It's me again, always trying to understand everything.

So, explain to me why AA and Al-anon teaches us that we are not supposed to expect love in return from a marriage to an addict.  We are only supposed to care for ourself, take care of ourself etc.  Of course we can't force someone to love us, but when your married or in a relationship, isn't that why your there, because you fell in love, (or something). 

What confuses me is that we have to be seperate and find your own things and let the other live their own life and have what they want. To an extent this makes sense, because right, you can't be completely involved with your spouse to where you have nothing in life for yourself. But then on the other hand, what is marriage all about? You sacrifice for each other, you love each other, you would do anything for each other as well as your kids and family. You grow together and find interests and exciting things together. Marriage means TOGETHER.  But aside from that, you have your own career, your own friends, interests, etc.  Yet I'm getting the feeling that from some of this is that No, you can't be "together" because it could never last. If you live totally seperate lives while married, how could that last? That is why people get married, because they want to share their lives with each other and be together. Of course you can't spend  every single waking minute and suffocate each other, but you do spend time together, why would anyone get married in the first place if you didn't?

Can someone clarify this or give a little more understanding into what maybe I am confused on, (with out a bunch of pyschobabble that ends up taking the subject to a completely different angle?!!?)

Thank you :)

your life may revolve around your family (& really it should). but does your hubbie's life revolve around that as well?

my mom spent 22yrs married to my father thinking the same thing. after 22yrs, she asked him to choose between drinking(&getting help) or the family. he chose to drink. what do you think your hubbie would choose?

 

When the alcoholic in our lives is our spouse we all have a choice to make.  Either stay with them or leave.  End the relationship.  Some choose to end it, others choose to stay.

For those that choose to stay there are more choices to make.  If the A's in our lives aren't in recovery then chances are high their lives are unmanageable.  Living with somone who's an active A not in recovery who's life is unmanageable..........can tend to fall over onto us and make our lives unmanageble.  Does that make sense so far?

So here's our choices:  Continue to allow our lives to revolve around them and their alcoholism/addiction.  Continue to pick up the slack for them (enable), continue to be involved in all their drama, continue to find ways to make them want to stop drinking/drugging, do anything we can to manipulate them into recovery.......and basically allow them to consume our every thought and action.  Or.......

We can work this program and learn to detach from the disease without fully detaching from the person. (since we decided to stay and not end the relationship)  If we choose to stay and we expect any peace and hapiness out of this life, then we need to make changes, in ourselves.  Al Anon gives us the tools and knowledge to make those changes.  We can't change them, the only person we have any control over is ourselves.  So that's who we have to work on changing.  Our expectations (for a *normal* marriage), our reactions, our thoughts.  Addiction is a disease and just like every disease it has symptoms.  Unfortunately when addiction is in a marriage things aren't going to be the way we feel they should be.  Eating dinner together every night, going on family vactations, husbands that come home at a certain hour every night after work etc.  Is it fair?  No.  Do we like the way our marriages are?  Probably not.  Can we force our husbands/wives to be the partner we had hoped they'd be? No.  But we choose to stay in our marriages/relationships so we either have to remain unmanageable ourselves, or find a way to change what we can.

Its all about choices, even though when we're so caught up in our loved ones addictions it doesn't feel like we have any choices at all.  Al Anon shows us that we do.

Darn it... no psychobabble??   lol...

I'll give it a shot....

I think Al-Anon teaches us to learn to love ourselves first, and other relationships will follow accordingly - kind of following the old adage that we "cannot love others if we don't love ourselves"....

I don't think Al-Anon spends all that much time with how or what we need to do in relationships, per se, other than to suggest that when we have "expectations of others", particularly addicts, we are likely to be disappointed.....  I believe it is much more about perspective, than it is about "right or wrong"... 

As an example, if my wife is an active alcoholic, and I am choosing to be in that relationship, at least for now...  I'm likely "setting myself up for disappointment" if I plan an important dinner party get together on Friday, and "expect" her to both show up, AND be sober....  What Al-Anon teaches us, in general terms, is to be less dependant upon our A's behaviors, as it relates to our lives....  So I could plan the dinner party, and acknowledge to myself that there is a distinct possibility that she either won't attend, OR that she will be drunk... 

