Shielding a person from the consequences of a destructive behavior; Allowing a person's destructive behavior to persist by managing or minimizing the ill-effects of the behavior.
"Enabling" vs. "Empowering"
Enabling: supporting a person's behavior that (repeatedly/habitually) instigates a negative or destructive result
Empowering: supporting a person's ability or effort in a positive or progressive endeavor
Enabling can be as destructive as the behavior itself . . . a person enabling a destructive behavior is motivated by their need to do so and is gratified by reinforcing their superiority or control over that person; An "enabler" holds a person in an inferior state by denying them the motivation to change and therefore, the opportunity to grow.
1) A friend who encourages extreme behaviour to 1) make themselves feel virtuous in comparison 2) make their companion feel as though everything they are doing is really not so bad after all. Both friends have to collude in the behaviour partnership for the relationship to work.
A shopaholic and an enabling friend will go shopping together. The enabling friend (EF) will buy two items and tell the shopaholic things like the real reason they buy is that they have excellent taste, love beautiful things and really deserve them because they work so hard and encourage the partner to buy ten things. The EF then reassures herself or himself that (s)he's very restrained and frugal compared to his or her companion.
The same applies to going drinking with someone who has an alcohol problem.
Person 1: "I just wrote a Tumblr post about how the remix of R. Kelly's Ignition is best song of the decade."
Person 2: "Dude, you realize that you are meta-enabling?"
Person 1: "Yeah, but I need to generate pageviews without losing my high-end advertising β or my self-regard."