Originally Posted by MindfulMan

In any 12 Step recovery Step 4 involves looking at resentments. One of the most crucial parts of this is looking at these resentments and acknowledging our part in it...because we always have a part. It's a rare case where the resentment is ENTIRELY do to the other person, usually when it's a resentment towards an abusive parent that started in early childhood. Other than that...as Rosanne Rosannadana would say...."It's always something."

I get it. Living with an addict of any kind is beyond frustrating and painful and difficult. Angry judgement is nearly impossible to avoid. The worst is the situation that you find yourself. There are reasons why you want this relationship to continue, and she may make this impossible no matter what you try to do. Being in limbo sucks.

I think that the Step 4 exercise can be useful to ANYONE, not just those in recovery. My therapist and I used a highly modified form of it to start our work together, which has been very successful.

What is your part your resentment to this relationship? Because nobody is completely blameless. Why does she perceive everything you say as "judgy?" What things about yourself and your communication could be changed to change your relationship to one you can tolerate or even enjoy? Because at the end of the day it is impossible to change someone else's behavior, only our own.

Sometimes we find ourselves in an impossible situation and have exhausted all options to change it, yet find ourselves still in it and resenting the hell out of the person and the situation. In that case, our part in it may be simply remaining in a situation we should have left already. That was one of mine.

Blowing off steam and venting...I more than get that. Being vulnerable to the whims of an addict is a living hell. They are not at all rational and their alliance is not to you, nor even to themselves. It's to their substance(s) of choice, always first and foremost. Dealing with someone in active addiction is crazy making, terrifying, sad and infuriating....sometimes all at once.

Yet only you can change your relationship to this person. They can and may change and stop their substance abuse. If they do, it may have something to do with you, and maybe not. The process of recovery is by its nature extremely selfish, as the #1 alliance is being changed from their substance to their recovery, with the same take-no-prisoners methods. The wonderful relationship that you remember will never return. It may be replaced by something else that is as or more wonderful, but it won't be the same. Recovery irrevocably changes both the addict and any relationships that they are in.

No wonder there is so much completely understandable resentment that survivors (and I use that word deliberately) of addictive relationships hold. Always remembering when they felt love, or at least a bond, with someone who chose substances over them, and holding out hope that they will give up their substance and return to them. There may be other reasons why there is a strong desire to continue the relationship, the shared life, children, family. AND IT COULD HAPPEN. But in the meantime you are left in an abusive relationship over which you have no direct control, when sometimes the only way to sanity is, however painful, to leave it and try to put your life back together elsewhere.

So ultimately, what can you do to change the situation and the relationship, if it's something you want to continue? Or how can you extricate yourself from it? Those are the only two choices that you really have, as you can't change what an addict, even one in recovery, will do.