I think...... we forget sometimes, when we get frustrated beyond our worst nightmares with our realities..... that when we get mad with our A's..... they are really doing what A's do - they are using....  It doesn't make it right or wrong, it just is....

Dunno if that helps....  I think Al-Anon's main strength is that it turns our focus on the one thing that we CAN control, and that is ourselves. 

Take care

Tom

hi i   kinda  cut and pasted some of ur stuff here so i can give MY experience on it...

 

YOU________So, explain to me why AA and Al-anon teaches us that we are not supposed to expect love in return from a marriage to an addict.  We are only supposed to care for ourself, take care of ourself etc.  Of course we can't force someone to love us, but when your married or in a relationship, isn't that why your there, because you fell in love, (or something). 

ROSIE______**expectations** that are UNrealistic  (love in return from an addict)  set us up for RESENTMENTS....an addict cannot love in return...they are a SLAVE to their drugs...they weill steal from you...lie to U....forsake U  for their poison..whether its booze or drugs...same thing...they will sell their own SOUL to get their "fix"....that is why  those of us  (i quit that marry go round)  in  alanon are taught   "if U stay in this???  take care of U..."     if i **expect** something a person cannot give   (it matters NOT whether i deserve it)  if they cannot give it??? than i need to DROP my **expectations** make the realistic.......when i am married to someone  NOW< its going to be a HEALTHY relationship...NO "A's"   and NO  "NA's"  i am DONE with them...i want a give AND take marrige....."falling in love"  with someone who cannot meet my needs, sets me up for BIG disappointment......  you cannot  go to hardware store and buy  dinner....u  better  desire hardware cuz that is all  there is to  give....

YOU__________What confuses me is that we have to be seperate and find your own things and let the other live their own life and have what they want. To an extent this makes sense, because right, you can't be completely involved with your spouse to where you have nothing in life for yourself. But then on the other hand, what is marriage all about? You sacrifice for each other, you love each other, you would do anything for each other as well as your kids and family

 

ROSIE______ if i am in a  relatinship with someone who CANNOT be there for me??? whats my choice???  keep hoping and keep getting screwed?? OR, take care of me...get healthy  and THAN  make a CHOICE about the relationship based on a HEALTHY ME......i cannot change another...i gotta accept it AS IS....and keep them or leave them....but it has to be based on the FACTS....NOT what i dream/ hope it to be...... marriage is about  MUTUAL  give adn take.....care GIVING....NOT care taking....marriage is a MUTUAL  friendship, where EACH partner is there for each other...meeting each others needs....NOURISHING each other spiritually and emotionally and mentally.........sacrifice does NOT mean giving till it hurts and getting ZERO in return.....and "do anything"  for each other  WITHIN  healthy boundaries and reason..... .............just my take,  please use what works..dump the rest...rosie

I have been struggling with the same type of ideas. The previous replies were also helpful to me. I think that we need to recognize the kind of marriage that is possible when it is to an A. And I am beginning to realize that sober or not, it is not the marriage that I dreamt about. You know, my A got sober early in our marriage and stayed sober for about 10 years. Early on, I kept my guard up, maybe not so much emotionally but with other things like making financial decisions that I could follow through on my own. Time passed and memories faded, I got caught up in the way our life was. Both with good jobs, great kids, everything but the dog... And then he picked up....That was about two years ago. Today we are separated, I cannot live that life, I cannot have the insanity, I need to take care of me and my kids. Tough choices but fortunately ones I have the capability to make. I do not want a divorce, I love this man, he is a great husband, a great father, a great partner, WHEN he is clean and sober. But now when I think about the future I too wonder, will we ever have the marriage that I believe I am deservant of... I do not know.. Will I have to protect myself in such ways that there will not be a give and take, I do not know... To stay sober will he have to work an intense program for the rest of his life... YES, will that exclude me, quite likely.... but I do agree with the previous posts, I am in no position to make these decisions today. Today all I can do is continue to get healthy so that when I am prepared to make those decisons I can do so with a clear head. And I am eternally grateful to Alanon for providing me with the tools and the support to move forward. I don't know quite yet where I am going, but I am learning where I do not want to be. The rest will come with time. Lynn

I can only share my own ESH because I am not sure exactly what it is that Al anon teaches but I know some of the background of Al-anon.

