I’ve been doing some self-evaluation. I even busted out ye old Codependent No More to see what gems of knowledge the only self help book I’ve ever read and not laughed at had to offer me. After pondering codependency, my life, and my relationships I have a question of the world: what do you do if you’re a recovering codependent who seeks other codependents to be codependent with? Or: what do you do if you’re a recovering codependent and feel there are particular behaviors you must cut out of your life and those around you for your own sanity and happiness? Ms. Beattie doesn’t address these questions in her book.

I keep in mind that this book isn’t exactly meant for the me now; it was more applicable to the me of four years ago, but, regardless of the ways I’ve changed, old knowledge is always worth reevaluation for worth and possible reapplication. But I can’t help but wonder what is ethical and moral in relationships when it comes to helping and supporting friends, and walking away from friends you feel are bad for you. Let me see if I can clarify--if you’re friend has a rough day, week, even month, you are a crappy friend (I pass judgment here, it’s true) if you abandon them because they aren’t “fun” or it is too difficult to stand by them when their mood is down. But if you’re friend is having a bad life punctuated by the occasional good day, week, even month, then when is it ethical to walk away and save yourself while leaving them to figure it out? When it is unethical and selfish? This is the crux of my immediate questioning.

And I think it’s an important question. We tell people they need to be aware of themselves and their needs; they need to protect themselves from abusive relationships and destructive choices. We have Lifetime movies and ABC Family movies where the boyfriend/girlfriend is so obviously awful and the hero/heroine is so desperately drowning. But real life is rarely, if ever, that simple. While it’s hard to walk away from a destructive relationship--sometimes impossible--once you manage to extract yourself there is a definiteness there. When the story is told everyone will quickly and clearly understand that the alcoholic, drug user, emotionally abusive bastard treated you poorly, and that while s/he might not be a bad person there was nothing you could have done. It was both right and good that you walked away and congratulations on pulling yourself out of an awful situation. But...when it’s someone who makes you tired, stressed, or generally unhappy without exactly hurting you when are you at liberty to walk away? When is your decision to let that person figure it out ethical, and when is it abandonment? And (though I don’t think I can begin to evaluate this idea here) when and/or how do you tell them that you are walking away?

I know. Not even JCVD can get me through this one.

It is precisely this gray area that I find myself subsisting in presently, however; not all of a sudden (does anything that promotes self-evaluation ever really happen all of a sudden?) but over the course of the last four years. I’ve worked past the self-help book. I know how to take time for myself (you might call me selfish and you wouldn’t be wrong) and I know how to stand by my friends (I would go to jail for those I love). But when I discover that someone isn’t good for me, that beyond simply not making me happy they make anxious, stressed, irritable, judgmental, short tempered, mean--the list goes on--when or how do I proceed from there? My modus operandi heretofore has been to pull back, gain distance, disappear. But is that the better choice? Is it better to simply give them room to grow or not grow as their own life journey dictates or am I ethically bound as a friend to tell them why I’m pulling back?

I think I feel that space in this cases is the best decision; it is no more fair to me to be miserable because of unpleasant company than it is that the unpleasant company is miserable in the first place. But with my assertion of autonomy--this is my space and my mind and you aren’t allowed to manipulate it--must I reveal, explain, and/or justify that assertion? If the answer is sometimes, when do those sometimes occur and how does one recognize and navigate them?

It doesn’t feel right to me to simply pull away from those I’ve established relationships with, but I am codependent so of course it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel right for me to be brutally honest about how someone’s behavior makes me feel and affects me, but I come from a family that would sooner admit to venereal disease than own up to feeling sad or wounded. I’ve been raised to believe that if someone affects me it is because at some very basic level I have allowed it to affect me; if I were tougher/stronger/smarter whoever it is that ruined my day wouldn’t have ruined it. I recognize now that is a patently false idea. Simultaneously, however, you aren’t always a complete victim; often in life we have some degree of power and wielding that power responsibly is as important as surviving someone wielding theirs irresponsibly at us. If I get robbed we can all agree there was nothing I could do, but if I get manipulated and feel used...should I have been tougher/stronger/smarter? If that feeling of use and manipulation makes me angry, depressed, and/or unsympathetic am I being over sensitive?

I understand that things aren’t easy; it no longer surprises me that they aren’t, but knowing a thing to be true and knowing what to do about that true thing are two very different skill sets. The last four years of graduate school have required a particular level of selfishness from me I do not feel bad about--I needed to learn and to learn one needs to spend time with/on one’s self--but I also know I have not held the line of necessary selfishness and convenient selfishness as strongly as I should. But hell, even knowing all of that I still have no answer to the problem of what constitutes ethical behavior when you recognize destructive behavior in another. I guess we all do the best we can, but that idea is a copout and too often used to excuse our failure to do what we should.

This would all be so much more awesome if I could fix it with a roundhouse kick to the head. Granted I can’t roundhouse kick, but I could learn man. I could so totally learn.