How Do I Forgive A Recovering Addict?

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

This isn’t about dating, but it is about a relationship.

My older sister was an active drug addict/alcoholic when she was a teenager. I spent ages 9-16 managing it the best I could. I didn’t get to be a carefree kid, because I was too busy worrying about her; wondering if she would end up dead somewhere. After a bit of a rocky start, she really pulled her life together. She got her Masters degree, and a tenure track position at a community college. 

For years she has struggled with a genetic disorder of the soft tissue, called Ehler’s-Danlos. Her bones pop out of socket, including the ones in her skull. She basically lives in a horror movie. Still, she has always consistently refused any kind of narcotics. Last year, out of desperation, she tried Xanax. It did not go well; she became physically addicted pretty quickly. 

I live halfway across the country, and she called after a major falling out with our parents, whom she was living with because of her disability. I had already scheduled a trip to help her, and by the time I got there she was living with friends and detoxing from the Xanax. It instantly became clear that old hurts had metastasized. Old traumas had come to the fore. She told me awful things that she had heard my parents say about my siblings and I. We rehashed old hurts. She described new abuses.

Then, suddenly, she became fixated on preventing the imminent deaths of our parents. She was sure they were moments away from falling down the stairs to their premature demise. She became convinced that only she could save them, while simultaneously fixing all of our family’s trauma, if only people would listen to her and act according to her master plan. Her demeanor shifted between manic, rageful, and calm. Still, her natural charisma made her very believable, and her strange affect could be explained by detoxing, and the trauma she had experienced. 

She also explained that, for the first time, she was not masking her autism. She described herself as an empathic robot. She described creating a neurodivergent utopia, where everyone would speak plainly and without pretense. And she was extremely attentive to my needs, saying the only way she would get through her illness, and likely spinal surgery, would be if we were all honest with each other, and stated our needs clearly. 

Eventually, though, I still broke. I simply could not live in her reality. I called my parents, and they seemed like their normal selves.  It seemed that she had twisted events from our childhood and mixed them with new delusions. I returned to the relatives I was staying with, and the next morning could not go back to visit her. I drove 3 hours home to see my parents.

I told her that I needed her to be evaluated by a CD counsellor before we could get back in touch. I told her I loved her. 

At first, she was worried about me. She told my husband that she was concerned that I had experienced a dissociative episode due to the rehashing of old traumas. He reassured her I had not.

The next week, she responded with bile. She accused me of sleeping through a medical emergency during my visit (impossible, as I hardly slept, am an extremely light sleeper, and she failed to mention it the next morning), and being a useless, fair-weather sister. I sent an email apologizing for bailing, stating that I needed her to take a breath before responding, and that I didn’t know what kind of help she needed but that I knew I was not equipped to provide it.

And that is where things stand now. After that very long wind up, the question I have is: if and when she comes back to herself, how do I forgive her? She was my best friend. How do I reconcile with her, after she caught me briefly in her delusional cult of personality? How do I forget that for our whole lives, the trauma she has experienced has always been more important than the trauma she has caused? How do I ever trust her again? How do I forgive myself for bailing? I miss my sister.

Do I Give Another Chance?

I’m sorry you went through all of this DIGAC. That sounds like this has been a long, incredibly rough time for everyone, so I’m glad you’ve got some distance right now.

The first thing I want to tell you is that you did the right thing by leaving that situation. I fully understand that this was a hard decision to make and you’re questioning everything right now and you’re feeling guilty for leaving when your sister is clearly in distress.

But here’s the thing: there’s a reason why we tell people to put their oxygen masks on before helping someone else with theirs. The cold and honest truth is that it doesn’t do you any good to break yourself into pieces in the name of trying to help someone else. All that happens is that now there’re two people who are hurting badly, not just one. You protected yourself and that’s admirable. It was the right choice here, especially because this was not something you can fix. You were a reasonable person caught in a very unreasonable situation. The only way anything positive could come from this is if first nobody else is getting harmed in the process.

And you count as “anyone else”.

Next: I want to remind you and everyone reading this that Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor, so take what I’m about to say with all appropriate levels of salt. However: your sister is clearly not well, and I think desperately needs to talk to a therapist. The behavior you describe a lot like a combination of obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder to my (again, untrained, unlicensed) ear. The manic highs shifting to anger or depression, the intrusive thoughts that’ve taken over her waking life, the insistence on things that never actually happened and trying to coerce you into a folie a deux… all of this is really concerning to me.

If I were to make an extremely uneducated and speculative guess, I’d say that some of her addiction issues were a form of self-medicating for her condition. Just as people with depression or other mental health issues will use booze or drugs as a form of self-treatment, I suspect that the Xanax helped immensely with all those conflicting and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Getting through rehab was absolutely necessary for her, but if she never actually sought diagnosis and treatment for any underlying mental conditions, then it’s very likely that her mental health issues came roaring back with a vengeance.

