ACOA12

I have so many issues. Do you? I know that some are directly related to being an ACoA but some aren't.

I have been diagnosed with ADD (without the Hyperactivity), Depression, Anxiety.

I have really poor coping skills and don't get over romantic relationships ending well at all. It has taken me years to get over 2 different guys that I dated (no engagement even!) I think these are due to "daddy issues." I haven't dated in many years. Break ups are normal but the way that I react is not.

I went back to school for a second career and did poorly and eventually had to leave. The shame, guilt and trauma I felt literally ruined my life. I became a social recluse and lost all of my friends, I no longer did the volunteer work that I loved.

My life is in shambles and I on top of that, I still live with my alcoholic father as I'm still unable to support myself.

happybeingme

Hi! Welcome to the forum. Being an ACoA has far reaching implications. I have a dysfunctional mother, alcoholic father.

I am also a recovering alcoholic, suffer from clinical depression ( medicated), situational anxiety, and low self esteem, and shy.

You are absolutely not alone. Isolating and relationship problems are quite common.

Do you go to therapy, support group, or take meds?

ACOA12

Thanks happybeingme!

I take meds for the ADD (Concerta), Zoloft and Klonopin. I suppose that they work. I would love to try some different ones though.

I've been in therapy on and off. The one have now is ok but I don't think she really gets how the ADD affects me or how all of my issues together have really affected my life and if I don't get some of it figured out, I'm not going to be able to attempt to have a romantic relationship or even develop deep, authentic friendships again.

I also go on and ADD Forum just like this one that helps a ton.

tromboneliness

I've also struggled with ADD -- it was really bad when I was in high school, and my grades were all over the place despite the fact that I was a bright kid. In college, I somehow -- through sheer force of will -- managed to suck it up and get good grades, mostly because of the big bucks my Dad was paying to send me there. It made working as a journalist and technical writer pretty, um, interesting at times.

About 3-4 years ago, my pdoc had me take Adderall, and I found it extremely helpful. I would get so focused that I'd be relentless, especially when doing stuff like cleaning house ("oh, I'm almost done, but just one more shelf and I'll quit," etc.).

I took it for about 3 years. It worked well, but I started to feel as though it might not be having quite as much effect as when I started. Also, I began to be concerned about the idea (not the ill effects, because I don't think there were any) of taking amphetamines every day for years on end, so I stopped taking it.

I've actually done pretty well without it. I think it actually helped me develop some better habits, and just generally get an idea of how it feels to be focused and on-task. So now, I'm able to do that fairly well on my own, without the meds. Not 100% of the time, etc. -- progress, not perfection, and all that -- but that's been my experience, anyway.

T

Liberator4EVA

Well I'll throw this one out there, since it's quantifiable, verifiable and definitely falls outside the usual cluster of ACoA issues...

In sexual terms I guess you could say I was a "late developer", to put it mildly. It's quite the reverse of what many of you guys report on here, which triggers sneaking feelings of admiration/jealousy.

To define the condition, i'd say it's a state of being inexperienced, and that inexperience seeming to pose a barrier to acquiring experience, forming a vicious circle.

To start off with, I had no siblings, except for a blissful few years aged 8-12, lived geographically apart from the extended family. So the opposite sex were mysterious. Apart from AM, who was unpredictable and sometimes fightening.

Mum and Dad moved a lot, i had four different schools growing up. Each time we'd move, i'd be the only new face in the class and tend to get picked on. Why? Too passive? Poorly developed social skills? No siblings (mutual defense)? After a year or two, i'd finally get accepted by the peer group and start to make friends.. then we'd move again. One of these moves came at a bad time, aged 13-14, when boys and girls are first supposed to start dating , in mainstream uk culture. There doesn't seem be the same godfearing , teetotal, conservative sect you get in the US, at least i never encountered it.

