FallenAngelina

With this, you are most assuredly pointed in the right direction.

This is a huge factor in the benefit of both partners having their own programs. There's a myth that good partners should be able to share everything and that's just not so. Good partners (even good separated or divorced partners) allow each other to be different. The only way to get to a more peaceful place with this kind of allowing is to not focus on what we think the other person needs and to work our own wellness program. It can be challenging when the whole tenor of our relationship has been to be involved with each other's emotional business (to the point of enmeshment for many of us.) This is why most AlAnon meetings begin with the statement "In Al-Anon we discover that no situation is really hopeless and that it is possible for us to find contentment and even happiness, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not." Focusing on our own resentments and allowing the alcoholic to focus on his own resentments is an enormous healing step, whether the relationship continues on as spouses or exes or friends. Focusing on our own resentments is what we do for ourselves and for our own healing, no matter what the alcoholic is choosing to do or think.