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After a really awesome weekend with my boyfriend and children this morning I have caught myself thinking about my ex A B/F who still sits in rehab. I havent spoken with him in over 2 weeks, but I cant help but have such anger towards him today. How could someone that has lost so much due to an alcohol/drug addiction resort back to that lifestyle after being sober for 11 months? He lost so much over the past 20+ years that alcohol/drugs had taken over his life. He lost his license (4 times), his ex wife and 2 children, his 6 figure income at a prestigious company, his jobs at numerous less prestigious companies, just to name a few. He had committed himself to sobriety numerous times only to resort back to the bottle and drugs. I am feeling so angry at him. He's such an idiot. All the help and support he needed was right there in front of him. The meetings, the AA functions, his family, his 'good' friends, his son and daughter, and me. Why couldnt he grasp the help with open arms and realize how bad he screwed up his life and really make an attempt to live a clean life.
The part of me that was angry at his lack of showing emotion to me has eased up, although part of it remains within me. I now realize that he wasnt emotionally stable enough to show emotions to me, or anyone else for that matter. The relationships he had during the several times we were broken up were either with women from AA, or women that stripped in go-go bars when he was drinking and/or using cocaine and smoking pot. These women werent long term relationships, they were for the most part one night stands. Several weeks back a member of the board posted a topic that I copied and read over when I start wondering about the lack of affection him and I had. Below is a portion of their post:
"He didn't have to go through the discomfort of emotional and physical intimacy on a daily basis. I didn't know for years what that meant. Today I do. What to me might be closeness, bonding, passion and expressing feelings is like going to the dentist for a root canal for someone who is emotionally unavailable. When I wasnt being responded to, I took it personally. I believed it was about something either I was doing or not doing. Sometimes its about the booze or drugs, sometimes it's about the fact that they dont feel comfortable in their own skin so even getting sober that isnt going to change unless their is a lot on work with a sponsor and sometimes we never should have gotten together in the first place because it's our issues that brought us together."
I wish I could remember who posted this because I'd like to read their other posts.
Right now I feel like calling him to rip him a new a**h**e, but I won't. I wish this anger would subside. Normally I am not an angry person. It takes an awful lot to get me to this point. I am just so pissed that he screwed up his life once again. What an idiot.
I'm also pissed that he had the nerve to blame his relapse indirectly on me walking away from our relationship. Of yea, I'm just sooooooo powerful that I guided his hand around those drinks and lead them to his mouth. If I am that powerful why havent the winning mega million numbers come into my head and made me a winner? Always passing the blame onto others, what a jerk. Accept responsibility for your own actions. That would be nice, huh?
I wonder if now that he is forced to do his steps if when he gets to the step where he is supposed to make ammends with the people he's hurt he'll pick up the phone and call me. Probably not. I dont think in his eyes he thinks he hurt me.
Sorry for venting, but thank you for listening.
I cant wait for my boyfriend to come home tonight. Its such a pleasure to be in a relationship with someone who gives back to the relationship and doesnt take take take.
Anger. This too shall pass.
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Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean that they don't love you the best way they know how
I was extremely angry with my exAH long after I left him. Unfortunately I didn't address that anger, and brought a lot of baggage into all my relationships after him, until I faced my codependency issues.
I can't tell you at what point I had forgiven him, but when I got a phone call out of the blue after 9 years of absolutely no contact with him, my heart softened.
He didn't have to call, but he did, because at that point he was in the clinical stages of AIDS, and wasn't sure when he had contracted it. He was concerned he had passed it on to me.
I told him that yes I had been tested for HIV when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, and I was negative.
It was then that he knew exactly when he had contracted it, sharing needles with another female while I was in rehab. He didn't know for sure until he talked to me.
I missed contracting HIV from him by about 2 weeks.
That phone call left me feeling very sad, sad for him, sad for the anger I carried all those years. In the end he paid the ultimate price for his addictions.
He died last year at the age of 47 due to complications from AIDS.
The end stage of AIDS is a horrible way to go.
He never made direct amends to me in saying he was sorry, but the fact that he took the time to call me because he was concerned was a huge amend in my mind.
Today I know I don't have to have amends from others to live a full and productive life. I have no hope that I will ever have amends from my oldest because she's not interested in recovery. I'm okay with that.
The 12 steps have taught me that when I make amends, those amends are for me and to clean my side of the street, not for the person I am making them to.
Take it from an old gal who's been there. You can't fully bring yourself to the table in a new relationship until you have dealt with past and gotten rid of the baggage.
-- Edited by Tenderheartsks at 11:09, 2008-08-25
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"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." - Woodrow Wilson
I know that I have to fully let go of my "baggage" in order to have a healthy relationship with my current boyfriend. Its hard though, I suppose because deep inside I do have this anger (and frustrations) and deeper inside me I still have some feelings for him. I know its demented, and I cant explain why I do, but I do.
