As I have read the books, listened to podcasts, and explored the world of CoDA (Codependents Anonymous), a common denominator in codependent people is addiction. Not generally their own, although that's not unheard of, but addiction with members of the family. It could be your parents, maybe even a sibling. More often than not, codependency grows from being in a relationship with one who battles addiction. My story couldn't be further from the truth...
I was born in 1967 to very loving parents. I was the second child of what would become four children. My older brother was born a year and a half prior to my entering the world, with my younger brother following nearly a year and a half later, and then by my sister five years after me. Having grown up in a mostly white neighborhood in the suburban outskirts of the Salt Lake Valley, odds stood that I would grow up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints... otherwise known as the Mormons... which I did.
My mom was born and raised in Bournemouth, England, converting to Mormonism when she turned 18 years of age. My dad grew up on the Mormon faith, his great-grandfather being a 19th Century pioneer that left his family (being disowned by his parents) with only his brother and a few meager possessions, making the harrowing journey across the ocean, then making the long, grueling trek to Salt Lake City, losing his brother... his only flesh and blood in the land he would call home... to Cholera.
Mormonism was something that ran deep in my father's side of the family. He, himself, grew up in a family of two devoted parents and six children... all boys. The church ran deep through all their veins, each remaining steadfast in the religion throughout their lives. Of the two that are still alive, they, to this day, remain valiant to the cause.
Mormonism was all I knew, growing up. All my friends were Mormon. Most of our neighbors were Mormon. Those neighbors that didn't belong to the church... or were "inactive" members of the church... seemed to be put on a figurative list of people whom we needed to beware. In retrospect, I recognize that a lot of those ideas were probably just things that I put into my own mind, although there were very real issues that would occasionally come up when it came to my siblings and I playing with "non-member" friends.
Church for a Mormon boy was probably not too dissimilar to that of any other religion. We went to church nearly every Sunday, we had "Primary" for us younger children during the week, usually after school, with various other programs for adult men and women, as well as programs for teenagers of both genders. Like every other religion, we were told that our church was the only true church on the face of the earth. We were taught from an early age to pray... to "bear testimony" of the church... and to work towards our eventual Eternal salvation. The church hierarchy consisted of a Prophet, First Presidency, Quorum of Twelve Apostles and a Quorum of the Seventy (men called to serve different areas of the world). When I was young, all the men serving in these capacities were white. For me, this was the way the world was... Mormon, white and middle class. I didn't have much experience otherwise to lend myself a wider outlook on the world around me.
When I was 10 or 11, I had my first orgasm. What does THIS have to do with anything, you ask? Well, let me explain...
I have a mutant superpower... at least that's what I like to call it... where I can occasionally have non-sexual, flaccid orgasms. It's usually triggered by an upset stomach, often resulting from eating extremely spicy food. I don't remember what ultimately caused my first orgasm, but I remember it very well. I had been watching "Logan's Run" on television, having been an avid fan of all things Science Fiction, since seeing Star Wars when I was 10. I was engrossed in the film, when I felt the uncomfortable sensation of a churning stomach... one that felt like diarrhea was imminent. I pulled myself away from the television and went into the bathroom, sitting down with hopes that I could rid myself of the discomfort I was feeling. Amidst the churning feeling in my stomach, I all of a sudden felt this intense, yet amazing feeling sensation come across me... the likes of which I had never felt before. No sooner had it hit, when the sensations slowly faded away. Nothing else happened. There was no ejaculate... no outward signs of anything out of the ordinary.
Similar experiences happened again, with no knowledge whatsoever of what was causing it. Eventually, when I was in junior high, I was using in the bathroom with one of those pesky adolescent erections when I stumbled upon a way to trigger that sensation on my own. My method of bringing myself to climax was about as far removed from what one would consider a "normal" way to masturbate, but I didn't know that. Heck, I didn't even know what masturbation was. I was still too young to really understand all that, let alone to actually have any kind of physical reaction to it other than the amazing feeling it brought. I was probably in 7th grade at the time, although the timeline there is fuzzy.
Once I figured out how to cause that sensation, I started making it a ritual most days after school. My method wasn't normal, but I really had no clue there anything normal about what I was doing. Because it involved my genitalia, I felt like I couldn't tell anybody else about, or even ask my parents what was happening. It was my little secret.
Over time, I penis began secreting a clear liquid when I had these powerful sensations. Keep in mind, I didn't know it was called an orgasm... or that it was anything that anyone else ever experienced. My immediate reaction to the clear liquid that began coming out of my penis was that I had broken it somehow. My initial thought was that I should stop doing what I was doing, but I couldn't. The feeling was that good.
