I want to talk to you about two women and their relationships.

The first, Alice, met her husband and married him at 17. He was 27. They had three children together, but she did most of the work in raising them. You see, Alice’s husband is an alcoholic. He likes to drink beer until he passes out, and God help anyone who gets in his way. This isn’t his only vice: he also smokes three packs a day, smokes pot regularly, enjoys porn, eats garbage almost exclusively, and has felonies on his criminal record for hard drug use and possession. These vices along with his general lack of ambition ruined his health and career prospects, so while he used to make a modest living as a construction worker, he’s no longer in the physical condition required to do the work. He’s now 57 and unemployed, and Alice is 48 and keeping the household afloat with her single office job.

Alice’s husband has never had to live alone or take care of himself. Nor has he had to take care of his living space. When he was working, he’d shirk any kind of housework because he “busted his ass” all day and needed to relax (with a beer or three, of course.) Now that he’s too sick to work, he sleeps all day and uses that as an excuse to avoid housework.

This man is verbally abusive to Alice and their kids, and financially abusive to Alice. Yet Alice remains loyal to him. Why is this? She’s been his savior for thirty years now, literally her entire adult life. She doesn’t know anything else. This is the kind of love she understands, and it’s what she saw in her parents’ relationship too. Alice’s husband would be dead without her, and she knows it. They both know it. But while Alice is paralyzed by the possibility of his death if she isn’t there to save him, her husband rests comfortably knowing he’ll face no consequences for his actions until he drops dead.

To this day, Alice is never happy in her marriage and always has a complaint about her husband. She wants better for herself, but can’t bring herself to kick out a man who now struggles with alcohol-induced dementia and other health problems.

Alice’s firstborn is a not so young woman named Barbara. She grew up watching the struggle between her parents and the occasional good times. She watched her father rage and her mother cry, and in the past, she saw her father’s feeble attempts to make amends after an outburst. She heard her mother insist over the years that she loved him, and her father mention it on occasion when prompted. Barbara learned that love is struggle, and that you can’t help falling in love with someone but it does give you an unspoken mandate to take care of that person. Barbara didn’t date seriously in her teens and early twenties. The responsibility scared her.

Barbara met a 33-year-old man at 23 and thought she won the lottery. He was nice to her, he told her he loved her all the time, he wanted to go out and do things, and he wasn’t falling apart from multiple health problems. Or so she thought. The age difference didn’t bother her, as she learned from her parents’ relationship that it’s acceptable for men to pursue much younger women. But the honeymoon phase faded in a few months, as her boyfriend revealed he had serious mental health problems that weren’t being managed properly. But by then, she was already attached, and she knew ending things was already not an option: couldn’t she see how sick she was?

The boyfriend went on to have a mental breakdown. He screamed at her, accused her of hating him, accused her of mocking him, accused her of wanting to leave. He insulted her. He told her he’d kill himself if she stopped loving him. She took it, knowing he was mentally ill and it didn’t mean anything - after all, the fight would be over soon and he’d go back to being his usual sweet self. But she cried the whole time. Eventually, she learned to watch everything she said, whether to him or on social media. But she’d often slip up. She’d start to panic if she didn’t hear from him before 3pm, thinking he did something terrible. More often he simply hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. Barbara became an anxious wreck all the time.

Then after three years, Barbara’s boyfriend did something unexpected: he realized he had a problem. He sought treatment. He went to rehab and came back transformed. This man became one of the 1% of addicts who actually found some success in recovery. The problems in Barbara’s relationship were solved, right?

Wrong.

Barbara became accustomed to the roller coaster that was her relationship. When the low points disappeared, so did the highs. There were no more honeymoon periods to follow the explosions and outbursts. Barbara felt like the passion in her relationship was dying, and the two of them were no more than roommates. She thought this feeling would pass, and the spark would return after more time in recovery. It did not.

What happened? While the cycle of trauma bonding stopped, the relationship dynamic of Barbara caring for her boyfriend did not. He became complacent, comfortable in the knowledge that Barbara stood by him through his lowest point. Why would she leave now? Barbara didn’t know how to handle a stable relationship, and didn’t trust this time of peace would last. She knew something would happen, he’d do something stupid like relapse or cheat on her, so she was constantly on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was waiting for her relationship to return to “normal,” to the kind of love she understood.

Barbara learned better in time, and had enough of the worrying. She broke things off with her boyfriend after six years of anxiety. And while he was devastated for a time, he never flirted with suicide or relapse as he previously threatened. So there was small victory in that.

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If you’re the type of woman who needs someone to “save,” this is what you can expect. Either your partner will never recover and you’ll be caring for them for the rest of their life. Or they will recover, and you’ll feel lost and without a role in your dynamic. Worse, your partner will never fully appreciate the sacrifices and struggles you made on their behalf. You’ll be taken for granted. “Struggle love” is not something to aspire to, nor is it healthy for you.

I know this because I am Barbara, and Alice is my mother.