The Cost of Recovery

Day 52

I was right: putting together last week's post about my relationship and its "honeymoon period" was risky for me. I've spent the time since on the downward spiral and haven't been writing much lately.

Zoe is like a drug for me. Wanting to reach out to her is looking for another hit of that drug. Some people drink, some people gamble, some people shoot heroin. I try to rescue damaged women from themselves.

One element common to many relationships with Cluster B's: they have a way of creating an unbreakable trauma bond in their partners by using techniques like intermittent reinforcement. Then they disappear, often with shocking abruptness and finality, and leave their now-addicted ex-partners to suffer withdrawal symptoms on top of all the other damage they leave behind.

I've been in three other relationships that reached formal "girlfriend" status. In those cases there was a period of maybe a month, in the beginning, where I experienced that thrill and anxiety of not knowing where I stood, not knowing if my feelings were reciprocated, feeling the need to make somewhat-tactical decisions about when and how often to call, etc. After a little while I would relax into the relationship; that sort of anxiety would only come back when things really were about to end.

With Zoe that feeling never went away, not for ten months. She made sure that it didn't. One day she'd be telling me she'd never loved anyone like she loved me, the next she'd be sullen and withdrawn and, when confronted, claiming it was because I withdrew from her first. The day after that she'd be trying to get me to elope with her that night. Consistency was impossible for her because it would take away some of her control; possessing that form of power over me was the only thing keeping her survival terror at manageable levels.

That is exactly how you should behave if you want someone to be helplessly addicted to you.

In the end I did stand up to her when she picked her last fight with me; that's why it was our last fight and why I'm working on this blog, trying to ensure my own survival now instead of hers. It's likely that I understood on some level what continuing to enable her would eventually cost me. But I didn't expect two things: first, that relatively minor resistance would cause her to end our relationship instantly, and second, how high the cost of breaking the addiction would be. I'm wrestling with that cost now.