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so me and my exaw have been seperated for close to 6 months now, when i left she has been bombarding my friends and family with text messages telling me she loves me and trying to get a hold of me.... i had met someone else during this time who btw had a load of red flags show up !!!! but i continued with it anyways . me and this other girl split up but i told my exaw about it a month ago in the hope that she would move on ... so recently we have been talking.
my current situation is that im staying at my sister and brother in laws house renting a room. and my exaw is staying at our previous address, the only problem with my exaw stayin there is that she is squatting in her own sisters house which has caused them to stop talking. my exaw doesnt have a choice in this and is trying to get another place but has been told by the council to stay where she is until they rehouse her
my problem is that now im talking to my exaw my head seems to be running riot, constantly over thinking.... i really have no serenity.
she hasnt been bad at all to me but still continues to lie about going to meetings and her drinking ; and now finally sees that we cant be together as too much has happened between us which i feel quite relieved about.
i recently went to the doctors to try and get some councelling but he advised me to take 2 weeks off work..... now im sitting with my own thoughts and messed up feelings ... really not helping
anyway, my exaw wants too meet up with me and we have to make a descision about what the best thing to do is. either continue to be friends or i have to make a descision about stopping all contact for my sanitys sake !!
i wouldnt mind being friends but for some reason my mind is very overwhelmed with just talking now and again. why is that ???
why am i finding this so hard to make a descision ???
Because you don't have enough clarity, distance, and detachment skills to effectively deal with her and her disease. You are also living in a limbo state of "post' breakup / separation and that is very uncomfortable. You probably are motivated to just go back to status quo but then you recognize there are parts of that status quo that were intolerable. It's a connundrum that would behoove a spiritual solution such as is offered via alanon participation, attendance to meetings, and working the steps with a sponsor.
Right now, you have trouble separating yourself from her, her madness etc... You sound like you have good awareness, but good awareness prior to having good boundaries and detachment skills just leads to constant neurotic worries and misery. You know not to buy her BS about drinking...The same is true about her "squatting" in the house. If she wanted to do right by her sister, she'd move. It's not her house. Forget the zoning board. Careful not to get sucked into the drama. I imagine this is some of your fear cuz when it comes to her, I'd bet you have a history of meaning well, but then finding yourself totally sucked in and miserable later.
Prayers are with you. Keep taking this here and to alanon meetings and you will be better off.
You sound like you have some good awareness going on. I'm sorry that it is difficult.
Your post reminds me of many of my own backwards and forwards thought patterns!
When I have my more lucid moments I have learnt to trust my body. So if something is making me feel overwhelmed I ask myself 'how am I with this?' For instance I am seeing my husband tomorrow and I feel nervous about it so I am imagining that I see him and ask 'how am I with that?' Am I excited, looking forward to it? Am I scared? On a scale of 1 - 10, how good/bad do I feel? Then I imagine that I will not see him and I ask myself the same questions? Usually some answers feels calmer than the others - and I try to run with the calm ones if I can! For now, if AH and I do separate, I'm fairly sure that I would not be able to have any contact with him for quite a long time, despite the fact that I would like us to still be friends in the long term. I'm kind of ok with that - whatever space I need to recover my own equilibrium takes priority.
So I think you can give yourself the freedom to choose what feels right for you. If your ex wants to meet and you don't want to then could you simply explain that you are not quite ready yet? That does not mean that you can't be friends in the future, it does not have to be a lifetime decision. It just means that you need a bit more time. If she is unhappy with that, remember it is not about you. If she respects your feelings it might make it easier to be friends in the future. Just a thought.
Are there any nice small things that you would like to do so that you can make the best of your two weeks off work? When I've been in that situation I imagine what I would like to be telling my colleagues that I've been doing and that helps me to focus on things that I'd like to do.
Aloha Davie you didn't mention going to Al-Anon face to face meetings or using any other tools other than another failed relaltionship. You didn't mention any positives that come from getting into the program so I'm just guessing that you're trying to run it on your own. I did that a few times myself and now I know why the last word of the second step of the 12 steps is "sanity" "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity". You insanity is all yours...it is not your alcoholic wife's blame if you have the opportunity to go get help from others who have been where you are at and found the way out of it with the help of others. The program has many tools to help you gain and maintain your sanity...If you work it. Keep coming back. Sad to do time off and really it's not. (((hugs)))
Thanks for all your replies, ive been considering going to alanon f2f meetings for a while, i went once before and it seemed like everyone had given up. maybe ill see it different this time when i do go. its only on once a week in my area but ive been thinking more and more about going..... i really should . the thing that im worried about is getting too sucked into it all and the HP i find difficult to put in my mind .... i dont know; im in a pretty bad place mentally so i guess nothing ventured nothing gained.
and jerry ur right having time off and its not lol... so true !!
stuff it ill get my butt down there and give it another go !!
Davie, by all means try a meeting again....but since the meetings are only once a week I highly suggest you get the literature and books about Al-Anon so you can read in between meetings. Coming here to this board, reading Al-Anon books can help a great deal. You came away with the feeling that the people you met at the last Al-Anon meeting you went to "had all given up", well yes they have "all given up" on trying to fix their Alcoholic, and now see that they must change themselves and their own behavior and reactions, the only person they have control over. In support, Oldergal
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Don't Worry About Growing Old, It Is A Privilege For Some Of Us.....
Thank you for posting Davie. O please do yourself the favor of returning to f2f alanon, maybe even try a different group if you felt too much negativity. On the other hand, maybe it was you with the negative? Try to keep an open mind and give alanon a go for a couple months at least. That's what worked for me anyway. Your story sounds so complicated. What makes you think you can fix it all up yourself? You can learn to keep it simpler and make decisions in a healthy way, and you are so worth it :)
I'll just ditto what everyone else has said, and encourage you to get to as many Al-Anon meetings in your community as you can make each week, when you are not sitting in one of them, be sitting in our online meetings... don't try to sit with yourself and figure everything out. It will just lead to more confusion. Sounds like you still have an emotional attachment that gets into a whirlwind when you have contact with her, so I suggest, you give yourself a break from that for a few weeks, or at least until you are ready to not only make a decision, but to also follow through with it.
John
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" And what did we gain? A new life, with purpose, meaning and constant progress, and all the contentment and fulfillment that comes from such growth."
. me and this other girl split up but i told my exaw about it a month ago in the hope that she would move on ... so recently we have been talking.