Certainly Lois Wilson who started the program managed to live with Bill Wilson who was an active alcoholic for years before he was sober but they took their toll on her.  In so many ways looking at her life and reading Bill Wilson's biography's her life was certainly no picnic in sobriety either. At the same time the two of them managed to inspire a lot of people to look at their issues so it was by no means a failure either.  So I can't really look at Lois Wilson's life in black and white terms (which is a familiar way to look at things in addiciton either all good or all bad).  Lois Wilson's life as a mixture of tremendous challenges. I have no doubt the program of al-anon helped her to manage the enormous expectations people had of her and Bill.  I also  have no doubt that she enjoyed the life she had with Bill but I am sure she had tremendous sadness heart ache and frustration and that is expressed in many of the al-anon literature including the shoe story where she threw a shoe in frustration.

My own issue with relationships is not that I have a realistic sense of what I can do or the shades of grey.  I tend to think in very black and white terms.  If I look back on my relationship I could say early early on I knew there were lots of issue but I preferred to remain in denial. I did not have the strength to confront them. I could also see very very clearly that alcoholism and real dysfunction ran in his family. I chose to deny that too.  That is all very understandable but I also chose to deny that I needed skills of detachment, negotiation skills, boundary skills which I did not have. So while I denied I also blamed and resented to such an extent it made me really ill and toxic and I often descended into tremendous fights and rages.  They were interspersed with times where I had blind faith and hope in the A.  I no longer have that. I hope for him he is able to transcend his problems but I doubt he will as long as he is still "using" and "lying" and "boundaryless" on many many levels.  At the same time I continue to live with him but without the intense investment I had that he needs to change and I am perfect.  I am far far from perfect and I have to look at my own issues before I can insist he changes his issues and behavior. At the same time as I stop rescuing (which I did compulsively) forgiving (which I also did compulsively, making up for stuff to him and am responsible for myself things do change in the relationship. It is not the loving, kind, tender, warm place I want but it can be tolerable and even cooperative at times.   At other times I just go over the steps I need to do to work on separating myself still further from him emotionally and physically because I have to limit my resentments and sense of powerlessness when dealing with the A. 

I think for me taking the focus off him and putting it on myself makes me a better partner because I am less tied up in what he is doing and more focused on what I need to do next and how I need to change not to please him but to make myself happier.  And my future happiness may not include him that will depend on his process and my own and some of those issues are out of my control.  And of course I do not like for anything to be out of my control so that is also an issue I have to work on all the time, letting go of others who do not do as I think they should..day in day out..

Maresie

Maresie.

 

Hello!

You know....I can share I remember thinking the very same things in the beginning.  How can 2 people live completely separate lives yet stay in a marriage or long term relationship?  The whole thought process of staying out of the alcoholic's business....and staying in my own business....just didn't make sense.

It wasn't until I began to work the steps with a sponsor...that everything began to make sense. 

Relationships are all about give and take.........they aren't about give and take at the expense of my well being.  In other words, I used to give and give and give and give....and never get anything in return.  The only thing that did was feed my resentments.  And boy....I'll tell you....I had a pile of them!! 

The step work helped me to understand why I put myself in that situation over and over again.  The step work helped me to understand how to love me....and then in turn.....my relationships with the A's in my life became much more loving than they ever had been before. 

Recovery is a process.  Alcoholism is a family "dis-ease".   Thank goodness this is a program of progress.....not perfection......cause I gotta tell you.........I sure did "trip" alot during my walk through the steps!!   lol 

One Day at a Time,

Northstar