Another Take On Detaching
(from chapter 4 of Tears and Healing )

We can tell that detaching is something important in dealing with a troubled spouse or significant other. But what exactly is it?

Al-Anon teaches it by example, but in Al-Anon stories, the situation doesn't seem to get much better from it. Al-Anon never tells you what to do (which is itself troubling for some people), but the overwhelming bulk of its teaching by example suggests that people should stay in unhealthy situations. In Al-Anon stories, detaching seems to be primarily a way to endure in a situation that is harmful and depriving to us. Is this what detaching is all about?

Really, detaching is only one piece in the puzzle of who you are and what you need. Detaching is a tool or a skill. You may choose, like many in the Al-anon stories, to use it so that you can bear to stay indefinitely in a sick relationship. But for most people, detaching should become a shield - a barrier between you and the hurtful behavior that you live with. It buys you safety and emotional space in which YOU can exist, in which YOU can begin to live your feelings, rather than your partner's.

Tears and Healing shows how detaching fits into the bigger process of getting grounded in reality again, finding out who you are, dealing with your love for your troubled partner, fighting through your sense of obligation, and making changes for a better life.

What is detaching?

In my view, detaching sits right up there with the great mythologies of mental illness in families. I hear over and over, things like: "I know I need to detach," as if it the action were some kind of magical elixir that makes an intolerable situation tolerable. Does "detach" mean to enter some kind of hypnotic trance where the brutality and deprivation of a sick living situation don't hurt? Not.

Detaching is just a step along the dimension toward living independently of a hurtful person. To detach means to break your emotional dependence on another person, without necessarily changing your physical proximity to that person. It's a way of building emotional space when don't have the physical space.

Selected pages from Tears and Healing

How does detaching affect a marriage?

Can you detach from the disease and not the person?