Can't stop with the crying
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 154
Can't stop with the crying
I guess I am having a rough week. And rather than pretend it's not a big deal, given the fact that I have burst into tears no less than three times TODAY, I figure I should just admit that things are hard right now.
My A is still in recovery, but it turns out that even though he is doing well, the unresolved mess of our past doesn't just disappear. Logically, I knew this, but I had to sit down with his counselor on Thursday last week, and for some reason I was sobbing within seconds of answering the question, "so tell me about your relationship." Like, heaving-sobbing. And it just hasn't let up since then.
I am a bit stressed ATM, I'm currently flying home to say goodbye to my dying Nana and try to help my mom with everything. It's sad on many levels. But not the kind of sad that is ripping through me 5x a day for the last 5 days!
Maybe I am finally feeling all of the pain I wouldn't let myself feel before? Maybe I finally feel safe enough to feel (and express) anything in regards to the affairs/gas lighting/abuse/etc from our past? Maybe I am mourning our relationship?
I flew off the handle earlier, and wrote an epic-long text in response to my A's request that I respect him more, saying something along the lines of, "Is this joke!? Are you really that clueless about the profound disrespect you treated me with over the last 7!years? you don't get a clean slate. What a disservice to me it would be to forgive and forget your behavior simply because you are back in rehab. You need to think long and hard about the respect you think you deserve and the respect you think I can even offer you at this time."
Which, ok, I get was not the healthiest thing.
I feel like the floodgates have opened and I am just a wreck. Who cries about not being able to find a space in the overhead compartment for their bag on an airplane?? Because I sobbed.
My A is still in recovery, but it turns out that even though he is doing well, the unresolved mess of our past doesn't just disappear. Logically, I knew this, but I had to sit down with his counselor on Thursday last week, and for some reason I was sobbing within seconds of answering the question, "so tell me about your relationship." Like, heaving-sobbing. And it just hasn't let up since then.
I am a bit stressed ATM, I'm currently flying home to say goodbye to my dying Nana and try to help my mom with everything. It's sad on many levels. But not the kind of sad that is ripping through me 5x a day for the last 5 days!
Maybe I am finally feeling all of the pain I wouldn't let myself feel before? Maybe I finally feel safe enough to feel (and express) anything in regards to the affairs/gas lighting/abuse/etc from our past? Maybe I am mourning our relationship?
I flew off the handle earlier, and wrote an epic-long text in response to my A's request that I respect him more, saying something along the lines of, "Is this joke!? Are you really that clueless about the profound disrespect you treated me with over the last 7!years? you don't get a clean slate. What a disservice to me it would be to forgive and forget your behavior simply because you are back in rehab. You need to think long and hard about the respect you think you deserve and the respect you think I can even offer you at this time."
Which, ok, I get was not the healthiest thing.
I feel like the floodgates have opened and I am just a wreck. Who cries about not being able to find a space in the overhead compartment for their bag on an airplane?? Because I sobbed.
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Maybe I am finally feeling all of the pain I wouldn't let myself feel before? Maybe I finally feel safe enough to feel (and express) anything in regards to the affairs/gas lighting/abuse/etc from our past? Maybe I am mourning our relationship?
I agree with Mariah that crying might not be a bad thing right now. It's better than that stuffing of feelings that we all tend to be so great at.
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 1,452
Are you really that clueless about the profound disrespect you treated me with over the last 7!years? you don't get a clean slate. What a disservice to me it would be to forgive and forget your behavior simply because you are back in rehab. You need to think long and hard about the respect you think you deserve and the respect you think I can even offer you at this time."
Which, ok, I get was not the healthiest thing.
This is the truth of what happened to you. To say this IS healthy for you. It is what you lived through; it is what literally happened; it is how you feel.
That the truth may not make your addicted husband FEEL GOOD is not your problem. It is the consequence of what he chose to do.
Moving out of co-dependence means expressing the truth as you lived it, regardless of, and without anticipation of what it may or may not mean or do to your alcoholic spouse/partner.
