The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
just as a recovering alcoholic has to change the things he can - (he has to stop walking into the bar!) we have to do the same or we run the risk of losing our emotional sobriety, right? You have to decide you want serenity no matter what and just for today, he is an enormous trigger to your serenity, you are way too raw and this situation is just plain toxic. Nobody, but us, is responsible for our serenity. And so, in the early days, being in the exact same situation you are in now, I had to decide that I was sick and tired of BEING sick and tired and I had to become willing to go to any lengths to get it - I had to take my sponsors suggestion and get to a meeting every day. If you haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing.
At last night's home group meeting, a newbie had shared how he had just completed 90 in 90 al-anon meetings. the difference in him is completely miraculous. Afterwards, an old-timer with 30 years spoke about the time she did 365 in 365 because she had lost her job that year, and the meetings were the only way to transform her fear.
The serenity prayer, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change... (can't change him, can't change the past, can't change what you did, etc. etc.)
"COURAGE to change the things I can"... make that list and ask Higher power to give you courage. Higher power does NOT expect me to suffer, that was my own distorted thinking.
-- Edited by glad lee on Thursday 4th of October 2012 05:41:38 AM
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The prayer isn't for Higher Power to change our lives, but rather to change us.
I called my sponsor but she's got a packed schedule for the next few days, hopefully we'll get to talk tomorrow.
I have no idea what is going on with me right now. I look at my AH and I literally seethe with anger and frustration. I almost shake when I'm in the same room with him. He went to his first AA meeting and that certainly didn't change a thing in how I feel about him right now. I have no desire to reach out to him, to hug him, to ask him to comfort me mainly because I feel that he emotionally abuses me by using my feelings against me. I don't feel safe in this relationship and I honestly don't know if that's going to change any time soon. We're going back to a second marriage counselor tomorrow and I have no idea what I'm even going to say. I keep moving my line in the sand, and letting him cross over it and then I change my mind or back down mentally and get angry at myself.
Most recently I made a comment about my dad and how I shed a few tears remembering a childhood memory. According to him, I didn't even mourn my father correctly and he wants to know what's wrong with me that I would cry over losing a father who was emotionally abusive. He would have done it differently and has no compassion to give me because my dad was a jerk. UGH! I mean, I know he's an alcoholic but does that give him the right to judge the way I choose to mourn my dad? I'm just so sad, because I don't want to live with someone like this for the next 30 years. It's just too draining and I'm feeling burnt out emotionally.
I keep reliving the hurts from the past 9 months or so and I get angrier and angrier and I know that it's not healthy. He has apologized for various things but I've honestly felt they were more given as a means to get me to go to bed with him. He shut down again after his last drunk binge last week in Vegas and we're barely communicating. Before the Vegas thing he was at least making an effort to reach out to me, but that's over again. Didn't surprise me, but I was disappointed as usual.
I am just a mixed bag of emotions. I turn him over to my HP every flippin' minute of every day. I don't bug him about anything, I try not to take stuff personally, and I work my program. But, honestly I'm just drained. I'm tired of the weird behavior and attitudes that come from him. Even though I know it's not personal towards me, I still have to witness it and do a mental dance to let it go and change the pattern of my response or my thinking. I am mentally drained just 'trying' to respond appropriately. Detaching from someone when you are around them 24/7 is really hard. He works from home so we spend a lot more time together(in the same house anyway) than most couples do and we both tiptoe around each other at this point. I guess I'm just worn out from doing mental gymnastics. It's not easy to detach when you live in the same home and I'm finding it draining to keep doing so. Sigh, I'm sorry if I'm a downer today guys. I'm just plumb worn out.
Thanks for reading and if you have any ESH to give me, I'd surely appreciate it!
I understand how you feel. I have been going through a lot of emotions too and I am starting to feel anger towards my recently XAB. In my situation, my anger has been helping me see my situation for what it really is. Instead of wondering why he is so mean or how he could treat me bad or what I was doing wrong, I have to accept that he is doing that and there is nothing at all the I could say or act that would make him change and realize he is hurting me. He also has such strange and distant behaviors and would never talk to me about what was wrong. I just know that I WANT a healthy relationship and maybe at this time he is not able to provide it to me. I took that anger I have for the treatment I have been recieving and I am turning it around so I can know in the future what I want and want I will and will not accept. I was never able to figure out how to detach with my XAB when he was living at home-I think if you can do that, that is great, but it was oh so hard for me. I see that you are married and I'm sure that is even harder. I am sorry you are going through this. I don't know if anything I said helped, but I do understand.