My previous school was large, situated in a leafy dormitory town in the north of England. We were allowed to leave the premises at break times, so people just tended to form small groups of friends who hung out, came together for lessons but left each other alone. This new school was smaller, but we kept inside over breaks while the staff dissappeared to smoke fags, mark homework, smoke fags, prepare lessons and smoke more fags. Meanwhile, the kids used the time to beat the cr@p out of each other. The whole class passed the time sitting on their desks waiting for the break to end, forming a class-wide clique. Towards the end of my time there, that claustrophobic closeness felt good, like a surrogate family.

When i arrived however i was an outsider and the subject of ridicule because of my accent, the new school being in the south of the country. Not a good time to be going through puberty. More so because this was a small town and this school was the only one in it. I was hardly likely to proposition the same girls that joined the whole class in baying for my blood.

So, there's my excuses. For whatever reason, I got to be 15 having yet to date or kiss a girl, and suddenly became aware this was a PROBLEM. Now it's a myth to say that girls are valued for chastity and boys for promiscuity. Being a player certainly sends other boys the message that you're an alpha male, which can be reinforced in other ways to show that you're not somebody to be messed with. But nobody really likes them, in private, we all thought this guy that made a point of asking every girl he met for their phone number in front of the whole class, was an absolute dick. However , being able to talk to the opposite sex and having a steady girlfriend were signs of maturity and self confidence. Lacking these things marked you out as a victim, made you less desirable and left you with no defence from homophobic slurs/accusations of sexual deviancy.

At this point I gained access to a new source of information about sex, namely the letters/reader's stories pages of my stepdad's soft porn magasines (the cache was poorly hidden, probably on purpose). This taught me several things

1) with any act from kissing to the full spectrum of sexual behaviour , your technique is going to be horrible at first but will eventually get better with "practice"

2) sexual stamina was necessary to satisfy a woman , however when loosing one's virginity everything was likely to be over in less than 10 seconds. The woman is likely to be greatly offended and depart in a huff, and tell all her friends, so "practice" on total strangers that you will never meet again.

So there you had it... all you had to do was to con as many women into bed as possible, and disappoint them bitterly, to become "good" at sex. Presumably, this is what all my friends had been doing the past couple years, with inexperienced girls who knew no better, and who were now "good" at sex, any girls i now dated would be experienced and expect me to be accomplished, completing the vicious circle.

Such messages were reinforced by my first jobs, which of course would mostly be blue collar, low paid, low skill and in retail/office environments, where most of the staff would be middle-aged and female. They'd constantly ask probing questions which seemed to be aimed at determining my sexual history, which, in trying to protect my "terrible secret" I'd do my best to evade/obfuscate. Nowadays, i recognise this for what it is - sexual harrassment. These women were embarrasing me in front of the whole office/staffroom, and did not dare behave like that shorn of their "pack mentality". I suspect they just felt it was "harmless" flirting however, driven by sexual interest in someone half their age. Whenever i see any of my work colleages do the same to a new, young female member of staff, i'm pretty damn quick to call them out on it.

So, finally i decided to make a break with this bungled childhood and go to university, where maybe the open, hard drinking , hard partying lifestyle and fresh start would enable me to explore the final frontier.

I'd say it was a partial success. I spent the next 10 years being serially "friend zoned" by 4 different women. Logically, there are two possible explanations as to why that came to pass. One is that I might be fun to hang out with etc, but completely lack sex appeal, either physically, or just through giving off the "wrong vibes". The other is that i tended to steer away from women who showed signs of returning the interest, fearing the need to "perform" and reveal my sexual inexperience in the inevitable encounter that follows, but latched on to the girls who i felt comfortable talking to and who didn't make me feel under any pressure. Eventually, weeks, months or years later, i'd develop romantic feelings however hard i tried to resist.

These relationships were actually very close from an emotional point of view... the majority of the time we'd end up living together in a shared house. At times we'd live, work and party together, only retiring to our separate rooms to sleep. But no matter what psychoactive substance was ingested, no matter if i was too drunk to stand, there would be no touching , no DoL (declarations of love), no PDA.

