m1k3

Those of you who are familiar with me know that I find recovery in the strangest places.

The other day while watching Star Wars: The Clone wars and they start each episode with a Jedi saying. Occasionally they can be interesting. This one was very interesting.

Attachment is not compassion.

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I never thought to look back at my motivations for attachment. In my mind attachment was something good taken to a bad level. While my attachment was harmful to me it was noble in purpose. I was sacrificing myself trying to help someone else and save our marriage. Bad results but good intentions.

So, as I looked into why I choose to be attached I started to come to some disturbing conclusions. My noble sacrifice wasn’t all that noble at all. It was a product not so much of control but greed and ownership. I was attached because this was MY marriage and I’ll be darned if I was giving it up. I worked hard for it, I did what I could to make it good and strong (for me) and it was MINE.

I was like Gollum and my marriage was my ring of power. I was driven by the need for ownership. I had identified myself so strongly with my marriage that I couldn’t see myself without it. My attachment wasn’t large and noble, it was small and petty and grasping. I was willing to hurt myself and my wife by hanging on way too long. It was the dark side of magical thinking.

This was a revelation. It was very helpful for me to look at my motives, be honest with myself and to clear out some more garbage from my head.

I am amazed as I work this program that there is always something new popping up. It is a strange, wonderful and always worthwhile journey that I am on.

Your friend,

Learn2Live

I did not try to control. I allowed whatever was going to happen, to happen. But I sacrificed my self, my life, my home, my peace, my sanity, and my serenity so that someone else would not have to struggle financially. I endured disruption after disruption, chaos, drama, uncertainty, and unpredictability to help someone become more balanced and healthy, and to try to help and prevent harm to children who have grown up with nothing but drug addiction and alcoholism. I tried to provide stability and healthy living to some very sick, unstable, unhealthy people, but in the end the sickness is much, much more powerful than I, or anything I could have done. I did want the happily ever after and thought I had it within my grasp, but now that I look back I realize it was all just a dream. A beautiful, horrific dream.

FireSprite

Oh, I can absolutely identify with this feeling. I had that lightning bolt moment when I saw this in myself very clearly during the height of AH's active drinking.... I could acknowledge that the entire situation was toxic yet I stayed & dug my heels in deeper because it was MINE. After this epiphany I was finally able to work on detachment & understand it's purpose & move forward in a way that allowed me to learn to put myself first.

I never set out to define myself by my marriage so I don't know when those wires got internally crossed & the definitions got co-mingled. I suspect that it's another of those events that changed slowly over time like the frog in the boiling water comparison.

ZiggyB

Well in some ways I think attachment is inevitable in any type of romantic relationship. I think we have a hard time telling the difference between attachment and love. This makes it very difficult to know when to let go.

Live and learn my friend... there are no perfect people walking on the face of this Earth.

m1k3

FireSprite, for me it was the opposite. I worked through detachment, saw my attachment was harming me and moved on.

I just never looked at why I was attached. Guess I had bigger problems to work on.

Your friend,

rdlesstraveled

thank you for sharing your revelation. In times like this I think your higher power is speaking to you through other outlets.

Alucard

In any NORMAL romantic relationship, there is a certain amount of attachment, otherwise it is just a plain platonic "just friends" relationship. But with the alcoholic, it becomes an abnormal, surreal and unhealthy thing, true, you cannot control anyone or the drinking. BUT, there doesnt have to be compassion once it has been unceremoniously dumped on it's end. I also, in addition to not following the Al anon philosophies, dont follow the Codependency ones either. If you are in a romantic/sexual relationship, you are codependent to a degree, period.

lillamy

Of course you'd find wisdom in Star Wars. Duh!

I can very much relate to what you're saying, although I phrased it differently:

I felt like it was my duty to stay in my marriage, come hell or high water. I felt that I was a good person, a good Christian, and a good wife for doing it. But really, when I looked at it closely... it was more about showing to other people what a good Christian person wife I was. You know, I didn't just divorce my husband because he had a little problem with the vino. Nope. Because I was better than that.

Holding on and staying married wasn't about him. It was about my pride.

lillamy

I get what you're saying. But I think "codependent" as a diagnosis is different from the mutual trust & leaning on each other that you do in a normal couple relationship. And I also know that in my new relationship, I second-guess my actions a lot: If I'm pouring myself a cup of tea and bring my man one, too -- am I being codependent? It fits the definition that says "codependency is doing something for others that they're capable of doing themselves"... but is it codependent? Is it codependent if my man fills up my car with gas? I'm capable of doing that myself.

You can drive yourself crazy with those kinds of thoughts. I think I've settled on "if it's something he would do for me, I'm fine doing it for him."

