repeatedly lies and you stop excusing them, they might learn from the consequences of lying. If someone refuses emotional responsibility and you continue to enable them, they learn nothing other than they can take advantage of you.

When you continually remove consequences, you remove opportunities for growth. The loving adult understands that pain itself isn’t the enemy. Needless suffering is, and sometimes temporary discomfort prevents lifelong dysfunction, which is why healthy boundaries can be acts of love, and actually protect love.

Healthy boundaries are boundaries you set for yourself – not for the other person. If your partner is being unloving, a healthy boundary lets him or her know that you are not available to be treated badly. Boundaries are not punishments for the other person. They are expressions of self-respect. They define what you will and won’t participate in. Without boundaries, resentment grows and resentment slowly destroys love.

Many people stay in enabling relationships because they fear being judged. Perhaps they think things like, “They’ll think I’m selfish.” “They’ll say I don’t care.” “They’ll accuse me of abandoning them.” Sometimes they will. But loving action isn’t measured by another person’s approval. The loving adult is guided by integrity rather than by guilt. 

Guilt often accompanies healthy boundaries when you’ve spent years abandoning yourself. Feeling guilty doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done something wrong. It may mean that you are judging yourself for taking loving care of yourself rather than enabling the other person.

You can give loving support to the other person without enabling them. The loving adult knows that the other person can learn if they want to, that they have the capacity to grow if they want to. You can let them know that you are more than willing to support their healing and growth, but that you are no longer willing to support or protect their dysfunction.

You might let them know that you love them, but that you will no longer lie for them. That you care deeply but that you will no longer give them money that supports their addiction. You can say, “I’m here if you’re willing to seek help but I’m not here to rescue you from choices you continue making.”

This is about coming from love and controlling what you can, which is you, and letting go of trying to control them with your enabling.

My clients often ask me, “How do I know when I am caretaking and enabling and when I am being loving?”

The answer lies in understanding your intention. As I hope you know by now, enabling through caretaking comes from the wounded self and the intent behind it is to control. When you are caretaking, you are giving yourself up to do what someone else wants you to do in the hopes of having control over getting approval or avoiding disapproval or anger. When you are caretaking, you are taking responsibility for another person’s feelings while ignoring your own. You are taking care of the other person’s inner child while putting your inner child in the closet. Frequently, you are doing for others what they need to be doing for themselves – which means that you are enabling them.

While it might look loving to be caretaking others, it is anything but. It is not loving to abandon yourself. It is not loving to give to get – giving with an agenda to get approval or avoid disapproval. It is not loving to enable others in not taking responsibility for themselves.

Loving behavior toward others always comes from the loving adult. When you are loving others, you are giving to them for the joy of giving to them. The intent behind the giving is to share your love. You don’t need anything from the other person because you are already full of love from having taken loving care of yourself.

There is no agenda attached to loving behavior. You can accept how the other person responds because you don’t need anything back, nor do you expect anything back. You are giving for the pure joy of giving and are further filled in the act of giving.

Caregiving is a particular form of loving behavior. You are caregiving when you are giving to others what they need and cannot do for themselves. When you are caregiving, sometimes you do things even though you don’t feel like doing them, because you love or care about the other person’s well-being. An example of caregiving is taking care of children, even when you have to get up in the middle of the night and don’t want to. You are caregiving when you take care of an old person or a sick person – doing for them what they cannot do for themselves.

Sometimes caregiving gives you joy, and other times it is difficult, but it never has an agenda attached. You are being kind because it makes you feel good to be kind – not because you are trying to get something back from the other person.

Often clients will say to me, “Isn’t there a fine line between caregiving and caretaking?”

No, it is not a fine line at all. There is not a fine line between the intent to control and the intent to be loving to yourself and others. The confusion comes in because the action may be exactly the same. For example, you might make dinner for your partner for the pure joy of giving, or you might make dinner to get approval or avoid disapproval. While the action of making dinner is the same, the energy of it is totally different because the intent is totally different. Food made with love even tastes different than food made out of fear, guilt, or obligation.

When you give from the wounded self with the intent to control, you will eventually end up feeling resentful and used. When you give from the loving adult with the intent to share your love, you will feel filled in the giving, regardless of how the other person responds.

I’d like to close by inviting you inward. Take a deep breath and bring to mind someone you’ve been enabling. Notice what happens in your body and ask yourself, “What am I afraid would happen if I stopped enabling?”

Listen to the fear behind enabling, such as “They’ll be angry.” “They’ll reject me.” “They’ll suffer.” “I’ll feel guilty.”

Now imagine your loving adult entering and deciding to take loving care of your inner child rather than their inner child and open to the courage to be loving to yourself and to them, rather than compromising yourself to try to control them. Imagine releasing the burden of managing another person’s feelings and actions.

As we end today, remember this: Love never asks you to betray yourself. Love never asks you to participate in another person’s self-abandonment. Love is not measured by how much you sacrifice. Love is measured by how fully you embody truth, compassion, responsibility, and integrity. When your love supports growth instead of fear, when your love includes yourself, when your love trusts the wisdom of natural consequences, then your love becomes a healing force rather than an enabling one.

If you’re ready to learn to take more loving care of yourself and let go of enabling, I invite you to check out my 30-Day Love Yourself Video course. You’ll find the link in the description.

Thank you for joining me today.
 
 I’m sending you my love and my blessings on your healing journey.