Hadassah

I know that I can be a codie. I also recognize it when I have behaved in that manner.
What I mostly do is, ignore. I don't see what is going on in my face. I didn't realize for YEARS that my stbxh was verbally, and at times physically abusive.
I didn't put two and two together that when he drank, he would then just out of the blue start in on me about crazy stuff.
I was just confused and hurt. Other people seem to see things going on in their life, or seem to have more insight than me.
I still find myself giving him the benefit of the doubt, even when he has proved me wrong countless times.
I catch myself thinking, that maybe he is not drinking now that he is not here. Then I have to tell myself that he has not changed.
The texts he sends to my dd tells me that he has not.
Anyway, is this oblivion to realitly at times being a codie? I think it is. How do I stop and see what is in my face. I hate that I might repeat this pattern with someone else. Hadassah

cmc

One thought I have that helps me keep on track is to practice awareness in all aspects of my life. If I don't, I might slip backwards just like the proverbial frog in a pot of water who failed realize he was slowly being cooked.

I found by going to lots of recovery meetings (and coming here to SR) I was better equipped to recognize attitudes and actions that are not healthy. I also try to be gentle with myself when I slip or miss the mark. It takes time & practice to learn how to change and live better.

keepinon

Going to alanon helps me.Keeps me on track.Also this site, you will find people who are gentle and not so gentle here and both styles can help u.Sometimes we all need a kick in the pants!

LaTeeDa

I find quite often when I am not paying attention to what is happening NOW, it's because I am off in the future or past in my mind. The writings of Eckhart Tolle helped me to focus on living in the present moment. I still don't always manage it, but at least I recognize when I am not.

L

MsPINKAcres

wanting something different I had to be willing to do something different -

for me - that was attending Al-Anon, being an act part of my own recovery (working the steps, participating on recovery web sites, working with others, journaling, reading literature, etc.) and communicating with the God of my understanding.

It has been a long and learning road - but one I am grateful to be traveling on -

My favorite book is still "How Al-Anon works for Family & Friends of Alcoholics" truly helped me tremendously!

HUGS,
Rita

Hadassah

Thanks everyone. I have to keep my head in the present situation. I tended to stay busy with life and kids, and the problems in my marriage just kept getting ignored, and not just by me. I feel like I was just trying to do the right thing all the time ( caring for kids, house and such), and not acknowledging the elephant in the room. I don't know if I am making myself clear.
H

wicked

Well, it seems clear to me Hadassah. I used this special "blindness" too.
My father was an alcoholic too, and he could be quite abusive verbally and sometimes physically. When I heard a certain tone in his voice, or even an inflection when he called my name, a wall would go up in me. To protect myself.
No weeping, no emotion, cold as stone.
No reaction meant he would lose interest.
Is this what you mean?

Beth

Thumper

I understand exactly what you are saying. I felt that way too.

I can also relate to not living in the present. When I did take the time to think about the marriage - I did a lot of living in the future - a fantasy filled future.

I am now out of my marriage and I still catch myself giving him the benefit of the doubt - or I'm great at minimalizing things that happened in the past. I've totally lost my point of reference at what should be acceptable and what shouldn't be unless I really put thought and logic into it. I am at least identifying that now so that I can re-evaluate things, probably because I'm out of that relationship and don't want back in. I'm not ready to test that out on a new relationship.

theuncertainty

Hadassah. I can completely understand what you're writing about. I filed for divorce this week and I am still catching myself, thinking, "But he'll change if he's not drinking." That he'll not be angry, intimidating and emotionally abusive if he's not drinking, when I have ample experience that it really doesn't matter if he hasn't had a drink in a while: he still doesn't know how to deal with his anger in an ... acceptable way.

I am so tired of trying to tiptoe around his feelings and justifying his actions, because I can now see that by doing that I'm denying, devaluing, my own feelings and self-worth.

I think that being able to see this behavior of not facing reality and calling myself on it is the major first step in not repeating it. As is taking time to stop and feel how my day is going, to be present in doing what I'm trying to get accomplished. It is so hard to do, because I've got years of experience of just "get it done and get out of the room/house" of hiding from him and myself.

I am also trying to come up with a snapshot of who I want to be: self-confident, strong, compassionate (but not a doormat), serene, etc. Referring to that mental image of who I want to be is helping me stop and ask myself how I want to be treated, how do I want to respond.... It's helping me get away from just reacting.