When I found out he was sleeping with the girls at the strip club, I was tested for HIV. Thankfully it came back negative.
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Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean that they don't love you the best way they know how
Well no one says you have to do it all overnight. There are a lot of stages to grief. I'd really recomend the books by Toby Rice Drew. I think Toby has a great grasp on the "disease". Believe me I used to hate it when people described everything in alcoholism as a "disease" but it is. The process of labelling makes it possible to stop taking it all personally.
Of course it is terrible to see someone incredibly talented, bright, outstanding throw their life away but that is the "dis-ease" not anything you could do.
In fact its probable that your leaving him was one of the things that led him to sobriety. Maybe maybe not, there is a thing called free will too.
I don't ascribe to the hurry and be done with it method. Therapy helps, grief helps, sharing helps, working it through helps but be good to yourself. You've been through enough. There is a process to this. I'm no longer involved with an A left him a year ago. My life is one huge mess, one thing after another, huge debt, huge issues, loneliness the works. I don't have it all resolved. It may not be for years. I work on it one day at a time and yes part of it is in anger at him. How dare he? How dare he strip me of my self worth and self esteem? How dare he think that I would be there waiting at every turn? How could he?
The thing is those emotions work for me today, at one time they totally overwhelmed me. Now the anger is part of what drives me. Emotions can be channelled.
I noticed that you describe yourself as not usually an angry person. After all you went through with your exA, does that seem reasonable? Often when I hear someone say that they never or seldom get angry I wonder, how much are they really just stuffing? Everyone gets angry.
If anger does not get expressed in a healthy way it tends to come boiling out when we don't want it to. My suggestion is to find a way to express that anger. Talk to someone about it, not just here, but out loud. A sponsor is good for this as they have probably been through something similar.
I would try to be as honest with your current bf about it too. If you don't then you are just stuffing it some more, hiding it for someone elses benefit. Just a suggestion, I am not you. I know it felt really good to me when I just got real honest about my anger. I had dealt with rage years and never knew why. When I started talking about it to my friends(mostly program people who would understand) and my AH, after a few months my rage disappeared, and my anger just subsided like after a flood. It feels good now to let it out in a healthy way when it tries to build up on me again.
I hope you can find some peace and serenity.
In recovery,
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~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
As I said, it does take a lot for me to reach this level of anger. I am much better tonight than I was this morning. It certainly does help talking about it. My poor sister has been the one person that I've talked to about EVERYTHING regarding my ex a bf. She has been so supportive! I always felt that I could deal with everything alone, then she new that something wasnt right which is when she approached me. Since that day, she has been my 'go to' person.
I wish I did have someone in the program that I could go to, someone that could relate better. Unfortunately, I have not established a close enough relationship with anyone in Alanon to ask to be my sponsor. So, for the time being, its gonna be my little sister.
My current bf knows an awful lot about my previous relationship with my A bf. He too was so supportive but it reached a point that I decided it wasnt in the best interest of our relationship for me to continue talking to him about my ex. This was due in part to some responses I received from people on this board. They were right, because since I quit talking so much about my ex, my relationship with him has gotten deeper. Well, as deep as it can be after only a short period.
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Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean that they don't love you the best way they know how
"I wish I could remember who posted this because I'd like to read their other posts." Take a phrase from the part you saved, and put that into the box that comes up when you hit "search" in the maroon menu bar. Something relatively unique, like
bonding, passion and expressing feelings
This should get you back to the original post, which will tell you who posted it. Then you can either search for their name, or go to their profile and check out "topics started" or "member posts".
wow, just something I noticed about your post, you spend so much of it talking about your ex and then at the end talk about your wonderful bf- what if you were to invert that and spend all you energy focusing on how great things are going with the bf and jettison all that nasty ex stuff off to HP? My esh is that we get more of what we invest our energy into. Just a thought. Hugs, J.
wow, just something I noticed about your post, you spend so much of it talking about your ex and then at the end talk about your wonderful bf- what if you were to invert that and spend all you energy focusing on how great things are going with the bf and jettison all that nasty ex stuff off to HP?
I truly do try to focus on my current bf. My relationship with him is new, just a few months. For some reason though, my ex is usually in the back of my mind somewhere! I think thats because we were together for so long and he was a MAJOR part of my life. We did EVERYTHING together. When my first marriage failed, I swore up and down that I'd never let someone into my life again and fall in love. Low and behold my ex A bf appeared out of nowhere and swept me off my feet so to say. I have only been in love twice in my life and my ex A bf friend was one of my true loves. My ex husband of 18 years being the other. One thing I guess I am thankful of is that my ex A bf did teach me that I am capable of loving again. The shield around my heart was 12 inches thick, but he squirmed right into it and we were supposed to live happily ever after. Sometimes things dont work out as you think they will.
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Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean that they don't love you the best way they know how
