old & new behaviors battling in my head - Al-Anon Family Group

ddub · ~*Service Worker*~

old & new behaviors battling in my head

Jean4444 · ~*Service Worker*~

Hi dd, you know, my piece is that we need to truly and honestly love and accept and like ourselves first before we have any capacity to offer that to another.

And my ESH is that real love and acceptance will not enter one's life until we have that for ourselves first.

We learn to love ourselves by developing a strong relationship with our HP, I believe.

Here are my relationship priorities: HP comes first, I come second, family and friends next and work last. Plain and simple.

Take what you like and leave the rest. hugs, J.

-- Edited by canadianguy at 01:59, 2008-08-17

nmike · ~*Service Worker*~

dunno ddub. Too deep for this early in the morn. lol. Logic and reason don't apply in the disease. What appears to true in "normal" life doesn't seem to work with the disease. I am coming to believe that there is a little addict in all of us. I don't think that there is much purity to what we do. With my AHsober he is so helpful but it isn't to help me it is to feed his ego that needs approval. So in the alcoholic context love yourself, love others means feed the addiction first.

In support,
Nancy

thinkstoomuch · Senior Member

What I have read is that in a partnership, each member has to give 100%. Energy that isn't going into the partnership is energy expended elsewhere.

However. I think I am coming to believe that part of that 100% IS focus on self - precisely because if I don't take care of myself, I have nothing to give to a relationship. In other words, if I don't take care of myself, I no longer have 100% to give - or perhaps it's that my 100% is smaller.

Years ago a colleague and friend said to me, yes, I thought that too about relationships - that when you marry, the marriage is the sum of both - and he drew me a Venn diagram - intersecting circles - to illustrate. But what I've found instead, he said, is that the marriage is actually only the part that overlaps.

I have thought about this for a long time, and part of what I think is that, if the circle that represents "me" gets bigger - ie if I work on myself and become more complete - then the area of intersection also becomes bigger. I also sometimes think that the circles are spinning, and as they spin they move, so that the area of intersection is actually constantly changing - sometimes it is bigger, and sometimes it is smaller, depending on where I am spinning my circle in relation to my partner's circle - and also on where my partner is spinning HIS circle in relation to mine. If my partner takes his circle somewhere else and I go chasing after it, there's still no intersection - just a worn out "me" circle.

I don't believe I've ever written this down before - thanks for giving me the occasion to do so. aww

ddub · ~*Service Worker*~

Thinks,

Thank you for giving me another way to look at this. I have used the intersecting circles before but more in thinking how little I share with AH. This helps me to see in a positive light that as I work on myself, my circle can get bigger therefore I can give to others after I give to me .......... or something like that, I'll think about the spinning circles some more too.

Thank you for sharing and I also recieved an email that surprisingly gave me another view too - I'll post it in another thread.

happy hugs, ddub

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