Been Contemplating This for a Long While - Al-Anon Family Group

GailMichelle · ~*Service Worker*~

Been Contemplating This for a Long While

pinkchip · ~*Service Worker*~

Yes. I get where you are coming from and the answer is that it is some of both nature and nurture like any behavioral condition. I think partners of alcoholics are prone to caretaking and enabling to a degree. I think the pattern gets cyclical like a battered spouse (albiet very different in some ways)...this occurs after living with the alcoholic and all those traits that drew you to him or her become exagerated to the negative (kindness and caring becomes enabling and caretaking). I think it happens insideously just like alcoholism.

In the end, it doesn't matter how the insanity developed. All that matters is changing it through working the 12 steps.

pineapple · ~*Service Worker*~

I agree with what pinkchip said ¨...partners of alcoholics are prone to caretaking and enabling to a degree.¨ I know that is true of myself. I've always been a caretaker, fixer, and bit of a controller. Alanon is helping me get over that. But in some cases, the person one is attracted to is NOT an alcoholic-or at least not at that time. In my case, and some others I know of, my partner did not have a drinking problem when we first got together. We both drank socially and that was all. It's still that way for me, but over the years something changed for him. Heredity? I don't know. I do know that if he had drank and behaved then as he started to later (after we'd been together for some years) I would not have gotten involved with him. But here I am. Who knew?

RLC · ~*Service Worker*~

Gail,

I think it can and does. In my case I had no idea I had become crazy or insane to use the words most often used to describe people who live in active alcoholism. I wasn't crazy but the disease made me do crazy things. I wasn't insane but the disease make me say and do things someone insane would only do. Why would anyone dig in a kitchen trash can and cut their finger wide open counting empty beer cans after their A had gone to bed for the night. Check the backseat of the A's car to see how many additional cans were there than the night before. Stand in the bathroom window for an hour looking across the deck into the den after midnight watching to see how much their wife was drinking. Maybe I wasn't crazy or insane but it fits into most people's definition. After years of living in the disease with no program slowly over time the disease had taken over my mind, body, and spirit as it had the alcoholic in my life. It all happened gradually without me realizing it. It all came home to me one night when I had to take my left hand and hold my right hand so I wouldn't throw the remote through the T.V. Sometimes I still wish I had done that. LOL. You know you have gone full circle when you can look back and smile about those "crazy-insane" days.

I am so thankful for this program that led me from insanity to serenity. Thank you Al-Anon for giving me the "Courage To Change".

Gail in my case living in the disease daily and watching it consume the alcoholic in my life led me to "Nutsville" as you say. For those who live in the disease and don't allow their lives to get entangled with the alcoholic's.......Well I tip my hat to them, they are a better man (woman) than I was.

HUGS,
RLC

-- Edited by RLC on Saturday 9th of April 2011 04:01:17 PM

Mattie · ~*Service Worker*~

I do know some people who discovered their partners were alcoholics and who got out right away. They didn't feel the temptation to stay and try to fix things, and they didn't get sucked into the insanity and sink down with the alcoholic. I think we tend not to hear about those people because they put the alcoholic behind them pretty quickly. Then the alcoholic finds someone who will stick around and try and try to control things -- in other words, us.

Christy · ~*Service Worker*~

Everyone's situation and mentality is different. It took me quite a while to really lose it. It was kind of like Chinese water torture over a period of years..drip..drip..drip..

drummerchick423 · Senior Member

I'm with you. Forget the lies, the manipulation, the way the disease twists your brain and messes with you. I simply couldn't sit back and watch someone I love destroy himself. WAY too painful. I'd rather not be an audience and an indirect participant in what amounts to a slow suicide.

RLC wrote:

For those who live in the disease and don't allow their lives to get entangled with the alcoholic's.......Well I tip my hat to them, they are a better man (woman) than I was.

-- Edited by RLC on Saturday 9th of April 2011 04:01:17 PM

GailMichelle · ~*Service Worker*~

Thanks everyone for your great feedback! I appreciate your thoughts & time!

