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Old 01-05-2012, 08:06 PM
  # 6 (permalink)  
tromboneliness
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Back East
Posts: 704
Originally Posted by CRandall View Post
I thought I would meet some man who would "save" me and never abandon me like my father and my birthparents... What I now understand, after about ten years of being on my own, is that the behaviors I have learned as a child have followed me to adulthood and I am not okay. I've been running away from every single person who has hurt me. This means I've lived in five different cities in the last 10 years, never staying one place long enough.... yet again, I've been abandoned by the boyfriend and wondering what I did to deserve that kind of treatment yet again. Angry at my dad for not caring about me enough to give me a childhood without drinking.
There's a pattern here -- and it sounds as though you're recognizing it.

When my wife (now sober 15 years) was in treatment, i went to a "family week" they had at the treatment center. Among other things, I had a couple of one-on-one sessions with one of their relationship counselors. She told me, "You're going to have to work on understanding how you got involved with this person and why. You can either do it now -- in this relationship -- or you can end it and move on, but you'll probably end up getting involved with someone else who's just like her. So you can do the work now, or do it later."

What she was getting at was that we tend to be drawn to a type -- a lot of people in Al-Anon will say that they've had one relationship after another, after another -- all with alcoholics, and they're not sure why!

You seem to be saying that you get into a relationship, cling to it, and wait for the other person to split up with you. What's the common thread -- is there a "type" that you tend to gravitate toward?

I'm really not sure what the pattern was with me, but there was a pattern. My wife had a very similar family of origin to mine -- two alcoholic parents, or at least one bad one and one that drank along with him.

Awareness, acceptance, action, goes the saying... Awareness is the biggest one!

T
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