Originally Posted by
Stung 
Hammer makes fun of me for my "if, then" way of thinking, but that's how I think. I feel like everything in life has a handoff or an opportunity cost. I believe that and it's been really damn consistent. Problem is that I haven't really tested that theory in the relationship field because I don't really know what I'm doing. My husband is really the only long term adult romantic relationship that I've ever had. People talk about love all the time and I love him regardless. I'll love him if we divorce. And I cannot control whether someone loves me or not (I think I'm a really lovable person but that's therapy stuff, not program stuff.) I don't want to regret divorcing him. I want to know with every fiber in my being that I don't want to be with him. I need it to be more than anger or hurt. Just like I love a lot of people but that doesn't mean I want to marry them all. This isn't a heart thing for me. It's a total head thing.
I understand what you're saying here Stung, but I'm still reading "I'm trying to apply left-brain logic to right-brain problems." I don't think it's a theory that CAN be tested in relationships for that reason.
I think that by nature relationships are emotional & the "opportunity cost" of having them isn't measurable in a tangible way.... but that doesn't stop us from being affected in what
seems (read: feels) like a tangible way. And sometimes those costs trigger us in ways we can't plan for. One day you wake to find yourself in a situation & your Plan B doesn't seem to fit because it didn't account for all the variables like red talked about. People ARE variables, IMO.
To me part of accepting being in a relationship with a Recovering Alcoholic means that I am going into it knowing that those variables exist, can pop up at anytime & I have zero control over them or what domino effect it will have on me or DD until it happens. If I have an if/then way of handling it, that means I have expectations related to it all too.
What if you get it all figured out in your head in a way that lets you place everything into those if/then columns & rows & he "gets" it & gets serious about his recovery & holds it together for 5 solid years...... and then relapses suddenly without warning. Is it possible or even
reasonable to expect the You-Who-You-Are-Now to know exactly how you will feel or what your reaction will be? I would wager that over 5 yrs of sober time a
lot would change in your lives & your kids' lives and that you couldn't even possibly predict all the ways the Future You would be impacted by something like that. So suddenly, nothing fits into those if/then boxes like you thought it would when you defined it all originally.
But at this point in time, I do feel like I do have a happy life. Then I talk to someone else candidly about what I have going on and they basically tell me that my life seems really stressful and then I feel like I'm full of crap. :/ This part is super confusing for me. I really struggle with giving other people free rent in my dome.
I think a lot of this is perspective too Stung.... Maybe it does sound super stressful TO THEM, based on THEIR experiences and only hearing the highlights. I'll bet that if they opened up & shared their garbage you could make the same kinds of assumptions about their lives based on your own POV. My friend is a teacher & when I hear about her job I think it has to be the most challenging & stressful type of living.... dealing with so many different personalities in the classroom, so many diff kinds of parents, the catty-coworker BS, the pressure from the local, state & federal administration. But to her it's NBD at all because she balances it all against the positives that she loves about the work. She shudders to think of doing a job like mine & thinks it's an outrageous amount of pressure, but I don't feel that same way. It doesn't make you "full of crap" just because you don't share the same perspective as the person giving you their opinion about your life.
Did you watch that Brene Brown TED talk that was linked in my thread last week (by FindingPeace1)? It's called the Power of Vulnerability & at about the halfway point, she talks about having a bit of a breakdown as a researcher (a very if/then type of thinker) having to embrace the idea that our humanity can't be predicted in such an if/then kind of way.
Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability | Talk Video | TED.com