EnglishGarden

Hello everyone,
I was a member some years back and am here again with a new name.

I struggled back then with the hard honesty of those here who had become savvy about what addicts do and what anyone faces in relationship with an addict. I thought, back then, many of the truth-tellers were simply more linear in their thinking and did not possess my kind of spiritual heart.

Oh. So sorry. I was so misguided. Thank you, all the veteran SR members whose posts I have read every day for the past 5 years, even though I stopped posting my story. I thank you from my heart for your hard assessments of the dangers and darkness involved in loving an addict.

I was in love with a recovering drug addict with well over a decade of recovery, someone I met in an Al-Anon meeting. He was a star. He did service work, he spoke at conferences, he had 4 years of Al-anon in addition to the many years in CA. He was a good father.

But he was brutal to me. It was such a shock to me. The coldness, the indifference, the blaming, the arrogance. Most of all, the absence of any real compassion and interest in me. It was from the start and remained so, only about him. He was the center of the universe. And sometimes it was so subtle.

I read on here often stories about the special connection someone feels with her addict partner, and I usually infer from the description of the relationship that really it is just an addict getting his immature and narcissistic need for attention and nurturing met. It is so subtle and it spins such a deadly pattern. The codependent thinks she (or he) is connecting in a soulful way with an addict who is really just high on the illusion of intimacy and the attention. The addict is humble, self-searching, confessional, inspirational, and it is so intoxicating, this special connection. This pattern trapped me for a long time.

I was so blindsided when I realized there were two people in the relationship but only one of them really mattered--him--that I was sick to my stomach not just for months but years. And I have visited this forum religiously to cleanse myself of my illusions.

Today I am still struggling to recover from the shattering of my belief not just in a man, or a soul connection, but my belief in recovery itself. My partner is a star. He is the winner they all adore. And if he is the poster child for recovery, I just can't believe in it anymore. It is hard to believe in something I have only read about but never seen. I love the AA Big Book, its passion and its heart and its humility.....and I made the mistake of believing that people who are in recovery must surely be living the 12 steps. Surely.

I have no wisdom to share here other than my profound realization that what everyone here said is true (and the RA's say this here all the time): actions over words.

If you are still loving those phone calls and letters and special walks in the park with someone who is in active addiction or who is in recovery but not really and you think you are connecting.....be careful. It is a selfish disease, it is chronic, relapsing, and it requires daily vigorous management for life. An active addict does not care about you. And a recovering addict who is unable to put you first as mutually as you put him/her first....does not care about you either.

Thank you, all you SR veterans. I still wake up in pain and sometimes nausea, in disbelief and shock from being devastated by a recovery god. And I head for the computer and read all your hard true words until I feel clear and clean again.

Your friend,
EnglishGarden