Now I want to head off any blame you’re going to take on yourself or any guilt you may be feeling for not seeing this or doing something about it. You had no reason to believe that she might have other issues besides her disorder and addiction. You’re not a doctor, you aren’t trained to see these or recognize the symptoms. None of this is on you.

But she is clearly hurting and just as clearly needs help. That’s something you and your parents should discuss, especially if it reaches a point that she might be a danger to herself.

I say all of this because it’s going to affect… well, everything about my answers to your questions. First and foremost: I think it’s probably for the best if you keep your distance and maintain boundaries until your sister is in treatment. She’s obviously very charismatic and persuasive (and, in fairness, you have every reason to want to believe her) and the way she pushed you to buy into her fantasies is likely incredibly frightening in retrospect.

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t forgive her. I think it’s safe to say this is very much a “doesn’t know what she’s doing” situation. I doubt she was trying to hurt you, and I think you can forgive her for what she did while in the thrall of her illness. But forgiving is often more for the person doing the forgiving than the person being forgiven, and forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. What she did was hurtful, regardless of the why of it, and you are well within your right to dictate the terms under which you’re willing to accept her presence in your life – if you decide to do so at all. And that’s by no means a guaranteed thing.

You were hurt and scared by her, and some hurts are just too much to allow for someone back in your life. If she does “come back to herself” and is consistently pursuing treatment… you can decide if you want her to have an active place in your life again. There’s no requirement that you do so; if the hurts have piled up too high, the memories too much and the scars too deep, then you’re well within your rights to keep her out of your life. You can love and support someone from a distance, especially someone who may still be causing harm, however unintentionally.

Similarly, reconciling with her is going to require her taking ownership of what she’s done, facing up to the actions she’s taken and how she’s going to try to make things right with you. And that’s assuming she can. Again – you’re not required to accept her apology or her attempts at reconciliation if you don’t feel you can, or if you don’t think you can trust her again. This is all ok. You’re not failing at being a sister if you can’t. Like I said: you don’t need to hurt yourself just because she’s hurting too. You have to take care of yourself first. That’s not being selfish, that’s being sensible.

Once again: you can’t help someone when doing so is going to harm you in the process. That doesn’t even maintain a status quo; it just means that one person doesn’t get healed because the harm prevents the healing, and the other just gets harmed.   

How do you trust her again? Well… first you ask yourself if you think you can. And then you ask yourself if you’re willing to trust her again. If the answer to either of those is “no”… well, then you should keep your distance. Not only is it safer for you in that case, but it’s better for her. It doesn’t do any good for her to try to earn your trust back if your (very real, very understandable, very valid) hurts mean that it’s an impossible task. It’s cruel to let someone try to prove that they’re trustworthy again, knowing that it will never happen. Continuing to keep your distance may be hurtful and feel awful, but it’s a lesser hurt in the name of trying to be kind.

If you can allow yourself to trust her and you’re willing to let her, then trust needs to be rebuilt. She’s going to have to prove that she’s trustworthy, and that means that she’s going to have to be the one who’s in charge of her own behaviors. Now, again: if she’s willing to get help and treatment and sticks to it of her own choosing, not because she’s being “forced to” by either you or your parents… well, maybe you can give her greater levels of trust over time. Trusting her doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing thing. Just as not everyone gets full access to our lives, not everyone – even blood relatives – gets 100% trust if you don’t or can’t give it.

As she proves her trustworthiness, you can allow her greater levels of trust. But I would take things slowly and cautiously. I’m not going to call her a liar or say that she’s going to try to deceive you, but her behavior still suggests that her grasp of reality isn’t terribly firm. What she may think is God’s honest truth may be nothing of the sort. So you’re going to need to take this with all due caution and skepticism until you feel that you have enough evidence that you can believe her.

Incidentally, I think it might be a good idea if you talked to a counselor as well. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if you don’t have some wounds of your own that you may not be fully aware of. Talking to a counselor can, at the very least, allow you to vent your feelings in a safe, non-judgmental space, with someone who’s trained to help facilitate the exploration of those feelings.

This is a difficult situation and I’m sorry you had to deal with it. But you’re away from it all and you’re safe. You did the right thing. Forgive yourself for needing to make sure you took care of yourself first. Everything else can come after you’ve let yourself heal and after your sister works on her own healing.

All will be well.

Dear Dr. NerdLove: I’ve got a bit of an Am I The Asshole question for you.

I (m/22) am in a bit of a tricky situation and I could really use your advice. I have been an avid reader of your column for years, and I have always found your perspectives insightful, so I am hoping you can help me navigate this.

I have had a crush on a woman (f/23), let’s call her ‘B’, for a couple of years now. We work together and have become good friends over time. B is currently in a relationship with a man from another department in our company. I’ve always respected their relationship, even though I do have feelings for B. Recently, however, I’ve noticed some troubling behavior that leads me to believe she might be cheating on her boyfriend.

