welcome to alanon and MIP!  I hope you are going to meetings, listening and learning, picking up literature and absorbing it as it does take time, practice and forgiveness with self to allow you a chance to learn about new techniques you can apply to your daily life and the situations and relationships it can assist you in.

The great thing about alanon is it is all about YOU.  Great thing about being an adult is, you can re-evluate what you have learned in your family of origin and decide for yourself if these views, attitudes, perceptions and behaviors are serving your highest good now, as the adult you are.  I found in my recovery, especially the year and a half I did extremely intensive daily forgiveness work- I kept having opportunities to forgive myself and then my family and decide if the coping mechanisms I was using were helping me or not.  I found a lot of what I had picked up in childhood as coping mechanisms did help me as that child in the moment, but as an adult the views - such as, believing all relationships consist of manipulation, the belief that I as an ACoA and codependent that I was responsible for others and that their choices and actions were in fact reflections of me - none of which I choose to believe, buying into anymore.  I had love mixed up with approval - which of course no we do not need to approve of each other's choices to love, support and forgive each other.

I had many more:  such as: life always hurts;  you have to suffer to be beautiful; that I need someone else to make me whole et cetera.  

Alanon has taught me in the last six years that taking care of my own needs allows me to feel my own inherent self esteem and that taking actions that I can feel self respect about do in fact offer you real self respect.  No one gives it to you, it is what you require of yourself.

You may be very scared or even terrified of what you/your life has become- I sure bought into the notion that I am responsible for others and that I can change/control them with these manipulative tactics and it is a bold faced lie from our disease--- adults make their own choices,period.  We are not stuck, and we do have thousands of possible choices, if not millions.  

I learned that the fear I held was made up in my own head from projecting into the future (where no one has any control, the future is an illusion bc now is what really is) and from incessantly comparing myself to others.  Society tells us where we "should be and how" but does that really jive with what you believe to be true?  I learned that comaring myself to others, made me feel judged bc I was judging- now that I do not allow myself to do that anymore- and continually forgive me as the condemnation arises - I get more freed and liberated each time I can sucessfully forgive, resolving a guilt that it was my choice to carry.

You cannot parent an adult, but we can re-parent and nurture us where it felt like others left off.  People teach us what they know and when we know better, we do better.

So congradulations on where you are right now in this moment, bc this is the beginning of the rest of your entire life and it can be what you make it.  Making a choice to take care of your own needs- and not the consequenes of other people's actions- allowed me to take back my own life.  We are alone with an emotionally unavailable partner and we choose that bc we would rather focus on others than to focus on the truth about ourselves.  Focusing on me is not so bad either bc if I want to change something I no longer value about me ~ I must accept it and embrace it, then I can tackle it.  As long as I am in denial and focusing on them, I am helpless to change me.

I learned that when I focus on someone else's choies, issues, feelings, states of mind, attitudes, opinions-- that it is a habit/pattern enabling me to avoid myself-- in which I lose me and feed the disease for us all, universally.  When I focus on me and decide what I can do and take positive action, I feel better, I stop being overly responsible for them and take actual care of me.

The truth is you are never alone, bc you have the inner child (soul), the inner witness with us at all times and we also have the spark, the glint of HP/god bc we are made in that image of loving, creative, boundless joy, compassionate wisdom & an expponential willingness to forgive without measure.

We are all already forgiven, it is not god who condemns us- it is the ego of humankind.  

Like tommyecat says- tackle only what is in this day bc the reality is right now and right now you can make a change that will allow you to feel better.  That was my magic question for the day- 20 times a day- what can I do right now that will allow me to feel better about my situation or myself right now and whatever the answer was, I would do it and see if it helped.  Life and alanon are one huge experiment- if you hear something you liked, try it out and see if it works for you.  We guarantee to refund all of your misery if you so choose.  I hope you stick it out in alanon bc you are worth the hard work it takes to get to know, recovery is self discovery and you are worth it and much more!