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Old 08-12-2012, 08:35 AM
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lillamy
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It was then that I realized that I really didn't know what I wanted, but it was very easy for me to point out what I DIDN'T want. I don't want to live with verbal abuse, I don't want to be disrespected, I want my opinion to have value, I don't want to live with a partner who uses alcohol in a harmful way, I don't want to be manipulated in conversations, I don't want to live with someone who uses pornography, I don't want to live with someone who justifies breaking the law or who disregards it, I don't want to live in a home where I am blamed for things that I didn't do or cause.
My therapist says that this is textbook normal for a person who has lived with an alcoholic or lived with abuse. And she actually suggest that I start there -- by listing what I didn't want in my life. Because once you've done that, you can start looking at what you do want.

Basically, what your list of don'ts tells me is that... you want to live a normal life. Because remove all of that, and you have a normal life. Where you disagree and get hurt and fall and twist your ankle but it's within a context of each person taking responsibility for their own feelings and actions.

The conclusion I came to was that I couldn't even start defining what "happy" looked like until I got out of "miserable" and to "normal." Sort of like being in negative numbers and having to get to zero before I could even consider positive numbers.

I believe that happiness largely is inside -- like the saying, it's 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to what happens to you. But that saying starts on the zero point. You can't use that kind of saying when you're in an abusive relationship with an addict. That butchers the intent of the saying, I think. I mean, if the person who is supposed to protect you drives drunk, pukes in your purse, and pees in your bed -- there's like no effing way you can have anything but a bad attitude to that if you're a sane person, right?

I think if you are fundamentally unhappy in yourself, nothing else is going to really change that. It's like it's harder to bring someone from minus 30 to zero if they're not willing to go there.

But I know for a fact that other people can both contribute to and subtract from your happiness potential.

If you expect someone else to make you happy, you'll be disappointed. I think... if that's what your partner is supposed to do for you, you enter into an unbalanced relationship from the start. What power you give someone else, if they are responsible for your happiness!

And your AH's "I've never made you happy and I don't think I ever can" just sounds like "I'm groveling in the dirt here to make you feel guilty and if I do it for long enough, maybe you'll tell me I'm making you happy and then this whole discussion goes away."
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