Relationship issues in early recovery
Hi All,
I've posted here before, some years back, and I've been in and out of AA for a while.
I came back in three weeks ago; it got worse, as people said it would, and I am absolutely committed to recovery now, one day at a time. Unlike previous times, I have a sponsor and am closely working the steps with him.
The last couple of days have been extremely tough though, not because of alcohol (from which I'm getting my daily reprieve as promised) but because of a complicated relationship (or rather non-but-might-be-relationship) issue. It's too complicated to go into, and this is a recovery forum rather than a lonely hearts one, but basically the last couple of days I've been torn apart with these feelings of despair and sadness about the situation, as well as slight confusion as I had no idea my feelings had become so strong about this person. It was so bad yesterday that I started crying during a meeting and had to leave.
My sponsor advises me that this is all part of my unmanageable emotional nature and to just throw myself harder into the program. I feel like I have no perspective on the situation and it's somehow linked with my sobriety, but at the moment I'm consumed with this problem (which FEELS unrelated to alcoholism) and it's distracting me from recovery.
The relationship itself is not something I can really do anything about at this stage; I am powerless over the girl in question and she needs to make her decisions (there's another person involved), and I have to accept that. I'm putting that into my step 4s but I keep yo-yoing between feeling better about it by convincing myself she'll come back to me, then feeling awful, then praying for her and trying to get out of the bondage of self. It's driving me crazy...
Anyone else had experiences like this in early recovery? How did you get over them? One theory I have is that I'm not really so emotionally tangled in this as it seems, this is just a PAWS sort of thing.