View Single Post
Old 12-31-2008, 05:58 PM
  # 6 (permalink)  
GiveLove
Member
 
GiveLove's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Stumbling toward happiness
Posts: 4,706
counselorK,

Take a deep breath. Nothing has to be done right now, this minute.

It sounds as though your friends and family have seen you abused a great deal. I understand why they would say what they say. The folks in our SR community here (including myself) sometimes want to reach through the computer screen and magically "fix" hurting people who come here. They give great advice. They point out the harm being done. They beg and plead for people to just wake up and see that life can be so much better.

The thing is, only you will know when you have had enough of this. When you're tired of being a wet nurse to your husband, tired of the drama, tired of the danger of a drunk handling firearms, tired of the verbal abuse, tired of your best never being good enough, tired of all of your money and time and love being sucked up into a bottomless pit of alcoholism, then you will finally save your own life, and not one minute before. I'm not being flip; literally, when you wake one morning weary as hell of it, or when you lose your home, or when you see a really great relationship and desperately crave "that kind of thing" for yourself.....sometimes, the day just dawns.

But from my vantage point, it appears that you are desperately in love with the man he once was. The great guy he was before. That man isn't in your life at this point. The guy who's taken his place puts your life, livelihood, self-esteem, and future in jeopardy. He abuses you verbally, lies to you, ruins cherished family time.......if someone came to you with this story, would you say it sounded like "love" to you? So often, we are in love with potential. I've done it so many times I could just hang my head.

At 40, I stayed with a man like your husband IS. I reasoned, "I'm 40, when will I ever find love like this again?"

The answer was: never. Because that kind of love is worth precisely squat.

But I did find something a thousand-thousand times better. It took counseling, Al-Anon, and a lot of work on my self-esteem before I could admit that I deserved better than the tiny scraps of potential, rememberd love I was surviving on. And before I could admit that what I was calling love was no such thing. Need, habit, fear, yes. Love? No. Love doesn't feel like that.

Take your time there at the cabin. Think about getting and reading Codependent No More (you will find yourself there). Think about finding an Al-Anon meeting. Think about what a better life would look like.

Love,
GL
GiveLove is offline