View Single Post
Old 04-02-2016, 10:17 AM
  # 5 (permalink)  
DayTrader
12-Step Recovered Alkie
 
DayTrader's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: West Bloomfield, MI
Posts: 5,797
Nobody here will know whether you should move on or not...

What I tell the guys I sponsor when they're faced with an issue like this is to start praying for some inspiration and then to act upon it.

As far as praying that she comes back.......well.......that's not a selfless act (at least in my experience). I'm not throwing stones here. Hell, I did the same thing when I was getting divorced.

After several inventories I learned that what I was doing was, once again, deciding what she had to do to make me happy. Was I being selfless and praying she is the most happy and content she can be......even if it means she needs to go somewhere else? Nope, I was praying she'd come back and make ME happy.

When I'd offer to split my 401k, when I offered to take on all the debts, when I let her have her pick of items from the house was I doing it because I wanted her to enjoy her life going forward? No, not really. I was doing those things so I could impress her and make her think she needed me and would be better off with me than without me.

As I got more and more clarity about my true motives I came to the conclusion I wasn't really any different than when I was drinking. Same selfish motives, same looking-out-for-#1 first, same desire to make the world behave as I wanted them for my benefit. Looking at it another way and using some AA terminology, I had made HER my High Power. She was what I needed to be ok. She was the thing that gave my life purpose and meaning. She was what I thought about all day and essentially worshiped. She was what and who I was dependent upon. And true to form, I just knew I was the one to figure it out and concoct a "fix" to make me feel better. As a mentor of mine told me, "Mike, with a Higher Power like that.......no wonder your life's a mess."

Staying physically sober didn't make any of that stuff stop. If anything, it gave me more awake-time to think about it more.....and I felt worse and worse. In AA we talk about the inability to live life sober. Looked at another way, to me it has meant that when I'm sober and running my life as I have been; full of dependencies, needing x, y and z for me to be ok, thinking I know what's best for other people, unable to cope with loneliness, unable to handle the common bouts of depression that pop into my life from time to time, and so on.......well, I just don't do a very good job. Now, I thought I could do a good job but when I got honest with myself.......the scorecard sure didn't support my beliefs.

IMO, stuff like this above....these are the roots of my alcoholism - these are the causes and conditions that lead to me picking up a drink even when I don't want to pick up a drink. Or......they lead me to buy stuff I have no business wasting money on......eating food when I'm not really hungry......not doing the daily chores in my life that I want to get accomplished but I don't accomplish because I feel bad and think I need to do something to feel good - even when that thing I do to feel good ultimately does me more harm than I can imagine.

I think you're onto something big here Tranklin but it's a lot bigger than just knowing if she's going to come back or not. Bigger than knowing what the odd are. Bigger than getting what you want or think you need. Like it was for me, I think it's a great opportunity to do some introspection and some growing like I had to do and still have to do.

I wish you all my best. It was a painful but wonderful learning opportunity for me.
DayTrader is offline