I definitely had a sense of hopelessness about my relationship with the ex A. The issue was I wanted him to be everything for me. I had no idea how to provide that for myself so I looked to him to do it. As he was an alcoholic/addict it was not a reasonable expectation.
Like you I found it very very hard to detach at first. In fact I very much resented detaching. Why should I have to do that?
I was not ready to say that what I had been doing was not working and give it up. Now I can see a relationship which has no trust is a very hard undertaking. As I didn't trust the now ex A my expectations had to change. When I don't trust people I change my boundaries towards them. Of course that isn't easy when you are in a place where you live with someone and can't just opt out this minute. I very much was in a place of total commitment to changing him rather than to changing me.
When someone upsets me these days the impetus is of course to rush in, explain, want to change their point of view. The new way of saying sorry you feel that way feels totally foreign, unrealistic and absolutedly like not giving it my all. But that was the issue everything in regards to the ex A was giving it my all. He expected me to drop everything for him at a moments notice while at the same time completely ignoring me for weeks on end. I was to be the beck and call without any sense of reciprocation. What a set up for disaster. And I dived right into it.
The ex A's opinion was one of the most important things in my life. As he hated himself he didn't have much of an opinion about anyone except those he put on a pedastel. I kept trying to be one of those rather than regrouping and putting myself first. I put him first in the hope that he would reciprocate. That didn't happen. In fact he went on spiral after sprial and then plateaued that is pretty much the pattern for his entire life.
I hated the way the ex A would arbitarily dismiss my issues. His opinion regarding my asthma was that I just needed to exercise more. I later met a man who regaled how upset he was when he took his girlfriend to the emergency room when she had an asthma attack. The ex A saw it as inconvenient for me to have one! I somehow wasn't working hard enough to please him!
In my first years in al anon I hated the suggestions I got. The one I hated most was to be grateful. I felt so angry, enraged and victimized I couldn't see anything to be grateful about.
I put all my effort, attention, care and obession into a relationship that was doomed from the outset. As I couldn't see it was doomed I obsessed more and more.
I don't think it is easy to walk around on eggshells with someone at the same time its possible. Of course we all want something else! These days I am willing to be whereever I am rather than anywhere else. For me that is a new phenomenon that never happened before.
Great post, Maresie. I hope I can get to where you are now. I am really struggling with detachment as well. Everyday I find myself wanting to drive by the house where AH is staying, or call him at a time when I think he might be sober- I spend precious moments of my life trying to think of reasons to call him. Then I sit on my hands, bite my tongue, whatever I need to do in order to keep myself from contacting him. It's the hardest thing to do. Everyone calls it 'detachment with love' but it doesn't feel like love to me. It feels horrible. It feels equally horrible that he doesn't call or bother to contact me either, or our three children.
I'm so glad to hear someone else say that in their first years of al anon they hated the suggestions they got. I have found myself getting angry at some of the suggestions people have given me as well and it left me wondering if al anon was right for me, after all. How can I find my serenity when I have no downtime, when I am struggling to pay the bills, when I am unable to pay my mortgage and am probably going to lose my house? But I am grateful I have a job, and three healthy children, and I know I will eventually recover and move on from this. Can't say the same for AH.
ilovedogs- I'm right there with you. I send you plenty of hugs and ESH if you will send them back to me. I kicked my AH out, but it didn't cure the anger. I am so angry. And sad. And lonely. I'm drained from being up at 5:00 and not in bed before 11:00, with every waking minute of my life in between spent working and/or taking care of people (my students, my children, etc.). Meanwhile AH sits at his sister's house. Just sits. Nothing else. I am seething at all the things he has destroyed and taken from me- my home, my credit, my children's father, my husband, etc. But I heard something great on Facebook the other day- someone posted a picture that asked God (or your HP) why it seemed like nobody was listening when they were struggling through difficult situations. The answer was 'The teacher is always quiet during a test." That really spoke to me. So I am looking at this whole situation as a test from my HP. I hope I'm passing.