Thanks, Japic05 and LaTeeDa for the book suggestions.

gingercharlie

Oh man... I can sooooooo relate to this. I was living in the future!!!

Still Waters

It's easy to do, especially when you're being told you're crazy, or you're overreacting, or that you're making things us because you aren't rational.

sesh

This makes perfect sense to me, I guess it goes for all people, when we're not ready to deal with something, we try to surpress it. I was the same for a long time, as I knew all the facts, I knew what should be done, but I was not ready to do it, so there was no other option but to pretend like nothing is happening, as otherwise it felt like the world would fall into pieces. That kind of behavior is the rooth of neurosis, as neurosis comes from conflict within personality, and this conflict occurs when our needs can't be met due to the external circumstances. Unable to remove our needs or the external circustances, and not being able to bare it, on concious level we're choosing to minimize the understanding of the intensity of our need or the acctual situation that is denying our needs of fullfilment, while on the subconcious level the conflict deepens.
That is at least what I found to be true in my case. And I found the only way to resolve it, as not being able to change the external cirumstances, it is to work on my internal, on my needs, but to work it to its very rooths, to discover what paradigms are motivating my needs and if they can be replaced by other paradigm that can acctually work in my favor, that can bring me to the place where my needs will not be in conflict with external elements; which in my case was my full marriage reality and my AH's acoholism.
Once I did all that hard work on myself and my own needs I was able to see everything in the differnt light and what my AH does or doesn't do, eventhough it is still part of my interest, it doens't affect me, my life or my emotional state any more whatsoever. Also this new perspective removed my anger, resentment and expectations of him.

This is the best I came up to date.
I don't know if it makes sense to you.

porkchopped

I don't know why but reading this thread reminded me of the lyrics in this Aimee Mann song. Everyone of you deserve the best kind of love. Don't settle!

YouTube - That's Just What You Are

Hadassah

I did find myself doing that, too. Yes hoping he would lose interest and move on to passing out. H

Hadassah

My NOW is alot better because he is not living with us anymore. I agree about the magical thinking. I have to get over thinking that all the ways he made me feel were right, that I am the one who caused our marriage to break up, ect...
I will get there, H

Hadassah

I had to read it twice,lol, but yes it does make sense. I like the part about the pardigm. I need to do that, live by one that is in reality , not the crazy one he lives by. Thanks,H

Hadassah

Yes, they are all so good at manipulating the situation and making themselves out to be the victim, the put up on one, and we are the crazy, lying, over reacting ones. Ughhh. For a while I will fall for it, but then I will start to think things over and realize that something wasn't rght about the whole thing.

Hadassah

I caught myself thinking the other day that I wonder when I will feel like a grownup. I am 45 yrs old and I still feel like I am not as mature as I should be.
I do all the things that grownups do, but I still feel like a mess. I am like you, trying to fulfill what I want to be, what I want others to see in me.
I also don't want to just react to someone when they are not treating me right. I want to be able to see it and respond appropriately .

Bucyn

This may not necessarily be a bad thing. I saw a therapist after the split up (actually I saw 3, a therapist specializing in dysfunctional families, our old marriage counselor who 'knew' him and my al-anon sponsor--I was determined to get right. I'd stuck myself with your run of the mill abusive alcoholic, divorced him, married the upgrade model, an abusive momma's boy alcoholic, and was sure there was a super duper abusive alcoholic momma's boy SOMETHING ELSE model just waiting for me, and I didn't want to stick myself with THAT, so I was really motivated to make changes).

One of the best therapies was in 5 steps: first I had to write everything I ever remembered--EVERYTHING--that was bad or unhappy in our marriage, every event, every single one. I had to write it out and catalogue it. The purpose was to see it clearly. I had 98 pages just on him, 23 on his mother, and 70 on his criminal/mentally ill kid, all single spaced. It was hard and I was exhausted, but utterly horrified. It was THAT bad. Freakish actually, surreal when all put together. At the time I only dealt with the issue at hand, didn't see the over arching big picture. The reason for this step was to see that it really was bad, and I wasn't over reacting.

Second step was to write everything good about the relationship, 4 single spaced pages. This was sad and depressing. There was so little. And it wasn't very good. I had had far better times with my first alkie husband. Anyway... The purpose of this step was to show myself that there was a reason I stayed, that I wasn't stupid for staying, that I was getting something back. That was the reason for it, but as it turned out, it just showed me how little there was.