The funny thing is those were some of my happiest days, even though i knew things would never develop into a proper relationship - I was just enjoying it for what it was. I actually felt little in the way of sexual fustration, even though i was constantly in the presence of the object of my desire with no actual prospect of doing so. Maybe that is the point. I can (and did, frequently...) take care of my own biological urges, but feel the need to look upon beauty, on a daily basis, have emotional contact with a woman, and have an object to direct my pair bonding instincts towards. These things i can't take care of myself!

The worst thing about being stuck in these "not quite real" relationships was not the lack of sex, but the insecurity. You are never a declared couple , at least on her terms. One day she will find someone that floats her boat sexually as well as offering some of what you bring to her, and you'll just have to pack your feelings up and try to move on. Also, there are hard limits on the level of "integration". The local property (*real estate) market is entering a boom, you need to get on the ladder before prices move out of reach, and neither of you can afford to buy on your own. But we can't buy a house together, because we're not a real couple. Etc.

My problem did eventually resolve itself, on the wrong side of 30. Lessons learned?

The Act - Except in the figurative sense, it's not "rocket science" after all. Also I had spent all that time worrying about how my junk would work, when in fact the problem is with that it attaches to - can't balance, no sense of rhythm, shoulder injury. I woke up the next day feeling completely different because i realised that nothing had changed at all . Of all the things I could choose to regret over this - not being able to get a GF, not getting married, buying a house, having kids, missing out on a wild sex life - i regretted only one thing, which is all that time lost feeling guilty and worrying about precisely nothing! I was a virgin - so the hell what? It was nobody else's business. And if i could deal with the lack of sex - and i could, if i had to - why the hell was it problem?

Another thing that really floored me was how easily it all happened. I didn't even see it coming. In the past, i'd be talking to a girl at a party or nightclub, and feel this sudden pressure and awkwardness. I thought I was expected to make some kind of advance or proposition, yet my instincts were screaming at me to stop, and i thought that I had "chickened out" and missed the window of opportunity on account of my condition, either getting friend zoned or rejected instead. With the benefit of hindsight after finally experiencing a relationship that did turn sexual, I wasn't "chickening out" due to my lack of experience, i was correctly picking up signals from the woman not to proceed further because she wasn't really interested, or was detecting that something wasn't quite right with the situation and the woman was trying to sleep with me for all the wrong reasons (rebound, bpd , trying to get back at someone etc).


Jeez, what's wrong with me. Why can't I ever write a short post? Let me know if i spin a good yarn, or these stories are too long and boring and could be summarised with less words !

tromboneliness

I don't think that's at all outside the realm of ACoA issues! I never had a date until I was 30 -- for many of the same reasons you had trouble -- then met a woman online, who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to go get it. And in this case, I was fortunate enough to be "it," so we became an item... and we still are, more than 20 years later. Which leads to my weird relationship history: have only had one relationship, ever, and it's still going -- so I've never been through a breakup! Of course, she did turn out to be an alcoholic, which I didn't really figure out until a few months after I had moved 1,000 miles to go live with her... but that's a long story. Illness, treatment, recovery -- she's been sober since 1996.

The bottom line is that a lot of the stuff you describe is very familiar, and I think it does stem from ACoA/Family-o-Origin issues. Not wanting to show feelings, fearing rejection, the whole nine yards. There are probably a lot more of us out there than you ever hear about, because for a guy, romantic ineptitude is pretty much the ultimate inviolable secret. In my case, there are ongoing issues -- my wife is also an ACA, and I think we both cling to our relationship at times for reasons that are not entirely healthy, fearing loneliness and rejection/abandonment. But the bottom line is, we're still together, and are probably staying that way!

T

happybeingme

Guys, great shares! Thank you so much for having the courage to speak up! I think not just our dysfunction should be discussed but the lack of certain skills should be talked about as well. We didn't just grow up with the Dont ask, don't talk, don't feel. I suspect for many of us there was deep fundamentals neglect.

