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Old 10-17-2012, 10:01 PM
  # 5 (permalink)  
EnglishGarden
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: new moon road
Posts: 1,545
Welcome to SR. I hope the forum can be of support to you in this crisis you face.

Your abf does not need any enablers in his life. The worst thing in the world for him will be anyone who tolerates his refusal to get clean and sober --by all means necessary--and who is willing to ride the roller coaster of addiction with him. Enablers help addicts kill themselves. They do not cause the addiction and they cannot control or cure it. But they can definitely smooth the way for its continuance.

It is very common for the new girlfriend of addicts/alcoholics to assume a feeling of protectiveness and even pride because she is standing by him when everyone else has "written him off." She usually does not know that family members who draw firm boundaries with addicts/alcoholics are expressing the highest form of love possible, as it is extremely painful for family members to draw those boundaries and they do it because they know it is necessary to the addict/alcoholic's potential bottom.

It is hopelessness that sends addicts into recovery. It is not girlfriends in waiting rooms of hospital emergency rooms. Those girlfriends almost always--in the early months, anyway--tell the addict that he will get well, she will help him, they'll go to meetings together, she will never leave him, she will not abandon him like everyone else in his life has abandoned him. She does not realize how sick he is, how damaged his brain is, how out of control his thinking and behavior have become. She usually knows little to nothing about the disease of addiction and she usually does all the wrong things as a result. She is an enabler. Just what he doesn't need.

Already you are being made sick by his addiction. Already you are lying to your loved ones about the reality of his addiction. And you are telling yourself he was "everything I had asked for."

The truth about active addicts is they lie. They pose. They wear a million masks. And they say what works. What hooks. What manipulates. What creates a thrill. A relationship with an active addict is always one of illusion because when we think we are connecting on a profound level.....we are connecting with someone who is loaded. Even if the addict is not apparently intoxicated. His brain is always loaded.

Your abf has to have a year of solid recovery under his belt before you can begin a new relationship with him. The relationship today cannot be sustained.

You can draw that boundary. You can choose to wait and see.

But there is no other solution. He has to be clean and sober.
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