FifiRhubarb

As I have said in a few of my posts, my ABF was adopted as an "older child" (4 or 5). I know he has attachment issues. He has said many times that he is a "throwaway person". His adoptive family is no longer speaking to him (long story, both sides are at fault IMO) and I know that when he went to prison, the adoptive parents saw a counselor who told them to step back from him. The problem is, this did more harm than good. It may have worked for the average person, but for someone with attachment issues, I think it was the exact wrong thing to do. His defense mechanism when someone does that to him is to completely turn off his love for them. I understand why he is able to do this, since he was not held or cared for by his birth mother and then spent time in foster care before his adoption.

My dilemma is that if I do detach from him (for my own sake), I am afraid that will a) cause him more harm than good (and yes I know I'm only responsible for me, but I have a heart!) and/or b) irreparably damage our relationship. I know how his mind works when it comes to this...if you push him away, he detaches himself from you and it is very hard to go back. So that means we would never be able to work in the future. I love this man with all my heart, and would really like the best for him as well as the opportunity to make it work between us in the future.

Any advice from someone who has been here?

Chris1000101

Around age 8 I had the pleasure of foster care myself. I was never adopted though. There were issues in my bio-home with drugs, alcohol and abuse. It has taken me years of off & on counseling, ACoA and Al-Anon to work through many of the issues. Some of which I feel I will be working on long after I am dead. Being taken from my bio-parents ripped my heart in half, it was like a death to me. Then moving from home to home was another death. By the time I was in my third home, I was so tired of being hurt that I shutdown. I felt nothing. I was always numb and when I did feel anything it was anger or rage. I hated myself. I hated people. I hated life. I wanted to die.

Other issues I had:
Fear of abandonment
I trusted no one
Worthlessness
I was so use to chaos that I had to create it to feel normal
I did not know what love was
I did not understand boundaries
I did not understand appropriate behavior
I got a rush from fires and explosives
I hated authority and pushed the limits every chance I had
What was mine was mine and what was yours was mine
Everyone is entitled to his or her opinions and they are entitled to be wrong, but it was understood that I was always right

I probable did not answer your question but trust me he has a lot of work to do. As strange as it sounds, the best thing you can do to help him is help yourself.

FifiRhubarb

You and he have a lot in common! I am just worried about the fear of abandonment. Does me backing off (which is how his adoptive mom described their exit from his life, now that I think about it) mean he will feel abandoned and resent me? His adoptive mom is a nutcase. Even my BF's friends and best friend's mom don't like her, don't trust her, etc. So I am kind of glad she is out of his life...but I know it hurts him. I don't want to do that too.

Chris1000101

I did not know it was okay to feel good or okay. As soon as things started going in a good direction I would make things happen so others would leave me. I never really had any close friends or any intimacy with any of the homes. I did not know how to be close with others, it was always in the back of my mind, “What do you want?” - I did not know it was possible to be nice just to be nice. I created my own abandonment – I would get rid of you before you could leave me.

You cannot control how he feels. If he turns, it is of his own doing. Is he in the AA program or any program?

Kiana

I think I understand where you are coming from. I found that decreasing one's self in order to adapt to another's unhealthy way of coping with life and relationships ends up robbing both people. They may never choose a healthy path but we can.

Seren

Please do not subordinate your own well-being and joy for another. I did that too many times in my life, and it did not do me, or the other, any good.

DefofLov

Hello there

You got some awesome advice already. I have found over the years that *I* am my first priority. I have boundaries and I deserve to be loved, nurtured, and supported. I deserve to be treated with kindness, dignity, and respect. I deserve to be listened to and I deserve honest communication. I am first.

That in mind, if someone is not honoring what I mentioned before then I have every right to walk away. In my opinion, everyone has the responsibility to work out his or her own issues. We learn in Al-Anon that we can't do it for them. We can only change ourselves. *This person's abandonment issues are his issue to sort through, if people have to separate from him as a consequence for his actions that is also his issue to sort out*

If love is real, then things will work out in the end. I can guarantee that self sacrifice, martyrdom, and not being firm and not acknowledging what you really need to do for yourself....does. not. work. I learned that from experience.

I hope I helped in some way. Best wishes for you. I know how hard it is to walk away from someone you love so very much. I had to do so not too long ago.