When I was 12, I became a member of the Aaronic Priesthood in church and was ordained to the office of Deacon, a position typically held in the church by boys between the ages of 12 and 13. During this time, a pamphlet was circulated among the young men of the church that delved into the whole notion that our mind was a "stage" and that when we allowed filth onto our stage, it would cloud our minds and ultimately lead us to "tamper with the factory". The pamphlet continued to warn us about what would happen when we tamped with said factory, that the "little workers" in our factories... the little workers that were busy making our life giving seed... would become overburdened, resulting in them speeding up the process of making that life giving seed. Apparently, that was a bad thing. We were told that our bodies had a natural way of giving off our excess seed (hello, wet dreams!!) and that we should just let our bodies do what they naturally do. Nocturnal emission orgasms were fine, but those brought about by our own "tampering" were not. Easier said than done, for someone who had already made habit of getting that physical sensation.
When I've shared this story with people, as an adult, I'm often asked if my parents never gave me "the talk". My dad did, bless his heart, but it mostly had to do with a diagram of a sperm cell and an egg and the sperm cell fertilizing the egg and...BAM!! Here comes baby!! I didn't really understand it all, but I was beginning to put two and two together about how babies were, in fact, made. When visiting my aunt and uncle, I would often secretively go down to the basement and look in their encyclopedias... looking up penis and vagina and sex and anything that would stimulate me.
One may read this and think that this story is not all that dissimilar to the stories of other young people, as they begin to explore their own bodies... their sexuality... the things that bring them pleasure. I had no idea, nor would I... for years to come.
As I moved into 9th grade, I noticed that the fluid secreting from my penis during orgasms was becoming more clouded and thick. I was convinced that I had somehow broken it beyond repair, but it was still not anything I felt I could even bring up with my parents. My parents had never done anything to make me fear going to them with such problems, but I literally felt like this was a unique problem and they wouldn't even be able to relate to it, if I tried.
Around this time, my dad began having "one on one interviews" with all of us children, something that he had been doing as part of his church calling as Elder's Quorum President. I remember vividly the first time that my dad, during one of these one on one interviews, asked me if I knew what masturbation was, and if I did it. I was so unsettled by the question, and even more, worried about what his reaction would be if I were to tell him I was doing it, that I simply looked away and said "no".
"No". A bold faced lie. Something that I felt was protecting me from his disappointed lecture, and him from having to deal with the perversions of his young son. Little did I know how much impact that moment would have on the rest of my life up until now.
Throughout the rest of my teens, I would regularly go through a cycle of: masturbation - guilt -masturbation - guilt - masturbation - guilt - masturbation - guilt... and so on... and so on... and so on. I didn't experience my first kiss until I was 16... I was a virgin on my wedding day... but I carried a deep seeded guilt about masturbating into adulthood. Truth be told, I felt like I was the only person that masturbated until I was nearly 20 years of age. It wasn't until I was (ironically) on my LDS mission, speaking with a couple of my companions, that I began to believe that others did it, too. We even had a legend in our mission about an Elder Quayle that, when asked by the mission president if he had a problem with "self abuse" (the term used to reference masturbation), Elder Quayle replied by saying, "Yeah, I came on a mission, didn't I?" Whether or not that story is true, I don't know... but the fact that we would regularly be asked by the mission president IF we had a problem with "self abuse" gave me realization that apparently it was more common than I thought. Even as a missionary, I struggled with masturbation. Nothing could stop that physical desire. Not the cold showers suggested by my mission president... not praying... not anything.
So, here you sit... having read a rather sordid tale of my coming of age and coming to terms with my own sexuality... wondering how in the hell this relates to codependency. Well, let me explain. As denoted in the title, religious trauma is a thing. A very REAL thing. For Catholics, it's usually referred to as "Catholic guilt", something that is often joked about among members of that religion. Mormonism is no different, other than the fact I think most Mormons really try and hide their misdeeds. I recently saw a humorous meme of sorts that was split into two sides... it was referring to Mormons and how (on the left) we won't watch R-rated movies, but (on the right) will belly up to the computer to look at porn without any problems. The sad reality is this is a pretty fair assessment of the culture in Utah. It is common knowledge that Utah ranks #1 in the 50 states for their viewing pornography online. My feelings are that it comes from the sexually repressed lifestyle that so many Mormons live. Even though our actions may not be repressed, we fail to openly acknowledge our behaviors, making much of it "dirty little secrets".
You're probably STILL wondering how this ties into codependency. Well, let me explain. No, really... let me explain. For those of us who begin codependent behaviors early on, that did NOT come from a family of neglect and/or addiction (neither of which were part of my upbringing), there is a portion of codependent people that begin their codependency by trying to compensate for the shame that they feel on the inside. Simply put, because I felt my behaviors would devastate my parents, potentially causing them a shame of their own, I would compensate other ways... by trying to please them any way I could.
It wasn't until my revelation of codependency a couple weeks ago... and my subsequent research into it... that I realized that a HUGE component of codependency has to do with "people pleasing"... with going out of your comfort zone to please others, whether coming from a sense of shame about something you have done or are currently doing, or because because you spend your life simply walking on eggshells in your relationships. The latter would ultimately become the reason why codependent behavior became ingrained in my psyche and who I ultimately became as an adult.
Join me next time as I share my story about becoming a full-on codependent person... married to one of the most codependent people I have ever known.
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