Old 11-15-2010, 06:07 PM
  # 15 (permalink)  
theuncertainty
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Alaska
Posts: 2,913
Originally Posted by Thumper View Post
I'm trying to play this conversation out in my head.
It's a really good suggestion that I've read elsewhere on SR to "play the tape all the way through." Pretending to hold the conversation I hoped to have with STBXAH helped me see what my expectations were. I found quite often that my hopes were to 'help him see’ why he needed to stop drinking or to stop behaving towards me a in certain way. Even though I knew nothing I said would change his decisions, I kept trying the same thing over and over, just re-worded, until I started playing the tapes through.

After running through what I expected the conversations to sound like, I realized that I needed to simply state my boundaries and what I would do if those boundaries were not respected. He was not and is not going to hear my reasons or pleas. Honestly, saying the boundaries out loud to him probably only helped me, because nothing seems to make it through the filters of his addictions and his own desires. The boundaries are for me, not him – and when he trod roughshod over the lines, I had to make the decision to follow through.

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