Love and Light,

Lily

LifeRecovery

My loved one was adopted.

He struggled with abandonment type stuff like you describe, even though he readily agreed he had great adoptive parents. He met his birth mother later in life.

I always felt so "bad" for a rough childhood that he had, and especially abandonment issues with woman that I somehow took it on as mine to save him and show him that not all woman were like that. In other words I overcompensated.

What it ended up getting me was putting him first, and instead of him feeling abandoned, I abandoned myself.

"It is too late to have a happy childhood," someone once told me, "but it is never too late to have a happy adulthood."

I learned though that my loved ones adulthood had to be determined by him....I could not make him work on those pieces just like I could not help him work on his alcohol piece. He is an adult, yes he felt abandon by woman, but that was his to work, not mine. He did not choose to work on it (unless continued drinking and an affair constitutes working on it).

boldaslove

I was adopted, and I do see certain patterns in my behaviors, especially when it comes to relationships, but I try very hard not to work my issues out on other people. I think any time we stay with someone out of pity, it ends up bleeding your soul dry. Of course, it took me a couple of tries to learn that lesson the hard way.

JenT1968

interesting that you think that the counsellor's advice didn't work: do you imagine that the counsellor was advising his parents on how to manage another person's internal emotions or on how to save their own sanity? perhaps it worked better than any of the other available choices would have in that respect.

what was he in prison for?

SadHeart

You are making a fatal assumption here: that the only 'good' acceptable is good for him. For parents to step back from an alcoholic son who got himself put into prison sounds like very good advice and likely did the parents a lot of good. Why should their happiness and well being be less important than his? They did cause his problems, can't control them, and can't cure them. And watching him self destruct has got to be horrible for them. Quite often the cost of chosing to continue your addiction is loss of family (as well as loss of job, freedom, and many other opportunities).

Why do you think they should sacrifice their lives for him? Do you really believe that cures alcoholism and character defects? His parents did not harm him more than he as an adult has harmed himself, but they likely have saved themselves from him. Why would you have them be pointlessly unhappy interacting with him, they are not Christ, they cannot redeem his unhappiness by being unhappy themselves.

If this coping mechanism works for him, who are you to interfere with it? If it doesn't work for him, he can take himself to therapy and learn better mechanisms for dealing with the same problems all of us have in life. When the pain of a dysfunctional coping mechanism is greater than it's benefit, he will stop doing it.

I understand his coping mechanism doesn't work for you. But that's a different issue. It's the core of codependency: getting your needs met by changing someone else, in this case changing him by changing his parents.

We all have hearts, and detaching from toxic people who are hurting us and derailing our lives does not mean we are heartless. . Are you saying that all of us who have no contact or have detached from our loved ones are heartless? Maybe like his parents? Does that imply you have more love and a bigger heart than many of the people here?

Why do you think detaching from him means you are heartless? In fact, a case can be made that one of the most heartless and selfish things 'loved ones' can do is to enable and cosset the alcoholic/dysfunctional person. Protecting him from the consequences of his behavior does not prove you have a heart, it just means you may be as sick as him.

What a nice little system for enslaving you he has you caught up in! It's the all or nothing system, the my way or the highway system, the don't protect yourself or else system. This is what emotional blackmail looks like.

Guess what? If you draw away as a consequence of his behavior and he shuts you out of his life forever--what does he have? What has he accomplished? He's cut his nose off to spite his face: he now gets to be without wonderful you.

You get to find someone with all his best qualities and none of his problems. You win -- and he ends up with what he wants: nobody who will ever challenge him to grow up and take responsibility for his own life and emotions.

FifiRhubarb

That's a good point. I guess my feelings about their actions are colored by a) the fact that I know how it made him feel, and not how it made them feel and b) the fact that his mom has given him some very unrealistic and cold-hearted expectations before he can be allowed back in the family. Half of the things are relatively out of his control in terms of how fast they can be done (i.e. have all your fines paid off...why does this matter? He has never asked them for money, and he has worked since he was 16) and the other half are things he has already done, which she would know if she would accept his phone calls. Rather, she e-mailed a list to his sister to e-mail to him.