Wow, Holivex, I loved your share. That line about the teacher being quiet during the test is so powerful! Thank you for posting that.
ilovedogs - I can definitely relate, too. I sometimes feel like if something doesn't change, I will go stark raving mad. I mean lunatic mad. That is no way to feel. And I often times feel like if I am detaching with love, I am just going through the motions, like there is no real relationship between me and my AH so what is the point of staying married to him? What is the point of going through all of this heartache if there is no real progress being made, if he is not truly sorry for his actions? I, too, re-live all the hurts caused by my AH over the course of our relationship. It's so painful. Then I get distracted because he is in a sober period and I get to remember what a great guy I married. Then the cycle starts all over again. It's just plain madness.
You mentioned that you keep moving your line in the sand. Ditto here. But I do remember someone saying something like "Stay with him, just for today. Or leave him, just for today." To me, that saying means that I can decide every single day what I am going to do. If today I decide to stay with him, that's just for today. I can always change my mind tomorrow. If tomorrow I decide to leave him, I might search divorce lawyers on the internet. I might or might not follow up with that. Sometimes just doing the searching for a lawyer is enough to calm me down and remind me that I am in control of myself and can take care of myself. Maybe this just sounds like rambling and I apologize for that. Take what you like and leave the rest, as they say.
I remember being so full of fury towards my ex A that I was furious every minute of every day. In a way, I had to stay furious because that's what protected me from him. If I let down my guard, I'd get hurt. Fury was better than hurt. But I lost perspective on the fact that that much fury means that something is badly wrong. I thought it meant that something was wrong with me, because a better person (I thought) would have found a way not to be furious.
The question I was keeping myself from asking was: if this relationship was as bad as it seemed (and actually it was worse), what kept you in it? Admittedly there were some good times. And in the beginning there had been some wonderful times. But given that the painful times were so heavy and serious, what kept me in it? I had all kinds of good answers. Like, "I'm learning how to be a healthier person." But the truth was, 100% of what kept me in it was fear. I was afraid I'd regret leaving; I was afraid I'd never find someone else; I was afraid of being on my own; I was afraid that I'd be overwhelmed by grief and loneliness; I was afraid that it meant I was a failure. And I just didn't want any more pain. I was at maximum capacity and I knew leaving would be painful (because of all those things my brain was telling me), and I didn't know if I could hack it. Actually staying turned out to be just as painful.
That's just my experience. Take good care of yourself.
If you knew for sure nothing were to change over the next 5, 10, 20 or 30 years, what would you do differently today?
10 years ago I was in a relationship that had lasted 7 years. I was low-grade unhappy in it. Not miserable enough to leave, but not a good way to live either. I kept trying to change my partner and our dynamic which felt challenging at best and painful at worst. I wasn't able to detach at the time, but kept like a clever little beaver chipping, chipping, chipping away at "our" problems. It got. me. absolutely. nowhere.
Now, 10 years past that relationship I am on friendly enough terms with my EX. Friendly enough that occassionally I hear about something is that is going on in her current relationship. It is a SHOCK how much that goes on for her still is the same. I am sure she has changed in some ways, but in some very core and fundamental ways she is the same. Some of the habits that she still has to this very day are the very things that I found painful, troubling, and difficult to live with.
I held on and on and on hoping things would change, trying to change them, etc. The reality of the matter was that my now ex wasn't interested in changing. What were BIG problems for me were actually solutions for her. The habits I thought were painful were soothing for her.
Now that I am in nolonger in that relationship, I can see how fruitless all that time was, but at the time facing the possiblity of the loss was too much to bear. In the end, the end of that relationship was very good for me, but I just couldn't see my way out until I could.
I am not sure that there is something called 100% I know and feel I should do X. Perhaps for some decisions there are. But just as often I think there is something that I call the 49/51 rule. For me, I have sometimes left a relationship when 49% REALLLLLLLLY wanted it to work and 51% knew I had to take care of me.
