strategery

Ultimately, you have to figure out what you want from the relationship. While you may be trying to help him with his health, he is ultimately responsible for his health. You may give him some healthy items, but if he decides he's going to eat fast food the rest of the time, you can't control that.

Same with you. While I understand you want him to care about your health, he may not see your drinking as a problem and figure it's your choice to drink or not. He may also realize it's a double-edged sword if he does get involved.

At the end of the day, you have to decide how you want to live your life in terms of work, relationships, etc. I cannot answer those questions for you. At the same point you do have to take responsibility for whether you stay in the relationship, agree to take other people's shifts, etc.

I would highly recommend for you to stop worrying about everyone else's needs and making decisions that support what you want out of life, versus pleasing others.

least

I think you should sit him down and explain what you need from him. He may just not have a clue. Not everyone is empathic. I'd tell him what you need in the relationship and then see what happens.

And yes, if he has a car, why isn't he giving you rides to work and home?

sleepie

I really am direct with him. He just absolutely hates talking about things. Maybe later I will try to talk with him, but he really made a lifestyle out of avoiding people and talking as much as possible.

sleepie

Well he will give me bus fare but the trouble is there is no bus by the time I get out of work.
He just really hates to drive. Ok, that's just a thing he could do that would help so much even if it was once or twice a week. He just really, really made a little bubble for himself where he literally has not left a 3 mile radius of his dwelling, except to visit his parents, in many years. He was a shut in before we met and has even said if it wasn't for me he never would have started paying attention to diet or walking or lost weight. What I am saying is, he would actually have to do something, which he hates.

SparkleKitty

He doesn't sound like the kind of person you are looking for. Any time I've been in a relationship where I'm always keeping score of who does what for whom and when, I've been in trouble. Building resentments in your relationships aren't going to help you in recovery.

ScottFromWI

I think you need to ask yourself if this is really rhe kind of person you want to be in a relatiobship with.

zjw

sounds like he has a fair amount of his own issues. No relationship is perfect and everyones got there problems.


I know for me getting sober was a very very selfish decision. I know i sorta had to turn everything and everyone else off. I was a total mess luckily no one that mattered went any where and stuck around while i got my S*** together.

I cant say i blame you for doing the nice thingsyou do for him thats pretty cool. But just be careful not to bite off more then you can chew. if any of this is standing in the way of you being sober then you got some bigger issues on your hands.

EndGameNYC

Sleepie.

What's the motivation behind neglecting yourself and exhausting yourself in order anticipate and then to tend to others' needs?

You're a sensitive soul, and I too am not interested in judging you or provoking you to defensiveness. Given your childhood experiences with your parents, it's only natural that you'd learn to protect yourself from harsh criticism and emotional abandonment by people-pleasing through your adulthood. And that you'd take certain kinds of support as criticism.

Expectations within the parameters which you've described are meaningless. He lives and works "inside," and he continues to expect the same unconditional love from the rest of the world that he apparently received throughout his earlier years, now from one person: you. No wonder he loves visiting with his parents. He's created a way of living in which he doesn't need to deal with the conflicts, challenges and struggles that living "outside" presents us with. You chose a partner, and then chose to stay with a partner, who has very little to offer, and so you find yourself in an extremely unbalanced relationship, but one that makes psychological sense. You've both essentially found the perfect SO in each other.

I can get comfort from a number of sources. I can feed myself, house myself and care for myself. I can support myself financially and, to a certain extent, emotionally. I can also get company when I want or need it. All this without the gratuitous, inconsistent and unreliable care that comes with strings-attached "love" from another person, which I would reject in the first place anyway. I am not a glaring exception in this.

We love or fall in love with someone because we see and appreciate their potential as human beings. They are helped along in realizing that potential by the very love we give through our actions, and by their loving us back in order for us to see our own potential as they see it. When this does not occur, then the relationship is based more on separate, personal needs rather than the nurturance, care and concern that love brings. Yet this remains an ideal. We learn to compromise with each other (or don't) over time because what we're getting outweighs all that we do not get for ourselves by virtue of being in a relationship. By definition and behavior, an unbalanced relationship is ultimately one-sided.

When you felt provoked in your thread, you spilled the beans about what's going on in your relationship. I don't personally see anything good there for you, but it's not my relationship. You might want to ask yourself what's in it for you. Most people here, after they've disclosed unacceptable behavior by their partners, usually in anger or frustration, later retract and modify what they first wrote as a means of softening a hard reality. We can't play Mr. Potatohead with the people in our lives. They are who they are and who they will become and, unless there is a compelling reason in their minds to change, they will remain more or less the same. The idea that "deep down inside" someone else is a "really good person" is also a myth as long as that goodness remains buried and only tapped via privileged access and on rare occasions. We are what we do.