I know for me my mom never really taught me to be a girl. Never taught me to do my hair, put on makeup, pick pretty clothes. It has always made me feel as if somehow I am a faker. Like I have a big sign on my forehead that says "not really a woman". She just never bothered with my sister's or I about that stuff or anything really.

guiab

Both of my parents were alcoholics. One was the Jekyll-Hyde type, either a happy drunk or spewing insults and anger at anyone in the room, and the other was the quiet retreat-to-bedroom alcoholic, hiding bottles all over the house.
I only recently learned that I also have PTSD from being awake for part of an eye surgery procedure when I was a year old. Alcoholism in the house definitely did not help with the almost instinctive mistrust and dread of the PTSD.
The prominent effect of PTSD, any likely also from being ACOA, was in relationships. I have never had a relationship last a year, and only maybe 5 that lasted more than a month.
I am going to a somatic therapist (lot of body awareness work, not a lot of talk, and definitely effective). In prior years, the PTSD had been diagnosed as ADD and depression, but the treatments (drugs, and talk therapy) were never effective.
I regularly attend Al-Anon meetings (there are no ACOA meetings in my area), and that is the one relationship I have maintained for many years. Al-Anon's focus on recovery keeps me focused on recovery, which is very important. I have found that few people in those rooms have the exact same story, and my PTSD is definitely unique, but there is alot of empathy, and a large overlap and commonality of how people heal.

Liberator4EVA

Glad to hear you and your S.O. are still going strong :-)

Years ago, I did find an online forum for guys with such issues. It was an awful place, lots of complaining about the world and very little effort to make progress, so i didn't stick around. However, being shy, being an only child and moving schools did appear to be risk factors, didn't hear of any ACA, so i assumed it wasn't an ACA issue.

Of those 3 risk factors, having a shy/nervous/avoidant temperament is the innate one perhaps, but could have been influenced by how things were with mom when i was very small - stuff i'm obviously not going to remember.

Rejection's a funny one. I wasn't afraid of a "No", I was afraid of creating (an embarrassing) scene. The look of horror on her face as you drop the question. The music stopping with the noise of the needle being dragged hastily off the turntable, conversation stopping abruptly as people turn and stare open mouthed. Yeah, that's my Room 101.

A few times, things did come out in the open and the girl would explain to me politely that she wasn't interested in that way, returning to our prior conversation in the very next sentence. It was actually a huge relief to know where i was and to have averted a "scene". I no longer had to torture myself thinking the chosen one was going to slip through my hands through MY inaction.

Come to think of it, I was probably more afraid of a "yes", which would be an immediate WTF am i supposed to do now situation.

Hiding feelings? One thing it's definitely an advantage to maintaining a FZ relationship ! I hate that term BTW, but what else can i call them? GF was a taboo term!

I get the feeling, that both parties in a FZ relationship tend to get into such situations repeatedly. Myself obviously. But of the women i was involved with, 3 of them had prior history of secret admirers, knights in shining armour etc. who'd still write letters, come and visit, send gifts.

NWGRITS

I have daddy issues (was very promiscuous starting at 14). I have mommy issues too, thanks to AM, and have a great distrust for other women. Anxiety, depression, Aspergers, three autoimmune disorders, and the wide variety of ACoA issues. I'm just a bundle of fun, man.

ACOA12

Thank you all, for responding!! I don't feel so alone now!! I hope that more people respond and we can continue to support each other!!

Soberpotamus

I have so many of the Aspergers traits. When were you diagnosed? How'd that go? I'm hesitating about going for a diagnosis. It seems silly now that I'm in my thirties.

advbike

I also had the "late bloomer" syndrome, like Liberator mentions. I was small, and developed late, so I hated school. I went to three different high schools in different states. Just didn't know what to do, how to relate to girls, had lots of anxiety, etc. My dad worked overseas, so I had no male role model. And mom was emotionally needy.

