I first joined SR the day I quit drinking. I read a lot over on the F&F sections before I ever posted in them and still mostly post on the "other side". But when I was drinking and doing drugs, I had an entire social circle of others that were doing the same. I had several relationships with qualifiers. So reading the F&F threads made so much about my own relationships become clear. Suddenly I could understand why certain things had happened in my relationships. I came to realize that so much of the dysfunction was typical of alcholics/addicts. I never got defensive, but it may have helped that I didn't post my own story for quite a while.
Reading over here made me see how much I had contributed to the insanity. Since I had been drinking and doing drugs, I knew that I had no desire anymore to have other people that were still doing so in my life. It wasn't a good thing for my recovery. I immediately removed all of the drinkers/druggies from my life with the exception of my then live-in boyfriend. It took me a year in recovery to finally ask him to move out.
But I read stuff over here constantly trying to figure out how to handle stuff. Trying to learn to detach, andto focus on me and my side of the fence. I never struggled against accepting that I was codependent. It was clear from my long string of dysfunctional relationships. It wasn't as if I just happened to end up with somebody that started drinking or using. I picked a whole string of them. And for me, it went a lot deeper than just whether or not my partner was drinking or using. It was a problem with my thinking. It has to do with always obsessing with what somebody else is (or isn't) doing rather than focusing on what I am or should be doing.
I am now in a different relationship with a guy who doesn't drink or do drugs. But I can still find myself in a bad place worrying about things in the relationship when I could be out enjoying my life.
Reading here has helped tremendously in recognizing these patterns. I am getting better about not going there, but it still happens. But coming to understand what I do has helped tremendously. I am still striving for self-care, to put the focus on me, and to not lost myself thinking about my relationship or the few problems in it.
I've also come to see how much my drug and alcohol abuse was intertwined with my codependency. There was so much that I couldn't control or change about other people that rather than changing what I could, I drank or got high to ignore my feelings about it.