LoveAllGone

This last week or so I've been trying to come to terms with some of my feelings and untangle them. I'm doing pretty good with this but I've got this one question about all of this that keeps popping back up and I simply don't have an answer for it...at what point did I lose myself and stop loving my XAH? I know I didn't love him in the end--I stayed because I felt sorry for him. I felt like he needed me there to make him "do right" but I can't recall the last time I actually felt genuine "love" for him. Or maybe I did love him and just wasn't in love with him or maybe we crossed that thin line between love and hate and I hated him. I think all of my emotions and feelings were so crazy at times that I did eventually just shut them off...I practiced not feeling so much that I really don't know what I felt for a long time. I always felt like if I allowed myself to feel that the pain would get worse with every let down. And the crazy part about that is I ALWAYS KNEW--I set myself up for heartbreak over and over and over again because I knew it wouldn't last. I knew it wasn't him, I knew he was just saying these things to manipulate me, I knew I was going to be hurt, I knew he would never change, I knew there was nothing I could do about it, and yet...I stayed. I ask myself "WHY?"--there was nothing to stay for so why did you stay for so long??

I know I'm rambling but I've just got a lot of crazy thoughts racing through the brain today.

Anyone got any input on any of this???

scrambled2012

At the very least, you're human; and a nice person, at that.

The bright spot is this--it's over. That's whats most important. You still have your life to live, and dreams to dream. Don't let the puzzles of the past blot out the horizon that is a new day.

fedup3

I've been in therapy for a few months now with a ways to go so when I figure out that answer I'll let you know.

Krys

I agree with Anvilhead's reply. I highly recommend you check out a book called Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young. It is all about what he calls life traps, how we are taught them and how we get stuck in them. To stop repeating it you have to change the way think of yourself (some of which was taught, directly or indirectly by our families) and change your behavior. It basically tries to teach you how to change yourself, and how to spot these people before they really get in. My therapist recommended it to me and I love it so far, it has already helped.

Dcakes

Im feeling the same confusion for my ex who was a
pill adicct. I Miss him, but when did the love end. Did I ever really know him? It hurts

choublak

Well while we're on the topic of families of origin, there is a book out there called "If you had Controlling Parents" that explains how being raised by certain behavior affects the choices you can make in your adult life.

Adventure

I am still living through ALL of this and wonder about all this stuff nearly every day - not really beating myself up about it, but just don't understand why I'm still here. In my case I don't think it's anything to do with my family of origin as they are and always were amazing. Some day we won't even think back to this I hope.

Adventure

Katiekate

I really struggled with the whys for awhile.

I came to the conclusion that sometimes the whys don't matter, and sometimes we won't find out until we get some distance between ourselves and the situation.

What is important is that I was unhappy and I had to stop doing what I was doing.

Now things are changing.

Carol Star

I heard in an Alanon meeting- write what people have done to you on the left side of a peice of paper, write how you reacted on the right side, tear the paper down the middle, my part to figure out is the reaction part- throw the other part away........

LoveAllGone

I have a hard time with that as well because my therapist also said things about families of origin and that it all related back to my childhood...maybe I'm just in denial about that as well. My childhood was not perfect by any means but it wasn't horrible either. I had both parents, neither were addicted to anything, and they were always there for me. The only problem was my father had really bad nerve problems and didn't get help for this until after I was grown. He could be very tempermental at times and could be hard to live with. Maybe in my XAH, what I found most attractive about him @ first was the fact that he was a very affectionate person and I never really got that from home. My parents (neither) were very affectionate and he told me several times in our marriage that I never showed him enough affection. Maybe that is the root of some of it...I don't know. I do know that I'm much happier now without the stress of his addiction and I love my life as it is now. I would just like to learn to understand some of this so that later on in life--I choose better and don't end up going down the same path again. Lord knows, I don't think I could live through another round of this. But I guess that's what recovery is all about and I've still got a lot to learn and figure out.

Thanks for all the helpful replies!