louise, i went through this phase as well .. and i will tell you that for me, i would of never made it through without my sponsor who has also walked this path .. sponsors are a huge piece of alanon and they are someone who can give us the support, love, and understanding we need during difficult times .. if we work the steps on our own, we might find awareness, but we just don't get the same recovery that we do when we share it with another ..

the hard part is that trying to figure out how to get him to stop is a complete drain of energy because it can't be done .. sometimes because they listen to us at times, we gain the illusion we can control them .. as when we give an ultimatum, they may listen for awhile but it usually doesn't last .. ultimately they make the choice to listen or not .. we cant' change another person .. we can't cause, change, cure, or control, another person's addiction period ..

what helped me to recognize through alanon, is that people learn survival skills that aren't really survival or even healthy but it's how they learn to cope with themselves ... sounds like the pot is how your partner chooses to get by .. it's not the choice we would have them make but that's the part we need to learn to let go of and accept if we are to stay with them  ..
i believe the steps can help us work through any situation .. really they are all about learning to take care of and change the only thing we can .. ourselves ..

i do know before alanon i was completely enmeshed with what my partner did .. so much that there really was no me in my mind because everything was all about him .. obssessing on how i could Make things work, but the truth ? i'm not his higher power or my own ..

it's as in the line through the blue path to alanon book though .. the line that reads.. when my husband and i got married, we became one, we became him .. ( this was me to a t) none of my thoughts really involved me, they were all about what to do ( For ) him ..

finally know for me today, even as my partner works his AA steps, if he's doing it for me, then he's working My recovery, not his ..

hope you keep coming back .. it's a we program because it's too big to deal with by ourselves alone ..

~ hope

Louise13

You get thru it One Day At A Time. Go to meetings, read the literature, get a sponsor, and find your higher power.

In support,
Nancy

hope

thanks for your comforting words and i related to what you said on, oh so many levels. especially about doing things for him. a perfect eg. every sat morning i make him a hot breakfast. even if we have had a fight and or i dont feel like it. i do it to keep the peace, because i know that if i dont, the day will be crap. he simply wont talk to me. this often happens for no apparent reason. so this is all about him and his needs. trying to keep him happy so the rest of us can be happy and have a nice day. even at the expense of my happiness. how do i go about gettin a sponsor? thanks again and i intend on coming back. facebook used to be my nightime drug, now its this..thank you

because i know that if i dont, the day will be crap. he simply wont talk to me. this often happens for no apparent reason

even you are not the reason .. i used to think it was all about me as in what i did that made him angry .. today i know i'm really not the cause .. it's his own thinking that gets him in this frame of mind .. the great thing is the day doesn't need to be crap, that's our part .. we get to choose what to " take as in pick up and carry, or what to '' leave behind .. but it's not just a matter of saying this, it's really a matter of having hp do for us what we can't do for ourselves.. we've never been able to do it yet, right ? smiles .. i finally realized no amount of complaining, pushing, crying, sweet talking, yelling, reasoning, talking, or pleading ever made an ounce of difference, in fact, at times, it just made things worse ..

it's really self defeating and the hard part is, it's progressive.. it took me over a year and then some to really see this is a disease .. but that's ok because it will all come .. my sponsor used to tell me All the time forever, hope, the answers are in the steps.. you just can't have 10 years when you only have 1 or 2 .. you get what you need for each one day and you are right where you're supposed to be coming into the steps ..

as for the resentments, try to remember if you can, there are 12 steps... resentments don't just leave and nothing we do can change our resentments either .. it's hard to heal resentments when the behaviors we resent keep happening .. but it will come and until then all we can do is work toward the later steps of having god  remove these resentments so they aren't dominating our lives .. he really does need to do them .. he or however we view our higher power.. for some that may just be the number of others together with greater experience and this is ok .. we learn and others and hp need to teach us .. course we all know right from wrong, but we don't know a better way to work through our situations until we learn ..

the best way to get a sponsor is to attend f2f meetings if you have them and then just listen and share .. when shares hit home or you find someone with similar patterns to you, ask someone to sponsor you .. when you have a strong feeling of who this is, this is usually your higher power calling you toward this person .. in my experience only, i'm finding sponsors are generally already matched for us .. this is the power of hp ..

if you can't get to face to face, online sponsors are good fillins or temporaries also .. i belong to an online email group for alanon, it's at AwakeningsAFG@yahoogroups.com .. my name in there is Sunnydelight33.. oj moment what can i say ... smiles ..

the www.stepchat.com is also very, very good.. i hope you will look into these both .. in the first, there is a list of sponsors and those willing to be fillins ..

i wish you the best of luck and am here to talk anytime you need it ..

one day at a time may not seem like much ..it never did for me preprogram but for me . one is big ' today .. preprogram, it was like well, if i can't have the Whole pie, why have any .. today i know one is so big that One thing a member shares in these meetings can change the way i've looked at something for 30 some years for the rest of my life ..

glad you're going to keep coming back .. there are so many gifts of this program, the first we receive is hope through learning we aren't alone.. the 2nd is courage through others' honest shares .. it will all come .. this much i can promise as does alanon .. one of the promises .. We will learn to love others without losing ourselves.. this is really because we will learn to love ourselves ..

much serenity, hope