Those who never change need you to leave to have a chance

Perhaps you’re holding out for someone to change, and you have waited years, and their promises just never seem to stick.  Maybe they stick at it for a little while and then they go back to their old ways, whether it’s addiction or violence or betrayal or a combo.  You just can’t seem to let go of the thought that they may just reform themselves.  You can’t entertain the heartbreak of letting them go and being responsible for their demise, for giving up on them, for being their last hope who just abandons them.

You cannot be their last hope.  You cannot be.  You aren’t.  You cannot be responsible for their demise.  Because you aren’t.  And by giving up on them you are paradoxically giving them the best chance they have.  Of getting up on their own two feet and fighting the fight they need to make, that you cannot take.

All structures for co-dependency need to fall away.  Every last excuse needs to be pared back.  It is not your fault that they have made no progress.  They do need your help, but it’s not the way you and they are currently thinking which will be most helpful.  They need to be cut loose, but of course there may be all sorts of threats of self-harm and worse, that they cannot possibly do it on their own without you.  In other words, they are pinning their responsibility on you.  You have a say in this, but it isn’t the say you or they think that is.  Your say is, “It’s your turn to do it on your own, and I know you can do it.  I have to go.”

Then is the tough work of staying gone, because they will make a huge wrestle of it.  It is so unfortunate that in the process of you giving them their best chance, that you will be seen as the betrayer, the enemy.  Be committed to the altruistic act of believing they can do with you out of the picture.  Who knows if there may be a reconciliation, but they need to be CHANGED before that can be entertained.

I can tell you from personal experience that the only chance many of us have of real recovery is if we are left to do it on our own, where every structure of excuse is ripped away.  It’s not to say that support isn’t needed.  Support is needed, but it must be the right kind of support and not enabling support that we are easily sucked into providing.  And at least until there’s been a year’s change, it can’t be you.  It has to be others.  And they need to make a go of it.

Of course, in cutting the mooring lines, and in letting them go, we do risk that they may harm themselves.  It might sound harsh, but how can you be responsible for these actions?  We are each responsible for our own lives, and not for others. It is part of the reason why we end up in problematic relationships.  It’s because one person took too much responsibility and the other took not nearly enough.  Adult relationships only occur when there are two adults in the relationship and not one child and one adult, because adults by designation of maturity take responsibility.

The best motivation we can give anyone to take responsibility for the change they need to make, is to get out of the way, and to make the tough choice to absolutely ensure that it happens.

Photo by Eugene Golovesov on Unsplash