You're at the cutting edge here in terms of your relapses. My therapist used to say that I keep on going back to the empty well, and only walk away worse than I was before. Yet I continue to return expecting satisfaction. None of us deserves the kind of seemingly benign neglect that you get from your SO.

I would ask the same question of you: Based on your experience, what can you reasonably expect from your SO? And, what are you willing to settle for if you don't get what you need?

sleepie

It's reasonable to expect that he will work on it if I bring it up. But it's going to take a long time. I ask him things like this all the time, "What can I do to be a better partner"? And he just says don't be so hard on myself etc. Or don't get so worried about things. Ugh I know that a part of it is I have to quit drinking altogether so we can work on these things together. But then I ask myself again what is it reasonable to expect from him? I told him before not to let me stay over if I was drinking but he says then he'll be worried. How do I ask him to help me? It sounds like I am to leave him out of it altogether.

I think you're saying he is incapable of changing? He has very, very little dating experience, it seems like most of his mindset is as if he is in highschool when it comes to relating to people.
I guess I am willing to settle for a partner who doe snot lie and cheat and who does actually care for me which he does.

sleepie

I guess, how do I ask him to help me?
I don't know what to ask of him.
Of course I don't mind being enabled or allowed to drink but I always regret it later. I kind of wish he would set an ultimatum or something. Is that messed up?

Chrissy2014

A great deal of good advice here. Are you sober?

EndGameNYC

I don't know that he's incapable of changing, but his history carries little evidence that he is capable of doing so, or even motivated to change.

Setting an ultimatum would mean that he's treating you as an adult, that he himself is an adult, something that seems absent in your relationship to date.

It seems that your reluctance to ask for help is another aspect of deferring your own needs and desires for the sake of other people. How does any of us ask for something from someone else who's never substantially demonstrated that they're willing or able to give us what we ask of them?

I can no longer survive a relationship in which I am not interested in my partner's needs, interests and desires. This simply would not work for me. But before all that, I was mostly interested in what I was doing and needed my partner to be interested in what I was doing as well. It was only through heartbreak and suffering that I learned how wonderful things can be by simply finding a way to be interested in my partners' interests.

I used to think that I don't ask for much in my relationships, but the fact is that I do. Or did. Nowadays, I can be happy when not all my needs are attended to, and instead appreciate what my friends and partners have to offer. For most of us, there are only a few opportunities in life to be with a genuine, loving and caring person. The worst thing I did was turn them away when they showed up on my doorstep and settle for much less, usually for paradoxically selfish reasons.

sleepie

off and on sober since mid December with far more sober time than not. certainly not perfect but I am not done trying.

bemyself

👍to all the replies.
Dear sleepie, I'm quite a grizzled veteran of the kind of relationship you describe, and of a similar kind of emotionally neglectful / barren upbringing, so I do understand your confusion and angst. It took me a very long time - far toooo long, in fact - to really see and accept the underlying reality of those relationships' dynamics. As EndGame put it most clearly, and some others hinted at: it's very one-sided.

An even more blunt way of saying it is: we can't get blood out of a stone.

For yourself: please, take it from me - don't waste more years of your energies, which you clearly want and need to be putting into your own growth and wellbeing. Wasted years in a relationship which is going nowhere, and mostly causing you more overall grief than pleasure or comfort, can never be got back. There's a bit of a corollary there, too, I've found with the years we waste in alcoholism - and relapses, as I too have had quite a few now.

It's hard to cut such ties (the relationship and the booze), but I guess when the red alert signs are there - of more damage being done, with little if anything in return....well, somewhere along the line, we must cut those cords. As so many people here say so often, 'and only we can do it ourselves', ultimately.

Good luck, luv. Many of us have been where you are, so you're in good company.
Vic

sleepie

I always am interested in his hobbies, and even participate. It's genuine on my part.
Are there books on better communication you might reccommend? When I learned I very, very likely have a learning disorder I read everything I could about it and became better at communicating myself.

Chrissy2014

Sleepie, rooting for you. You've been incredibly thoughtful in your posts and I'm sure you've helped many folks. No advice on your SO, but please take care of you.

sleepie

Thanks for all the replies people, I find different perspectives very useful and it helps me think in different ways.

sleepie

Thank you Chrissy

EndGameNYC

Love Is Never Enough: How Couples Can Overcome Misunderstanding, Aaron T. Beck

With an emphasis on expectations in romantic relationships.

sleepie

Thank you. I usually to rely more on books or word to get things, better yet if there are instructions even for stuff like this where it should jut be obvious or learned socially or whatever. This has helped me more than anything because I am a social idiot. I do ok on the surface but when things are more meaningful or long term I flub it a bit. I think my SO might be a bit the same.
Which reminds me I have a copy of the Buddhist 12 steps which I found useful. I am trying to locate a Buddhist based meet in my area but with overwhelming Christianity it's a little difficult so far.