Discovering alcohol at age 18 was a godsend, and helped me cope, until of course it didn't. I dated many women over the years, had good and bad relationships, was married.. but could never make them last. I eventually broke free of alcohol but still have plenty of insecurities and issues to work on. Mainly learning to like myself.

ACOA12

I wasn't diagnosed with ADD until my thirties and it helped so much!!! You are still young!!

makomago

My partner is ACA; although prefers to avoid "dwelling on the past" as she calls it, "won't look at what happened, no point" and "doesn't need the pity party of 12 step fellowships" - that's ok, I'm not trying to fix her. And I'm absolutely convinced and have been for a while that we cling to our relationship for unhealthy reasons. Fear of abandonment being only one of the traits that applies in this case for me.

Recently, however, I've found in my search for my true self, understanding my own needs and wants, 'recovery' from my ACA and Codie issues etc etc (I'll ignore drink and drugs for now as today I don't want to drink)... that I can't bare it. I can't bare the prospect of staying. Unfortunately, I can't find the courage to leave either!!!

A friend shared something with me recently;

"No one stays in a relationship unless they're getting something out of it. The key to freedom is finding out what one is getting and if it's worth receiving. If it's not worth it, but one stays, they're fear of abandonment is a symptom of "I'm not enoughism" and they'll continue to settle for less. All relationships are a mirror of ourselves."

I can smell the wisdom, but I can't taste it :-(

happybeingme

Mako, I definitely agree with your friend unless there are children involved. Than I think that can skew one's thinking. All of us here came from dysfunctional homes and I think that sometimes we think as we are working on getting healthy that we have to make things up to our children. But, that needn't be. Children can grow healthy and happy without both parents together provided both parents ensure that the children feel safe, secure, and loved.

I hope you find the strength and peace to do what you need to do.

ACOA12

Very wise friend. It's all really good especially the bolded. Gulp.

NWGRITS

I was diagnosed at 31 and I'm... 31! I actually went through the process when my daughter was being diagnosed with Autism. Suddenly everything made sense. All those years of "Why are you so weird?" "Can't you just act normal?" "What's your problem?" finally have an answer. When I started talking to other women with Aspergers it was like I'd found long-lost sisters. These are women I *can* talk to without feeling judged or looked down upon. It was a huge relief. It's not too late to seek out a diagnosis! Researchers are just now starting to study Aspergers in women, so the more who come forward to say, "Hey, this is me. Don't discount my life because you think only men can have it!", the better. We really do need more women stepping out, because we don't present the same way men do.

tromboneliness

I get a little nervous when I hear people say "I won't settle," because that is never realistic. At least in my experience, I haven't seen a perfect person, house, job, city, company, product... or anything! Every decision we make, we're always "settling," whether we admit it or not. "I'm doing self-care, I'm worth it, I won't settle," always sounds like healthy Program-induced growth... but that runs smack into "progress, not perfection." "Settling" for less than perfection isn't a sign of weakness -- if anything, it's a sign of growth.

That stuff about "dwelling on the past" and "the 12-step pity party" is denial at work. Loosely translated: "My history is too scary to look at, so I'm going to pretend there's no point in it, and make fun of you for growing and changing -- meanwhile hoping you'll stop, because if you don't, you might not like me anymore!" But that's her thing -- nothing you can do about it, as you've figured out. I have some of the same issues -- although my wife (sober since '96 -- doesn't go to meetings or actively "work a program," but seems to have internalized the principles well enough that stuff works for her) is doing OK, I think she could benefit from going through the same exercises I go through with my ACA sponsor (the yellow workbook). But if she's not into it, she's not into it. She's still sober, everything looks OK there, and she's obviously not leaving me -- for whatever reasons, I'm not questioning anything at this point, got enough on my plate as it is.

So ya: the bottom line is --

Things I cannot change: other people

Thing I can change: me

Wisdom to know the difference: tricky!

T

Soberpotamus

Thanks for sharing your experience, NWGrits. I've been reading a few books and interacting on some Aspie forums. I've managed to get this far without a diagnosis. I am torn on whether I'll seek one.