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

Gail for me,I was a kid when I met them. It was still partying in our early twenties.

When I love someone it's forever. Especially if I marry them. Addiction took both my husbands away. Both times it was like cutting my heart out. To just leave would have been like leaving anyone else in my family I loved. They were way more than my husbands.

Just me. Now as an adult, I have NO desire and can see an addict a mile away and or with in three conversations.

I think for me, it is knowing I am ok living with out a mate. If I meet someone great, if not I am ok. hugs,deb

GailMichelle · ~*Service Worker*~

Debilyn wrote:
Gail for me,I was a kid when I met them. It was still partying in our early twenties.
When I love someone it's forever. Especially if I marry them. Addiction took both my husbands away. Both times it was like cutting my heart out. To just leave would have been like leaving anyone else in my family I loved. They were way more than my husbands.
Just me. Now as an adult, I have NO desire and can see an addict a mile away and or with in three conversations.
I think for me, it is knowing I am ok living with out a mate. If I meet someone great, if not I am ok. hugs,deb

Hi Debilyn:

I was a younster too! Married 2 weeks after my 19th birthday. In addition, like you I have no desire to get involved with a man again. Even though I choose not to live with my ex, I still love him. It hurts to see what he is doing to himself. But I realize it's beyond my control. Thanks for you response!

Jerry F · ~*Service Worker*~

From my experience before, during and after my choice to marry an active addict, another alcoholic/addict and to have multiple addicted relationship I was not paying attention. My ego and pride and esteem was a "can do" attitude. I thought that because I was willing the outcomes would change in my will and favor. I was not a realist. The hot stove burner applies for me and I grew a large tolerance for pain as a result rather than a better choice and consequences program. I continued to do the same things over and over again expecting different results. I was ambivalent about learning how to be truely responsible and just thought life would come out for me just because I thought it should.

I was born and raised in the disease. Did that give me special conditioning? No. I used the non-workable behaviors before and all thru the pre-Al-Anon period. It almost killed me and certainly just before it did, I knew I was certifiably insane. I was then and am still now a loving and caring person who is very wide awake rather than in a blackout. "Love is not enough" choosing to live with insanity is not a good choice. There is no reason in law or ethics to hold me to that situation. There is no marriage vow that says that I must continue on inspite of an avoidable death. God did not create me so that I would become the poster boy for poor avoidable and correctible choices.

Today it is not reasonable in anyway, shape or form to consider putting up with much less than peace of mind and serenity and a Power Greater than alcoholism.

((((hugs)))) smile

flopadopilus · ~*Service Worker*~

I agree with Jerry F whole heartedly! What a great post and nice ESH.

maresie · ~*Service Worker*~

I grew up around alcoholism. I can't say I was exactly attracted to it. what it was was familiar.

maresie · ~*Service Worker*~

i was thinking about this issue this morning. What it is and was for me was survival. Growing up in a home with mentally ill, abusive adults I learned to survive. Survival is not the greatest skill set. I survived, barely. As I was always in crisis mode I did not have time to reflect or adapt a new skill set. Everything set me off into grief over reaction mode because I could not process my life until I came to al anon.

I no longer blame myself. I take responsibility but I am letting go of the beating myself to a pulp part.

Maresie.

searching4peace · Veteran Member

maresie wrote:
i was thinking about this issue this morning. What it is and was for me was survival. Growing up in a home with mentally ill, abusive adults I learned to survive. Survival is not the greatest skill set. I survived, barely. As I was always in crisis mode I did not have time to reflect or adapt a new skill set. Everything set me off into grief over reaction mode because I could not process my life until I came to al anon.

I no longer blame myself. I take responsibility but I am letting go of the beating myself to a pulp part.

Maresie.

This, exactly this, is what I would say in response to this thread.

-- Edited by searching4peace on Monday 11th of April 2011 04:49:37 PM

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