Alucard

"a cup of tea?" Wow, thats WAYYYY overthinking things. No,you arent being codependent, you are being a nice girlfriend. Your man filling your car? No, he's just being a good guy. Lets say he gets a DUI#4 and you are there to pay his bond, and shell out cash to get his car out of impoundment, and you drive to the jail, pick him up, pay for an attorney and buy him dinner and tell him everything is going to be all right? THAT is codependency. If you come down with cervical cancer, and he says "oh, thats your problem, I'm going golfing with the guys" is that him being non co dependent?

Hypatia

One of the things a codependent person must watch out for is that anger doesn't push him into counterdependency. Both extremes are destructive. Finding the happy middle is the key.

Mike, thanks for the tip. Looks like I'm going to have to do a Star Wars marathon. Hmm... I will most likely have a few months coming up soon with lots of spare time in the evenings. Now if I can just find a rental copy of the video where they don't all speak German.....

fourmaggie

thats good stuff...my aah ha moment was in "Horton hears a WHO"

when Mayor asked where Horton was...and Horton replied, "I guess where you are standing up in the sky...something bigger than you and I, it was a ahha when i did not know who was higher than me, "up there in the sky"..."looking for my Higher Power" and he summed it up....

amazing in some moments we run looking for that pen and pad to write it down....lol

m1k3

Since I am in a Star Wars mood to quote Obi-Wan:

lillamy

I know I'm overthinking it! But that's part of getting out of a long codie relationship. It's a bit like having an infected wound (stop here if you're squeamish!) -- you have to cut out the infected parts for the rest to heal. And sometimes, you stare at a piece of flesh and go "um... is that healthy... or not?"

And I bailed myself out of the marriage before it came to bailing AXH out of jail. I want to think that I would have known better, but then again, I thought that about a LOT of things I ended up doing.

lillamy

Actually, AXH did exactly this. I was waiting to hear on a possible cancer diagnosis and he went golfing with his buddies. Yup. True story.

Tuffgirl

Quote:
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

LOVE IT!

So many people are sithes these days. Is that the appropriate plural form? Sithes? Sith's? Or just Sith, like moose. Or halibut.

Fathom

M1k3,

I always love getting your insight no matter where the source. I had an 'Ah-ha' moment today as I was explaining to a friend my general "Live and let live" attitude. I had not been one of those nagging types with my XAH. If he wanted to drink 12 beers every night, that was his choice (I started nagging when he added a liter of rum to those 12 beers). But, what I realized today was that my attitude was actually one of "let live." Oh, oops. I was supposed to LIVE too! Now I'm gonna have to think about WHY I forgot that important first part of the cliche...

Thanks!
Fathom

LostHusband

Alucard - You are 100% correct.

StarCat

I understand this feeling.
I called the therapist at work yesterday and left a message on his machine along the lines of, "I needed to talk to someone who understood my past history and the policies here at work, because something my manager is asking me to do is making me very uncomfortable and I need to figure out if it's triggering something I need to work through or if what he's asking me to do really is wrong. Please call me back as soon as possible because right now? I'm a bit of a wreck and need to know which direction to travel."
Turns out I was more correct than I realized, but I needed that outside validation because I knew XABF's stalking period was the reason I was feeling triggered, and I wasn't sure if it was for logical (manager stepping over the line) or emotional (too close for comfort to memories) reasons.

I've been putting out job applications elsewhere since then. Currently sticking to easy things - job requisitions in other departments using the internal job search system - until I am more calmed down to branch out into other areas.
Next step is to talk to a few managers who I know appreciate(d) my input into things, past and present, but I know that emotionally I need to build a healthy and stable momentum first so that I come across self-assured instead of desperate to leave.

In the past, though, I would have stuck in my situation because I doubted myself, was afraid to ask for validation, and felt responsible to remaining here because the other people whose job I am trying to learn are going to be retiring one-by-one until ten years later none will be here. But I've been in this specific position for years now, and I haven't learned anything - let them get someone else here and train them to do it! They'd be starting from almost the same position I'm in right now, anyway.


As for co-dependence in relationships, I also like your definition, lillamy. I'll do things for my boyfriend, and he'll do things for me. I'll pick up small items grocery shopping, he'll cook me dinner several times a week. He'll change the oil in my car, I'll grab things from the pharmacy when he's home taking care of his sick daughter. It's the give-and-take, where nobody is a needy black hole of depression. It's quite a change, and I LOVE it.

FireSprite

Oh thank you for posting this! I had a moment of this just this morning. I called out to AH to ask him if he remembered to submit his Direct Deposit paperwork for his paychecks (which I filled out & gave him earlier in the week) and then stopped dead in my tracks because I heard the Codie Police Siren in my head. :codiepolice

Was filling out the form codie behavior? It's his task, but for MY benefit to have the $ directly sent to my bank acct since I've taken over all of the finances again.

Was asking him if he followed through with it codie? I couldn't decide, erred on the side of caution & when he asked what I wanted I told him I couldn't remember.