NOT telling you to stay or go. Just sharing my ESH. And, in the meantime, please know that I follow your posts and have seen SO much growth - it inspires me!!!! So proud of you for doing the tough work!!!
What BlueCloud said x100 my friend, sooo much growth and growth is not always fun and games it's a process some of it hurts some of it comes softly.
Please be gentle with yourself, he goes to one AA meeting and you honestly think you are going to jump up and down and shout wooo hooooo!! Probably not after all of the hurt and the pain that has gone on, that's ok .. you only need to come to your own answers and where you are going to be happy, nothing more and nothing less.
Sending lots of love and support, hugs P :)
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Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
What Mattie wrote rings 100 percent true for me as well. Even though I am gay, I was still born with the same values on relationships that my parents instilled in me. My mother and father have been together for 50 years and both sets of grandparents were together over 60 years.... In my family, you just don't split up. When my sister got divorced, my mom told her "good people don't get divorced, they work on their problems." WTF!
Not that they cared that much about me and my relationships....they don't act quite the same with me and my partners as they have with my sisters and their husbands. Either way, I really was afraid of failure, afraid to be alone, afraid that I wasted all that time in the relationship for nothing, afraid I was skipping out when things would get better later on, afraid that if I was less needy I wouldn't be able to love others the way I had in the past, afraid I couldn't financially deal with life, afraid of never finding another partner again, afraid I would get sick and nobody would take care of me... All sort of fears. Finally the misery outweighed the fears.
We were so nasty and hateful to each other by the end. Just pray to have your fears lifted and then go from there.
Mattie, wow. You hit the nail on the head for me. Well, it is definitely fear that keeps me here, but also some sort of twisted hopeful thinking that things will get better and that things aren't as bad as they appear to be. Magical thinking, I know, but it keeps me going through my days and somehow I'm still muddling through. And, yes, I've even said that I'm staying because it's helping me become a healthier person. I've actually called my marriage, "my testing ground", to my therapist, LOL. I figured I have to take myself with me so I might as well stay where I am and work on me while I still have this alcoholic challenging me in my life, right?
Thank you BlueCloud, Pushka, PinkChip, and glad lee for sharing on this thread, too. I have been making an attempt to go to more meetings, I'm even chairing tonight's meeting, YAY, because chairing gives me a special boost for my Al Anon involvement and I love being there and sharing with others. BlueCloud asked that if nothing changes in 5, 10, etc years what I do differently? Well, I already know I can handle 5 years of no change, LOL, because I've already done it. I get a little antsy when I think about 10 years down the road, though, and that's when I start realizing that something's got to give.
My sponsor keeps telling me that I'll have my answers from HP and that I will feel a sense of peace about it when it comes. I guess I'm just still waiting for that peace. She said she prayed and waited for 18 months before her HP spoke to her and told her that it was time to move on. Another friend of mine who's active in AA told me that it's just not bad enough, obviously, for me to make any changes and at some point I will hit my own bottom and that then I'll know it's time. Right now, my thinking and emotions are so clouded that I don't know what I want or need in life. My AH wanted to know if I was going to buy a rug for the family room(since the dog died now we can cover up the wood flooring with something that won't get peed on) and I don't even want to make a decision on a RUG! A rug feels like a huge commitment right now, LOL! All I want to do is get my special needs kid through his 8th grade classes, keep homeschooling him to get him on track, as best as possible, with math and writing and reading. I need to start exploring options for high school for him or possibly teaching a class at his co-op next year so that he can continue to homeschool and I can get his classes for free. I need to find part time work or some way to pay the bills, if I leave, etc. And, for me, I want to keep going to yoga, playing tennis, getting involved in Al Anon and my church groups, too. Wow, now that I put it in writing; I am one busy woman....I gotta go take a shower, LOL! Thank you all for letting me share!
The phrase "wherever I go there I am" is meant to dissuade us from doing geographicals...meaning running from our problems. I do not see you running from your problems...if anything, it's the opposite. You have tried really hard to focus on the problems you guys have.
What happened with me (and it may not be this way for you) was that I had to leave to become the person I needed to be. There was no room to grow and stay in that relationship. Working on accepting what was basically unacceptable was futile for me. (again...just me - not sure if you are there yet).
