Safe Space: When Love Starts To Look Like Enabling

By: Jessica Steinmetz, LMHC, CASAC-G

Question:

My family keeps telling me I’m enabling my spouse’s drinking, but I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just trying to keep my household running. I make sure everything gets done when he’s not functional. I handle things he should be handling, and I keep the kids from seeing what’s going on. How is that enabling? I’m just trying to hold everything together.

Answer:

You are holding everything together. That part is true. And that’s exactly the problem.

Enabling means doing something for someone who is capable of doing it himself in a way that allows the addictive behavior to continue. It doesn’t require bad intentions or for you to be naïve or weak. It just requires love, and the very human instinct to protect the people you care about from pain.

Which is exactly what you’re doing.

When you make excuses to family and friends for why your husband wasn’t acting himself at a simcha, you are doing something he could do himself, and you’re removing a consequence that might have mattered. When you take over responsibilities that he should be handling so the household keeps running, you’re absorbing an impact that was his to feel. And when the children ask why abba seems different and you tell them, “Everything’s fine,” you’re stepping in between them and a reality that exists whether you manage it or not.

None of that makes you a bad person. Every one of those decisions probably felt like the only reasonable one at the time. But added together, over time, they create something specific: a person who is living with a serious problem and not feeling its full weight because someone who loves him keeps stepping in before it lands.

Consequences are not punishment; they are information telling someone clearly and undeniably that something has to change. When that information keeps getting intercepted, the urgency to do anything to fix it stays low. Why would the urgency be great? From where your husband is standing, everything is being taken care of.

Here’s another thing nobody talks about: enabling doesn’t just protect him. It protects you too.

When you’re managing the fallout, you have a role. You feel useful in a situation where you otherwise have no control. And that feeling of being the one who holds it together can become its own kind of coping mechanism. It gives you somewhere to put the fear and helplessness that come with loving someone who is struggling.

But it comes at a cost. You are carrying something that was never yours to carry. And the longer you carry it, the more normal it feels, until you can’t remember what it felt like before you were doing all of this.

So, what does it actually look like to do something different?

Stopping enabling doesn’t mean withdrawing love. It doesn’t mean letting everything collapse, issuing ultimatums, or deciding you’re done. It means stopping the specific behaviors that are absorbing the consequences on his behalf.

It means letting reality be visible instead of constantly softening it.

That sounds simple, but it isn’t. Because the moment you stop catching the pieces before they fall, things will get messier before they get better, and it will feel like you caused it.

You didn’t. You just stopped delaying something that was always going to happen.

Most people can’t do this alone. The pull to protect and cover up is too strong, and the guilt when you don’t is overwhelming. This is exactly the kind of thing that’s worth getting support around, not after everything falls apart, but now, while you still have the steadiness to make a different choice.

You’ve been holding everything together for a long time. It’s okay to put some of it down.

If you or someone you know is struggling or has questions about gambling, substance use, or habits that feel harder to control than they should, support is available. Questions can be submitted anonymously to [email protected]. Selected questions will be addressed in future columns. For confidential support, call (718) GET-SAFE. 

Jessica Steinmetz, LMHC, CASAC-G is the clinical director of The Safe Foundation, an outpatient treatment program licensed by NYS OASAS and NJ DMHAS, providing confidential, professional services for individuals and families affected by substance use and gambling disorders. We offer respectful and culturally sensitive support delivered with a deep understanding of the values and dynamics that shape the communities we serve.