He was in prison for assault. You can see some of the story on my other posts. I know many people in his family have issues with his mom. And in the interactions I have had with her, she constantly talks about how all of this affects HER, how his behavior reflects upon HER, etc. I know he has done plenty to be angry about, but she seems to go out of her way to involve everyone in the saga and to me it's like her disconnection from him is PUNISHMENT, as opposed to protecting herself. And really, how is she saving herself any pain by still keeping tabs on him and preventing any of the family from seeing him? My mom and step-dad are keeping their distance from my BF right now (long story --see other posts ) but my mom is still there for him. She still cares about him and checks in with him. She has told him that their distance is to hopefully help him realize things need to change, not to punish him. My mom is the best mom anybody could ask for, and she is extremely insightful. Her mom(my grandma) seems to have BPD among other issues, and my mom has told me a few times that his mom reminds her of my grandma.

FifiRhubarb

I have abandonment issues, too. I had a rough childhood in some ways...we were poor, my dad left us and then continued to psychologically manipulate me and my siblings for a few years before I finally told him not to contact me anymore. So I don't feel like I owe him anything for his childhood. To be honest, after the early years, his life was probably happier than mine in many ways. But the more research I do the more I see how very primal the needs he didn't have met were. The one person genetically designed to care for you rejects you, doesn't hold you, mistreats you...I think that messes you up on a level that few can understand. He doesn't use this against me in any way or try to guilt me. Truth be told, I don't WANT to distance myself from him, that's just what I have read from everyone I should do.

FifiRhubarb

Thank you so much for sharing with me. I really appreciate it!

I know I can't control how he feels, but at the same time I have no desire to do further damage to him or ruin any chance of us being happy together (that hurts me too, not just him. I am not as selfless as people are making me out to be ).

He has been going to AA since this week, and had a treatment evaluation a few days ago. He will be doing outpatient treatment. He has said and done everything someone who intends to change would say and do, but I am not believing him until I see evidence of change.

DefofLov

Ultimately, you have to do what is best for you. No one knows. Many of us here have a hard enough time finding out what is best for us. Believe me, I sure don't know what is best for me. That is why I decided to turn my will and my life over to a higher power!

All of that just to say, you have to decide what is best for you and in doing so...you can't think about what is best for other people. (Such as him...) I can guarantee you that once you do find out what is in your best interest and implement it, you'll find clarity and eventually you'll find your authentic self. I sure did. And from there, everything falls into place in amazing ways.

Love and Light,

Lily

FifiRhubarb

I guess I'm focusing on the good for him because he is who I am involved with, not them. And to be frank, I do not look fondly upon anyone who can completely step away from their family. It is something deeply rooted in me. While I asked my dad to leave me alone, I was a kid and didn't think he'd listen because he was always right. But he either listened or got too busy with his new baby who was full Egyptian and, thus, better than his other kids (according to him). But I don't see how I could EVER turn my back on my family. Maybe that's unhealthy, but that's how I feel. I would do anything for my family.


I'm sorry, did I say I wanted to interfere with it? Perhaps you didn't understand my post. I asked for advice from someone in this position in terms of if it will damage him further and damage our relationship. Didn't say "how do I make him not do this?"



Presumptuous much? Shouldn't even dignify that first part with a response. If you are concerned about being heartless, that's on you. I didn't say anything about anyone else but me, my BF, and his parents.


I would agree with this if he openly told me "if you leave me or detach from me I will cut you out forever". This is my fear because of observation and because of what I know about attachment issues. Please stop putting words in my mouth. Thanks.

FifiRhubarb

Thank you Lily! BTW I love your name. It's my cat's name, so now I feel I couldn't use it on a kid. But I love it!!

choublak

How old is this guy?

FifiRhubarb

He is 26.

LifeRecovery

I also have abandonment issues, from a little bit older in life, but they are there, and came out in an eating disorder.

I can get support, but it is mine to work on those issues (counseling, group work etc). Being a responsible human being in a relationship is important. I would let my exAH know where I was going to be, if I was going to be late etc. I never mocked his concerns, those are tender, just like mine.

No matter what I tried to do though to heal this wounds from in his younger days I could not heal them. I choose to try to not contribute to them further, but I could not heal them.

My intent was not to imply distancing, more what I meant was I just was not realistic about what was mine and what was not. I tried to fix things that I could not (him) and sacrificed myself as a result.

Does that make more sense? Writing is so challenging for me.