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.
I am so sorry that you are not feeling the deep connection with your sponsor. When she brings this subject up it would have been a good opportunity for you to express how you feel and why.
I do not understand. how she can generalize that only AA women feel the connection with men better than women I have found that is true for alanon women as well. After all we are all suffering from the same disease.
That said- Trust is hard. My first sponsor was the first person that I let in and the first person I truly trusted.. It is a difficult process to learn to trust. She should be willing to discuss this matter with you in depth.
Since you have worked the Steps together you can also look for a more compatible person.
Good Luck
-- Edited by hotrod on Saturday 27th of April 2013 04:01:00 PM
Last night I was at a meeting and afterwards I was talking to my sponsor - who to be perfectly honest... I really didn't enjoy as a sponsor and we are done with all the steps- I don't really call her because she feels very cold to me and I feel like she has no heart connection and I am very heart centered...nothing against her but we don't mesh well. Anyways to get to the point, I told her last night that I seemed to get along better with men than women. I said " I wonder why that is?" and she said that alot of women in the AA program find that too and then she said for me to not analyze that but it's something to think about. I then said "well I know I am not an alcoholic". I haven't drank for 11 years and do not get tempted to drink at all so I really think that is not right.....but I was willing to look at that within myself and question it but I just don't think I am. Anyways...this is the second time she has said this to me and I think I was triggered because I really have issues of feeling like I belong and it made me feel like she was saying I don't belong in alanon. But maybe I am making too big of a deal about it, do you think? I am SO insecure around her. I will admit that I have always had a hard time connecting with this lady because she seems to run things with alanon and everyone looks to her for all of the answers and sometimes things don't feel equal in alanon. I am also an intovert and I am not as talkative to others...I do better one on one. I know this is my individual program but I have a really hard time with her coldness and I always quesion myself and I don't trust myself....I always have put others opinions above my own. I guess I feel really insecure around people who are authority like figures and I really don't know why. I wish I could stand in my own power and truth and not get swayed by others so much. I never trusted myself growing up and I am still having a hard time with it. Anyone understand where I am coming from with this?
If you get along better with men than women, maybe you just haven't had the right kind of women in your life...
If this sponsor is any indication...hmmm...is she on a power trip? it's my understanding that all are equals in the fellowship of alanon...no one "runs" things...
whenever I get toxic vibes from others...I always think that I must adjust, accept, tolerate and please them, no matter what. I am learning, instead that it's really okay to say, this person and I don't click, and I don't have to make myself into a pretzel emotionally to try to make a friendship work. Life's too short. Move on to people who you click with...and shed the ones who bring you down...
I have met people like that in AlAnon. I, too, found I was closer to men than women, at first. But with more time in AlAnon I have found lots of women that I would trust with any information I gave them. They are very trustworthy. But I had to look and feel and identify and trust my identification of them. I had to learn to trust ME. Then I could find the women that I wanted to trust. Sometimes I got to know someone and I had to step away for a while. Trust your gut. Find a new sponsor. You don't have to ask her permission. Just do it for you. Or don't have a sponsor for a few months and get to know a lot of ladies in your meetings. Then you can make a choice.
Sounds like you have had some time with this sponsor and have given it a chance. If you don't mesh then don't force it, it will be fake. Although this sponsor is versed in the Al-Anon program and means well, she seems like a power seeker to me. I too am a one-on-one person, and that is more than ok. Trust your heart and your gut, sounds like they are saying to move on from this relationship.
In Support Oldergal
__________________
Don't Worry About Growing Old, It Is A Privilege For Some Of Us.....
I really appreciate the replys. Thanks so much. Each one of your reply's helped me a lot and I am so glad someone understands! So I agree that I need to trust my gut and from the very beginning I didn't feel right about opening up to her and I should have trusted my gut. So if I want to move on from her then how do I do that? She goes to my home group that I really like and we are a small town and have only a couple of meetings. How do I interact with her without "losing" myself? I wonder how I can stay confident in me without worrying what she thinks. I feel like it is hard for it to feel like "my" program when everyone seems to look to her for answers...I am going to need to figure out a way to stand stong within me and remember that this is a "no one's better than anyone program". It is just hard for me because I am pretty new and she has gone for years.
My sponsor is a lovely person. One day she told me she had quit Alanon. And of course she is a friend now and not a sponsor. I decided that I want to be a member forever. I am more than happy with my decision, and hers.
Recently i had contact with ex-sponsor and her hubby. I did not seek them out... it just happened. Hubby years ago was not happy with the local AA group- so he started an open Steps Group. I went along with my Alanon 12x12 and he had the AA one. Sometimes I had to sit in- a one person meeting in the early days- sometimes two and so on.
Fact is we had to bend to rules- I had a woman sponsor. Well in the end it was an AA member who actually became my sponsor, and gave me a good grounding in the steps. I was very very angry and mistrusting of men because of my family situation, but he got under the radar completely.
That Steps Group went on to be the leading group in the community. In recent times it, and the other one, have fallen on bad times. But our Alanon is growing within.
Aloha Jenn...I read your post thru the filter of an experience I had with my sponsor in Al-Anon. I had talked about something that was bothering me alot and had much to complain about. He said to me "reread your story as if you were someone else and then lets talk about what you see". Of course when I did that I was seeing the "me" in what was going on in my life and I could see me clearly. I saw the disabilities and the false perceptions and expectations and it was this "real" me that I had to do something about. Much of what I saw was fear. I associate very much about the person you describe as yourself...that was me then...that was the person that I brought into Al-Anon...the fearful person that was the first disability I prayed to my HP to relieve and that was the first one which was relieved. I was "free at last" of that crippling emotion which was as my sponsor described "F alse E evidence A ppearing R eal" My head was drawing pictures based upon bad information and then believing them. My sponsor worked me long and constant on perceptions which I learned to get other members feedback on and then I learned to bring my perceptions into reality...a character of sanity. I didn't always like or agree with my sponsorship and I was told at truth "You don't have to like it all you have to do is try something different that what you do which isn't working". Rocket Science via Al-Anon. I just had a reunion with my first sponsor...a woman...who I asked to be my sponsor after I had heard "men on men...women on women". She helped and not enough because she suspected and knew that I was manipulative and egocentric...I was introverted and a whiner and prone not to do the work and then try to manipulate her into doing it for me...what she did instead was point me at and then push me to the male sponsor who helped me to re-engineer my life. If your gut is telling you that it suspects that she suspects you might have or have had an alcohol problem do the assessment and run the findings by her...trust her with the findings and ask her for more feedback. Take your time...be patient...get a back up(s) It's your recovery. ((((hugs))))
My sponsor is a lovely person. One day she told me she had quit Alanon. And of course she is a friend now and not a sponsor. I decided that I want to be a member forever. I am more than happy with my decision, and hers.