The flowers still ARE lovely, and you get to enjoy them because they are lovely flowers.
As for your AH, he is NOT lovely, but just like he doesn't desecrate the flowers, he doesn't get to desecrate your life.
Firesprite wrote:
Also Liz, have you considered that you may NEVER trust him, regardless of how many changes he makes, how long he maintains sobriety?
I don't mean it as an absolute, but your relationship seems to have HIGH highs & LOW lows & long cycles of various forms of manipulation. It is only my observation, but it seems like in these kinds of extreme cases, the injured spouse sometimes simply can't ever rebuild that trust - that the saying, "too little, too late" literally applies to them.
Your response was:
what scares me the most: the fact that I might not be capable of trusting again even if someone is trying to prove they are trustworthy. I guess I feel that that's a problem with ME instead of seeing it as a problem with the other person. The 'there's too much water under the bridge' saying comes to my mind frequently. I think that's exactly what spurred this post originally: the frustration with myself and taking on the fact that I have difficulty with trust
I don't think you've got this quite sorted out. Firesprite was very specific "you may never trust HIM" and your response turned immediately to a generalized blaming of yourself not being able to trust again with another person.
Right now, you are very enmeshed with your AH. There is no other person in your intimate emotional life to trust or not trust. You don't have an across the board problem with trust, as you proved to yourself you trust other people just fine.
If I were asked to write a prescription for you, I would probably suggest that you jolt yourself free of using your emotional experience with your narcissistic alcoholic husband as the filter through which you consider how you relate to the rest of the world.
It doesn't seem to be happening while are you are living with him.
As Firesprite noted "your relationship seems to have HIGH highs & LOW lows & long cycles of various forms of manipulation."
When I've seen you get out from under his manipulation is mainly when he is behaving badly toward you. You can see it, feel it, believe it then. I think you falter when he gets back into the honeymoon part of the cycle and it feels better and you doubt yourself and the veracity of what you felt in the destructive part of the cycle.
This cycle lasts quite a long time - weeks or even months in both phases - and I think, from my observation, you tank again and go back to doubting yourself.
Can you really think about what your life would be like if you weren't centering around him? It may be that you have to have physical separation to get to the emotional separation that is eluding you. It isn't a matter of doing lots of stuff and keeping yourself busy and tired out at the end of the day.
It is more like you've been wearing somebody else's glasses and seeing yourself through their distortions. Time to take off HIS glasses and get your own vision back.
This is a hard one, and having lived with a narcissist, you've got my full support.
ShootingStar1