About a month ago, I saw B at a local bar late in the evening, in a rather intimate situation with another man, definitely not her boyfriend. I have also noticed her frequently texting someone with a lot of giggling involved, and she quickly hides her phone whenever anyone else approaches. While these are just assumptions and I don’t have concrete evidence, my gut tells me something isn’t right.

I am deeply concerned for both B and her boyfriend. If she is cheating, it’s not fair to him, and it’s also not the B I thought I knew. The problem is, I don’t know how to approach this situation. Should I confront B about what I’ve noticed? Or should I speak with her boyfriend about my suspicions?

Another part of me is also wondering if this situation could potentially lead to an opportunity for me to express my feelings for B. If her relationship ends, and after some time has passed, would it be appropriate for me to tell her how I feel? Or would that be seen as taking advantage of a difficult situation?

This situation has left me feeling morally and emotionally torn.

Am I The Bad Guy?

OK my dude, I’m going to say this with all due respect and sympathy: you need to come down with a case of “none of my fucking business”.

If you’ve been reading my column for a while, then I’m sure you’ve seen other times when I’ve talked about interfering in other people’s relationships and what I almost always tell people: “don’t”. This is a Kobiyashi Maru situation and you, my dude, are very emphatically not Captain Kirk. There is no version of this scenario that you can arrange that doesn’t end badly for you; the only question would be how badly and who else gets caught up in the area of effect.

Well, except for one: you stay out of this. Completely.

Here’s the thing: you’re operating on very limited information. You and B may be coworkers, you may even be friends, but I will guarantee you that you don’t know everything about B or what’s going on. You don’t know who this guy is, you don’t know what her relationship with him is, and you don’t know what her relationship is with her boyfriend.

One of the first things that stands out to me that says “stay out” is that you’re saying “you saw them in an intimate situation”. I notice you don’t say you, I dunno, caught them making out or B giving this guy a squeezer under the table at the bar. If you had seen something that was more than just suggestive, I imagine this wouldn’t be as much of a question as to whether she’s cheating on her boyfriend in your mind. Which means that what you saw is almost certainly the sort of thing that could get rounded up if someone were indulging in some motivated reasoning… like if he had a thing for B in the first place.

But even if you saw the two of them all but bent over in the bathroom, that’s still very much a “stay the fuck out of this” situation. There are an almost infinite number of variables here that you can’t control for.

You don’t know who this guy is, for starters. He could be a close friend, an ex she still has a positive relationship with or hell, even a family member. B and her boyfriend could well have an open relationship. They could be on a break, and she currently has no monogamous commitment to her guy. B could be trying to muster up the courage to leave her boyfriend and is slamming her hand down on the “relationship eject” button. Any of these things radically change the math on what you saw.

Similarly, bringing it up to either her or her boyfriend will do very little good to anyone. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you did see her doing something untoward. What do you think is going to happen next? Do you think that B is going to thank you for saying you caught them? Do you think her boyfriend is going to be happy if you come to him and say “hey, guess what I saw your snugglebunny doing”? Are you familiar with the phrase “shooting the messenger”? Because, even if you did catch her cheating, the odds that either of them will be happy with you knowing are very, very low.

There’s also the question of whether you and B are actually close enough that you have the… call it “authority”, I guess, to call her out for her behavior. A close friend, someone who has a strong and intimate mutual connection with her might have that level of relationship where they can say “hey, this isn’t you, this isn’t right, you need to change”. But a co-worker, even a co-worker who’s a friend? If you don’t have that relationship already – and I suspect you’d say so if you did – then you’re presuming a lot. Your judgement is going to mean a lot less in your position. You’re more likely to find out that you no longer have a friend, instead.

And that’s before we get into the repercussions for, say, B. There’s a non-zero chance that telling her boyfriend about what you saw – regardless of whether you are right – that this would lead to B being hurt, possibly even killed. I wish this were just hyperbole, but there’s a long and very well documented list of women being murdered by their partners because of suspicions of infidelity.

Now hopefully B isn’t dating a guy like that. But as I said: you don’t know. You don’t even know what you don’t know; there’re the unknowns you may be aware of, sure, but there’re even more that you don’t know to even ask about.

So as I said: if you think you saw something, then no you didn’t. This is something that you can and should be keeping to yourself and stuffing down a memory hole, because it’s not your business.

Oh and one more thing: looking at this as your “opportunity”? That’s the biggest reason why you shouldn’t get involved. If this leads to B and her guy breaking up – regardless of you have a hand in it or not – seeing this as a chance for you to swoop in suggests that you’re not as concerned with B acting “out of character” or whatever and more about how this might be good for you. That’s really not cool, my guy, and it’s especially not a good way to think about someone you consider a friend.

So my advice? You forget what you saw and move on. This isn’t your affair – and yes that was intentional. Stay out of it. There’s no way for you to get involved in this that doesn’t end badly for everyone.

Good luck.