Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

partners in the accounting finn that he founded, his sister and a
friend of his.
1For an excellent discussion of sexual addiction, see Patrick Carnes'
Out of the Shadows and Ken Adams' article entitled "Sexual
Addiction and Covert Incest" in Focus On Chemically Dependent
Families, May/June, 1987.

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Two years prior to the intervention, Bill's wife became concerned
about his sexual acting out. She started to make regular comments
to him soon after that. As is often the case, Bill dismissed her
concerns with a wave of his hand at first, saying, "Dear, if I really
had a problem, I'd do something about it. Really, honey, worry
about something else for awhile." Anita kept worrying, though.
Several months later the situation escalated to the next stage. Bill's
involvement with pornography and masturbation increased as the
pressures from expansion of his business increased. He took on a
junior partner, but it didn't help his addiction. Bill grew distant
from Anita, and their interactions became either cool and
perfunctory, or heated battles and debates. The friction in their
marriage became more and more intense, until one Friday night
when the trap snapped completely around them.
Anita had been out with a friend for dinner, which she had begun to
do more and more out of frustration and helplessness. When she
walked through the door at 9:30 that evening, Bill told her that he
had contracted a venereal disease and that he couldn't have sex
with her for awhile. Anita packed a suitcase, went back to her
friend's house, and spent the weekend with her. On Monday
morning she filed for a separation. The next day, Bill called her,
apologized, and said if she would move back home, he would stop
acting out immediately.
Anita moved back into their house and things cooled off for several
months. Bill was actually proud that they had been able to work
this out by themselves, and Anita was tremendously relieved that
she wouldn't have to be watching Bill all the time. Their
communication was still a little shaky, but it was improving. About

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three months before he entered treatment, Bill decided that he had
the whole thing under control and that his sexual addiction had
only been a symptom of the business pressures that he now seemed
to have managed well.
It wasn't long before his addiction had escalated again to
destructive porportions. Anita contacted COSA (Co-dependents of
Sex-Addicts) and asked for some help. They put her in touch with
an intervention specialist who met with her and the other concerned
persons who would do the intervention. One week before the
intervention was done, they all sat down and practiced how it
would be accomplished. When Bill was faced with his wife and
friends and the data they presented him, he grudgingly accepted

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their recommendation for treatment, which was the beginning of
his and Anita's recovery process.
Admitting a problem like sexual addiction carries with it both a
sense of relief and a sense of failure and loss, and one of the goals
of treatment for addictions is to educate the family about how the
addiction process is acquired. Everyone is asking themselves,
"How could this happen to us? Who caused this? Who is to blame?"
One of the goals of this educational process is to let people see the
dysfunctional dynamics in their present families, and to see how
those dynamics developed and were passed on through past
generations. The goal is not to blame. At first, it is almost
impossible for us not to blame someone for this mess that we're in.
Only later can we detach from our parents and grandparents
enough to say, "What went on with them was not healthy. I can
choose to live another way even if they don't so choose."
As Bill and Anita explored their family backgrounds with their
therapists and in their support groups, the following generational
picture emerged.
There were no obvious addictions in Bill's parents' marriage. Mom
and Dad Hopkins were teetotalers, in fact, who had no addictions
to any chemical substances at all. And at first, Bill described his
childhood and his relationships with his parents as "just normal".
But as his process of self-discovery continued, bits and pieces
started to fall into place. Bill's dad was a hard-working "bring-
home-the-bacon" kind of guy who ran his own auto mechanic shop
in the small town where they lived. He spent a lot of time teaching
Bill how to fix cars, and he seemed to be actively involved in

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raising Bill. But he was also an extreme perfectionist. Their garage
was always spotless. Their house was always quiet. Everything was
always under complete control, and there was never a question
about Dad wearing the pants in the family. He had quite a temper,
too. He never carried a grudge, but he was painfully critical
whenever Bill would make a mistake, make a mess in the garage
when working on cars, or somehow not live up to his expectations
for Bill
Thus Bill grew up with a highly overdeveloped tuner critic that was
always telling him that if he didn't do it perfectly, then it wasn't
worth doing at all.
Bill described his mother as "a saint". She was shy, retiring and
very hardworking. She kept a spotless home and raised five
children, of whom Bill was the oldest. She also received strong
messages about perfection from her husband, and was emotionally
distant from the

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children. Bill never remembers his parents hugging or kissing in
front of the children, and in fact, doesn't remember anyone in the
family being comfortable with appropriate touching.
Despite the perfectionism and domination of the family by his dad,
Bill at first did not see the connection between that and his own
problems. In going back another generation, the pieces started to fit
more, though. His grandfather on his father's side was never
diagnosed alcoholic, but it was a well-kept family secret that he
had a pretty serious drinking problem.
Grandpa Hopkins led two lives. Outside of the home, he was
generous, charming, humorous and well-liked by the community.
Inside the home he was a tyrant who screamed and yelled when his
wife asked for grocery money or extra money for school clothes for
the children. He drank a lot at home, too, it turned out.
Grandma Hopkins was a quiet, compliant woman who tried to keep
the peace by going along with whatever her husband demanded.
They, too, showed no outward affection with each other.
On his mother's side, his grandparents' roles were just the opposite.
His Grandpa Smith was a quiet, shy man, who always felt pretty
worthless, who never really "made anything of himself", and who
did what his wife told him to do.
Grandma Smith was domineering and controlling, and angry and
bitter about her husband's perceived failure in life. She had a quick
temper and was perfectionistic to an extreme. As the oldest child,
Bill's mother identified strongly with her father and was kept in her
place by her angry mother, and thus grew up not knowing how to
be warm and nurturing.

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As we so often do when dependencies are left untreated, Bill's
mother married a man who had many of the negative traits of her
mother believing that his strength and sense of goal-directedness
would fill in her own lack of these. And what she first saw as
strength, eventually emerged as all-out domination. The fact that he
had "made something of himself" far overshadowed the fact that he
had some clear problems in being intimate and supportive in a
marriage.
And so the pieces began to fall into place for Bill. Patterns began to
emerge that made sense. To avoid the confusion that you may have
about this family so far, we have outlined Bill's family tree, in
terms of the important personality dynamics, in Figure 7.1, using
the diagram that Bill eventually put together for his own
understanding.

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The other piece of the puzzle that is missing, of course, is how
Anita became entwined in this system. As is almost always the
case, the spouse of the person who goes in for treatment or
counseling rarely sees their own contribution to the problem
because they have become so overly focused on their partner's
problems that they can't see anything else. It is also common that
their focus on their partner is an unconscious way to avoid looking
at their own untreated dependencies. Remember paradoxical
dependency?
At first Anita told herself, ''Why, there's nothing for me to work on.
When Bill finally stops acting out, all of our problems will vanish.