Lilms...my understanding is that we detach but do it with love...Cover the passed out A on the floor with a blanket.  Do not clean them up and or help them to bed.  Ignoring the fact they slept on the lawn and continuing your morning as if their actions did not transpire.  No need to shame them or bring it up.  Not caring at all may be a start but is not loving in my understanding. 

http://www.coping.org/control/detach.htm#Content:  Try this link.  It was helpful to me.   

Yours in recovery,

 

Julia 

-- Edited by just me at 21:48, 2006-06-19

lil, detachmen to me was this, I feel my husband is being held hostage by a disease. I love the man but have no use for the disease.

If he is acting obnoxious, rude, mean whatever I know it is the disease talking and I completely stay way from it.

I will say, oh well I know who is talking now. So see ya I am going to read in my room. Or say goodnight or I am going out to the garden, whatever, but separage from the disease. The sad part is when the disease is in so much control it takes my husband with it.

I saw over the years that the disease was there more of the time than my sweet husband. To now, where he is totally controlled by the disease. So much now and for so long, I don't even want to talk to him or see him.

I am not sorry anymore that I love my husband. Becuz I know it is the behavior the disease causes that I hate. So since I can only change me, I changed how I looked at him. Again, I see my husband taken over by a horrible disease.

This is why it is not hard for me anymore to say NO. Not to allow him near me, not to allow him to stay here when he will have no where to go. Not feeding him, nothing. The disease has to get so bad, so bad, that the man I love inside may finally say, ENOUPH! I will do anything to not use anymore.

My A is homeless, moneyless, carless, no license, no job nothing. He is in jail now for a dui. so when he walks out, he goes to the shelter. I Hope. I hope no one takes him in. His style is to find some loose woman,(before we were married) and use her. Let her provide. Doubt that would work anymore since he is unable to perform.

It is hard. But it can be done. I am not mean to the A when he uses. I just disengage. I detach and take care of me.

Hope this helped some. much love,debilyn 

This is a hard one, and is something we grow into by working the steps and using the tools of the program. In other words, don't START with detaching, grow into it instead.

What it means to me is that I can love my A, and care about him, without getting damaged by his actions. I don't know if you have children but if you do, you will remember when they were very small, if you didn't do what they wanted they would maybe say "I hate you" (teenagers have a way of doing this too). You don't stop loving your two year old when he says this, nor does it make you change your position ("I don't care if you hate me, you cannot climb on the roof") . You may choose to ignore it, you may choose to not allow yourself to be talked to that way, it may even make you very angry or very sad, but it doesn't change the underlying love. It also doesn't change your position on their actions.

Now, your A is not a two year old, but the process is the same. Someone you care about is acting inappropriately. You don't stop caring, but you do not allow the actions to harm you.