That is his problem, not yours. To recover, he has to deal with it. Or not. You can't process HIS feelings for him; you can't anticipate HIS feelings and pull your punches about the truth of what happened to you.
Shakespeare said "True compassion is ruthless." To me, the truth sets us free.
I feel like the floodgates have opened and I am just a wreck. Who cries about not being able to find a space in the overhead compartment for their bags...
I might imagine that, with your nana's impending death, you are feeling a great sense of loss and abandonment. Your bags don't fit in the compartment, and that is at some level, a metaphor for there not being space for you, you pure and simple, you. And it is true, our alcoholic partners literally abandon us in the deepest sense of not being our partners and not understanding, caring about, or honoring our needs. They do not have space for us in their psyches. That is abanonment, as the death of a dearly beloved person is abandonment. So there are reverberations going on in your life, like a stone skipped into a pond, and concentric circles radiating outward from where it lands.
For me, I trooper through crisis, after crisis. I am the calm one. I am the person who is turned to, who is relied upon to get through it, fix it, make it go. Then, when the stage lights are down and the curtain drawn on the audience, and the theater emptied, then is when I crash and burn.
I think there is a lot going in your life right now, and it is okay to honor your deepest feelings whether or not you feel they are constructive to anyone else. You get to come first sometimes, and now sounds like one of the times. Feel free to take care of yourself. Be gentle with yourself.
The approaching loss of your nana is going to send reverberations deep into you and surface all the other losses you have had. You get to feel the pain without compromise because that is the truth, that is your truth. Whether or not your husband can calculate or comprehend the loss you have suffered in your marriage is not yours to anticipate or control. It just is what happened. And you have the right to own and experience that in its fullest because it is your truth, the truth of your life.
Owning that experience, owning that loss, is what, for me, eventually gives me the power to move beyond the loss.
It is when I cannot acknowledge that I want something so desperately yet cannot have it - it is then that I become stuck, a sailing boat caught in stays with no momentum, no wind, to move it onward. The truth, for me, is the wind that brings change and healing and health. In the end, as harsh and severe as it may sound, to me, the integrity of our souls is more important than whether our partner can or cannot comprehend and acknowledge what they did. Letting go of co-dependence is letting the chips fall as they may, and for me, that is the path to health.
ShootingStar1
Which, ok, I get was not the healthiest thing.
This is the truth of what happened to you. To say this IS healthy for you. It is what you lived through; it is what literally happened; it is how you feel.
That the truth may not make your addicted husband FEEL GOOD is not your problem. It is the consequence of what he chose to do.
Moving out of co-dependence means expressing the truth as you lived it, regardless of, and without anticipation of what it may or may not mean or do to your alcoholic spouse/partner.
That is his problem, not yours. To recover, he has to deal with it. Or not. You can't process HIS feelings for him; you can't anticipate HIS feelings and pull your punches about the truth of what happened to you.
Shakespeare said "True compassion is ruthless." To me, the truth sets us free.
I feel like the floodgates have opened and I am just a wreck. Who cries about not being able to find a space in the overhead compartment for their bags...
I might imagine that, with your nana's impending death, you are feeling a great sense of loss and abandonment. Your bags don't fit in the compartment, and that is at some level, a metaphor for there not being space for you, you pure and simple, you. And it is true, our alcoholic partners literally abandon us in the deepest sense of not being our partners and not understanding, caring about, or honoring our needs. They do not have space for us in their psyches. That is abanonment, as the death of a dearly beloved person is abandonment. So there are reverberations going on in your life, like a stone skipped into a pond, and concentric circles radiating outward from where it lands.
For me, I trooper through crisis, after crisis. I am the calm one. I am the person who is turned to, who is relied upon to get through it, fix it, make it go. Then, when the stage lights are down and the curtain drawn on the audience, and the theater emptied, then is when I crash and burn.