Third step was to write what could have been, what the potential was. Dreams and hopes and possibilities are very real things. They need to be acknowledged. And the purpose of this was two fold: to show the gap between what was real and what could be; and to identify what I want with someone else or for my future. All those dreams and possibilities still exist...with someone else. Not one of them is unrealistic or unattainable.

The next step was to write how things really are at this time. That was hard because we were in the middle of a divorce and I didn't know how things really were, because every time I turned around they were worse than I thought. Turn around and he's wanting alimony altho he's pulling in more money than I. Turn around and he's gotten himself fired. Turn around and now he's listing his kids on his financial sheet disclosure as our kids and wanting $900 a month for their expenses (there's a section for children of other relationships, that he left blank). Turn around and he's claiming my kids cars as marital property (including the one given to them by their grandmother and the one he himself bought and signed the title over). Turn around and he's accusing me of stalking him even though he's breaking the restraining order and he's stalking my minor kid. Turn around and he's accusing me of not paying the mortgage although I was paying the taxes and insurance and had receipts and he was paying NOTHING...but no, I was not paying just to ruin his life, supposedly that's how desperate I was to destroy him, I'd destroy myself too :rotfxko.

In any case, I always underestimated how messed up and vindictive he was. And this step was not really finished until after the divorce when the reality of who he was wasn't getting worse by the minute (or at least I didn't know about it).

The last step was to find a neutral picture of what he and the stepkids were doing that was within the realm of possibility and more on the positive end of the scale. So I imagined he'd stopped drinking and he and his brother were working on cars in the garage, while sisterinlaw and stepdaughter made good smelling things to eat in the kitchen, and stepson was infront of the tv playing some video game. A nice cozy happy picture, on a cold gray Sunday afternoon. I focused on that like a snapshot. Visualized it; the final chapter.

Now I KNOW that's not what's likely happening. XAH did not stop drinking, etc... but because of no contact (a wonderful concept), I have no evidence to the contrary and nothing to think about regarding them. With any luck until the end of my life, they will be frozen in that snapshot. That's minimalizing it after acknowledging it, and it's healing.

It's like forgetting how much labor hurts after the baby is born. You really don't remember until suddenly you go into labor with your second baby and then it's 'omg, why am I doing this to myself again'.

The thing is to understand fully what happened, lay it aside, LET the human mind fade it away, and trust yourself when the next 'labor pang' hits, you'll realize, omg, I know what this means, why am I doing this to myself again...and this time get out.

Actually there was another part of the therapy and that was to prepare for the next time I run into some dysfunctional someone: how to recognize it, how to handle it, how to say no to it, how to escape from it.

So don't be too hard on yourself because you give him the benefit of the doubt, or 'minimize' it. As long as you have no contact, understand the situation you were in with him realistically, and take steps to ensure that you will never find yourself in a similar situation...what harm does it do? Perhaps it's your mind trying to heal you, to let it fade. What do you need to have all his awfulness be sharp in your mind for? Just make sure you understand clearly what happened and learn how to avoid the situation in the future. As bad as your X was, there are worse out there and you don't want to stick yourself with him!

Learn2Live

OMGOSH I remember feeling this way for so LONG! So I feel ya' Hadassah. But you CAN conquer it! I'm not sure when exactly this changed for me, but it definitely was sometime within the last four years. Within that time period, the things that helped me to really mature emotionally were:

(1) I was treated successfully for clinical depression. The medicine truly helped me to be able to see things in ways that I was never able to see them before; it was like my eyes kept being opened for the first time in my life, every other week. The long and short of it was, the way I perceived and understood my world, changed.

(2) I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, a cognitive disability. My doctor told me that I scored at 75% in severity, meaning I was "more ADD than 75% of all people diagnosed with the disorder." This made me mad and made me want to fight it and conquer it. So, I read as much as I possibly could on it and learned a LOT about myself and how I function. I finally understood WHY I always had so much difficulty. This knowledge really helped my self-esteem and helped me find ways to compensate for my inabilities.

(3) I got a Higher Power. I finally accepted for me that there IS a God and I did a bible study with some "religious people" (to use the term I have always called people who believe in God and try to obey God's rules). This helped me to realign my values in what I think is a healthier way than I came up with myself. Having a Higher Power gave me strength and maturity in ways I never had before.