I apologize for not knowing who from SR posted this a long time ago but I saved it to help me understand DETACHMENT and BOUNDARIES in my early recovery.
DETACHMENT –what it is/our difficulties with it and why/excuses we make for being unable to detach from our loved ones?
Lets say that if every time I come over to your house, I go to your china hutch and I grab some of great gamma's china and throw it on the floor, shattering the priceless heirlooms, IT'S PERFECTLY OK to never invite me over again!!!! BUT if you DO invite me over, there's a reasonable assumption that you should probably
a) lock up the china
b) buy MORE china or
c) buy paper plates.
It’s about BOUNDARIES....YOUR boundaries, how much "china" you are willing to lose. And you decide what is more important to you - my presence OR your china intact. Cuz chances are you won't get both.
So, I am who I am. I have shown you who I am. I have shown you what I do, how
I operate.
You can choose to NOT invite me into your home.
You can choose to ask me to leave once the first saucer starts flying.
You can let me smash them all to smithereens. But first YOU have to decide which of those behaviors you can tolerate, if any.
And if you noticed, in none of those scenarios did you have the expectation that I would CHANGE or do anything different, only what YOU would do faced with my actions.