'You Just Buy The Refrigerators'

Everyone around you is telling you what you are and who you are by expecting certain behavior from you. Which, if you are a reasonable and socially-inclined person, you perform. Because that's what's expected of you.
— Alan Watts

When I was a kid, especially from age seven on, I was given the message a lot of children get when their parents are alcoholic: 'You are not as important as the alcohol. You are not as important as the bars and the parties. In fact, you're just in the way. Your role is to be as close as possible to invisible. Don't distract us or bother us.'

That's how I learned to be an enabler. It's how I learned that my role in life was to be the selfless giver, playing the role of supporter and friend while expecting nothing for myself. All my life I transmitted the 'enabler' message, and there were always people who recognized the message and exploited it. They included bosses, friends and women.

I finally started learning about this in therapy, when I was in my mid-forties. The short-term results were disastrous. My friends and my employer of 17 years, who had been telling me what I was and who I was by expecting certain behavior from me, abandoned me. Fortunately, I had the support of a men's group I had recently joined as well as a large circle of online friends on The Well. Even though my Well friends had never met me (or perhaps because of it), they were far more supportive than my 'real' friends.

I kept pushing on, and today I'm much less of an enabler than I once was. But I'm still far from completely liberated.

In the Rinzai school of Zen, they teach that enlightenment is sudden, but that it must be followed by years of rigorous training to cast off habitual behavior and thought processes. The same is true of post-therapy life. I still have to be mindful of my own thoughts and behavior, and must frequently ask myself, 'Are these the thoughts and behavior of my post-therapy 'enlightened' self, or is this my parents still talking to me?'

A few years ago I was with a female friend at Lowe's, walking through the hardware aisles. She suddenly turned to me, smiled and said, "Would you buy me a refrigerator?"

There was a time I might have done it. Maybe I would have done it right then, if she'd phrased the request as a command and attached some guilt strings to it. But I turned her down. More importantly, I saw at that moment that our 'friendship' was based upon her being a user of other people who had picked up on my weak but still flashing 'enabler' beacon.

About five years ago, the woman to whom I refer as Ms. Willowy and Ethereal had to choose between me and her current boyfriend, and she chose the current boyfriend. I was crushed — I loved her and still love her now — but I never spoke of it to her again. I wrote about it endlessly here, but I didn't say anything to her. I felt it was my job as 'the friend' to just shut up and be supportive.

I got differing advice from friends about how to deal with this. Some said I should have kept trying, while others said I should let it go. Among those who said 'let it go,' I frequently picked up a 'vibe' that seemed to say, 'Let it go because you're just the friend. You're not supposed to get what you want. You just buy the refrigerators.'

I think what I'm saying here is that some of my friends are real friends, and some — especially women — have just latched on to me because they've seen the still-flickering 'enabler beacon'. They actually find me weak and mildly contemptible, but they don't mind humoring me so I'll keep doing them favors. And I still have trouble telling which are the friends and which have just latched on.

When women flirt with me or seem to be attracted to me, I've learned, nine out of ten times it's the 'enabler' beacon that's drawn their attention. I can't trust them, and I don't.