Originally Posted by
Jaguar55 
Hi Pelican, started crying when I read your post. I'm miserable. I see your point. I was doing better until I spoke to him last night. I'm being tossed aside without a backward glance like a piece of garbage. And he even sees it as something I brought on myself. He's done it to me before and he's doing it now. It completely freaks me out. His whole attitude about it makes me insane, like it's so casual for him, so painless. Why doesn't he feel sad? Why am I not valuable to him? Knowing the answers intellectually doesn't do anything for how I feel emotionally right now.
Hi Jag. I am a recovered alcoholic/addict. On my first attempt at recovery, I had been married for several years, and I managed to remain sober for five years before relapsing. Without getting into lots of detail, I know now that my relapsing (for five years) had mostly to do with my inability to resolve my own issues of self loathing, and my unwillingness to let go of a relationship upon which I'd become dependent for all my self esteem.
I regard "codependency" as an addiction to adrenaline....a very powerful and dangerous drug, but one that produces a very seductive "high"...along with a subsequent "crash" often into depression. It is the fight or flight drug, designed to address potential threats (which is why it is so often accompanied by anger). Life via risk taking, rescuing others, crisis management, hypervigilance, hypercontrol issues. tilting at windmills (ending in angry despair), etc. etc. It is the drug of choice for many in the helping professions, like nurses, firefighters and police. It is a way for a person to escape focus on themselves by being "other centered," disguising the real motive (escape) by being the helpful, supportive, stable, trustworthy, ever loving, often martyrd mate. If I have a sense of "who I am is not enough" (shame), then I will depend on what I do to feel ok. Codeps tend to be humans doing rather than human beings, performing (quite well, usually) to get their needs met.
Who better to provide crisis and chaos to be managed than an alcoholic mate? And codeps have just as difficult a time "detaching" from their "drug of choice" as do alcoholics/addicts. Occasional contact for you would be like me having an occasional glass of wine with dinner. Nothing but trouble. Total abstinence was required of me in order to recover, and will be necessary IMO for you as well.
My recovery depends on my not drinking, but it is not ABOUT not drinking. It is about using the 12 step process to develop a new design for living, one in which I have learned to be spiritually empowered to regulate my feelings from the inside, instead of from the outside. I no longer blame others. I try not to complain. And I mind my own business. No one has the power to "make me" feel any particular way without my permission, but it took me a long time to be able to accept responsibility for my own feelings and behaviors. "My disease made me do it" can only go so far, and is an excuse that would ever keep me sick.
And here's the crux of the matter. In our dysfunctional addictive relationship, my wife was the "good mother," always supportive, loving, responsible, reasonable, etc. etc. I was the "bad boy," the designated problem. My recovery ideally provided a new way of being....a way to "grow up" and become an adult person. But my wife insisted on retaining her role as the good mother to my bad child. I continued relapsing until I left her after an 18 year marriage. She would never entertain the notion of needing her own recovery, of attending alanon (or whatever), so I had the choice of staying in a relationship role that required me to feel guilty, ashamed, less than, incompetent, immature, etc.....or getting out of it. Until I left, I drank. Being the "identified problem" is not conducive to being happy, joyous and free.
It's been fifteen years now, and I've not had a drink since I left my wife.
And no mistake here....my drinking was not her fault. She didn't make me drunk or sick. She was not responsible for my bad behavior. The relationship dynamic was just too powerful for me to overcome without her joining me in the recovery process. And I'm convinced that anyone in relationship with a recovering/recovered addict would be well advised to see to their own recovery as well. In the addictive relationship, it always take two to do the dance.
adding a brief anecdote: I have an alcoholic friend whose wife divorced him during the time he was drinking. She joined alanon. Sometime later he joined AA. Four years after the divorce, they remarried, and have been living in wedded harmony (if not bliss) now for twenty years. It's rare, but possible.
blessings
zenbear