Originally Posted by
Tally 
This is sooo true! I did pursue the things he couldn't give me, so much so I made myself ill. But here's the thing...I didn't just happen to choose a guy, think "Yeah, he'll do" and then try to extract all the things I needed from him. Unfortunately, if that was the way it happened, with him protesting "No, I seriously don't have these attributes you want...I have nothing to give" then I sure woulda thought twice about everything.
I was promised the world. Everything I liked in a man was dangled on a string in front of me. Then once I was head over heels it was all taken away and then it took about 5 years of blaming myself for not being good enough before I realised those things he dangled to get me hooked were never real in the first place. He just wanted someone else to look after him after leaving his mothers home at the age of 31.
Vomit, drunken rages, drooling, incoherent ramblings, paranoia, violence, selfishness...well they're not gonna capture an enablers heart are they?
I think that's where my resentment comes in. Being given the perfect relationship for a short period of time, only for it to be taken away and replaced with absolute hell.
I had PLENTY of red flags that I chose to ignore. I believed exactly what I wanted to believe, despite the glaring reality right in front of me.
While the alcoholic IS responsible for initially misleading me, my resentment is really about my inability to walk away before I invested 13 years of my life drilling a "dry hole". That responsibility falls squarely on my own shoulders.
My goal is to be recovered enough to not make the same mistakes over and over, next time around.
Thanks and God bless us all,
Coyote