Originally Posted by
GettingBy 
I had the exact same thoughts... I wondered for YEARS if I was being too picky, too demanding, too critical... too unrealistic. Didn't help that I had my XAH TELLING me that I was all those things!!!
So, before recovery... my life was like a limbo contest... how low could I go?!?! I kept lowering the bar on my expectations. I thought that "accepting life as-is" meant... you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!
That's not the case at all.
Acceptance means we see things as they are... and then we decide what WE do or don't do with it. Accepting my XAH AS-IS meant - seeing him, warts and all, and deciding if I wanted to live with that the rest of my life or not. Accepting DIDN'T equate to settling!! For me, acceptance set me free.
What I wanted for my life (my expectations!!) were NOT unreasonable... but expecting my XAH to meet them... that WAS unreasonable!! Sooo... in my case... it turns out that I had been shoving a round peg into a square hole all those years. My XAH just wasn't the ying for my yang
Phew... I felt soooo much better when I got to that point. It set us BOTH free. My anger at him subsided. And the best part... I got my self-worth back. I was worth more and deserved better treatment than I was getting... and now I'm free to go get it.
Thanks for letting me share!
Shannon
Thanks, Shannon, for sharing. My mom shared with me exactly that about being married to my dad. Her second husband is great for her even though I don't get along with him. My dad was like a lump on a log who just sat there and drank every night. He wasn't argumentative, he wasn't a jerk to her, he just wasn't 'anything', and she finally realized that her expectations of marriage weren't going to be met by my dad, but she was able to find that with someone else. And, my dad found someone else, too, very quickly. I swear I was never really bitter or angry over my parent's divorce. They both found folks who met their needs: my mom met a man who wanted to eat healthy, be told what vitamins to take, and was willing to read all the new articles on health and wellness and my dad met a woman who could out-drink and out-smoke him and she was the breadwinner in their relationship so he had a provider, too! Go figure.
Every time I share some of the 'woes me' stuff that AH writes, she says, "You know who that sounds like? Like your father." Now, I swore up and down that I wasn't going to marry a guy like my father. AH didn't smoke when we got married,he quit drinking before we got married, and he was going to church and seemed committed to a positive and bright future. None of those things reminded me of my dad. So, what do I have now? My AH smokes a pipe daily(he started this last fall out of the blue), he drinks, and has turned his back on going to church. Strange coincidence? I think not!