In another thread, someone mentioned hope as something that prevents them from moving on. Instead of hijack that thread, I thought I'd start a new one.
I was very stuck on hope as well. I hoped my exa would stop drinking so he and I could live happily ever after. I have realized through reading on SR how unrealistic that hope actually was. It was not a simple hope like hoping I'd find a lost ring or necklace. It was hoping I'd find something that never existed in the first place. It was like hoping that when I found the silver ring I lost, it had turned to gold. I think I finally get that it just isn't going to happen.
Like all alcoholics there were two sides to my ex: the ideal man I fell in love with, and the mean abusive drunk. I've learned on SR that even if exa gets sober, he won't become his better alcoholic half, he will become someone else entirely. The ideal man was only half of a whole mess. He had the luxury of being able to act like a hero during the day because at night he could go home and hide from everything in the bottle.. He acted ideally because he was mirroring the person he knew I wanted him to be. He was not real.
I don't think my ex will ever get sober, but if he does, would I want a man who has twenty plus years of emotional maturity to catch up on, and a likely untreatable personality disorder? Do I want MY life to revolve around HIS battle with alcohol and probable relapses? No.
I'm starting to see that hoping anyone will be anything they are not is very unhealthy for me. I am not sure that hoping an alcoholic will change is any different than refusing to accept them for who they are, and/or refusing to accept the situation for what it is. I used hope as an excuse to not work on myself for a long time and felt justified in doing so because hope has such positive connotations.
Hope should never be an excuse not to act. If the boat has sprung a leak, she better start bailing out water or she is going to sink. She can hope she won't sink while she is working to get the water out of the boat but she better not just sit there doing nothing but hoping. I need to work more actively on my recovery. Right now I'm just hoping life will be kind to me. I'm not sinking anymore but my boat has about an inch of water in the bottom and I've done a crappy patch job on the hole.