I think there is a lot going in your life right now, and it is okay to honor your deepest feelings whether or not you feel they are constructive to anyone else. You get to come first sometimes, and now sounds like one of the times. Feel free to take care of yourself. Be gentle with yourself.
The approaching loss of your nana is going to send reverberations deep into you and surface all the other losses you have had. You get to feel the pain without compromise because that is the truth, that is your truth. Whether or not your husband can calculate or comprehend the loss you have suffered in your marriage is not yours to anticipate or control. It just is what happened. And you have the right to own and experience that in its fullest because it is your truth, the truth of your life.
Owning that experience, owning that loss, is what, for me, eventually gives me the power to move beyond the loss.
It is when I cannot acknowledge that I want something so desperately yet cannot have it - it is then that I become stuck, a sailing boat caught in stays with no momentum, no wind, to move it onward. The truth, for me, is the wind that brings change and healing and health. In the end, as harsh and severe as it may sound, to me, the integrity of our souls is more important than whether our partner can or cannot comprehend and acknowledge what they did. Letting go of co-dependence is letting the chips fall as they may, and for me, that is the path to health.
ShootingStar1
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 16,246
Jrnibean87.....I've heard it said that what we all really want from our relationships is:
to be seen
to be heard
to matter
I get the feeling that you had so much hope invested in his becoming sober--in order to correct what was broken in the relationship. (many people do that).
Perhaps it is the awareness that you are not going to get what you want from this relationship....that your dearly held hopes are not fulfilled has led you to this opening of the flood gates--the flood gates of grief...
It does sound like grief to me. It is like your insides are bursting from the grief....even though you can't even hardly admit it on the outside.
7 years of cheating, gaslighting and abuse? That can't be swept under the rug. Those feelings and that pain has to go somewhere.....
I say..don't even try to stop the tears. I consider grief the first step to eventual healing...
You deserve your own happiness. You have been terribly wounded and you need nurturance and healing....
Do whatever you have to do to obtain it. Whatever it takes!
Your soul is at stake, here. It is the most valuable possession you will ever have....
I can always remember my grandmothers words...."What have you prospered if you gain the world and lose your soul ?
That has guided me so many times of darkness...to let me know what I needed to do.
These are my thoughts for you as I was reading your thread...
dandylion
to be seen
to be heard
to matter
I get the feeling that you had so much hope invested in his becoming sober--in order to correct what was broken in the relationship. (many people do that).
Perhaps it is the awareness that you are not going to get what you want from this relationship....that your dearly held hopes are not fulfilled has led you to this opening of the flood gates--the flood gates of grief...
It does sound like grief to me. It is like your insides are bursting from the grief....even though you can't even hardly admit it on the outside.
7 years of cheating, gaslighting and abuse? That can't be swept under the rug. Those feelings and that pain has to go somewhere.....
I say..don't even try to stop the tears. I consider grief the first step to eventual healing...
You deserve your own happiness. You have been terribly wounded and you need nurturance and healing....
Do whatever you have to do to obtain it. Whatever it takes!
Your soul is at stake, here. It is the most valuable possession you will ever have....
I can always remember my grandmothers words...."What have you prospered if you gain the world and lose your soul ?
That has guided me so many times of darkness...to let me know what I needed to do.
These are my thoughts for you as I was reading your thread...
dandylion
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Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Mmmmmm
Posts: 3,178
The first time my H went off the rails with our "perfect" life I could not stop crying. I had to go on meds for about 6 months just so I could go to work without sobbing at weird times in my cubicle or driving in tears (which is downright dangerous). As I left my counseling session the first time I called my H and informed him it was ALL his fault. 
This is now really funny to me as I was the one putting up with everything and cracking up.
It is good you can cry. The real trouble comes when you are beyond tears, beyond the ability to show anger and it is all repressed. That indeed is worse than bawling your eyes out.
So cry. It is NORMAL! Especially with your nana not well.
This is now really funny to me as I was the one putting up with everything and cracking up.
It is good you can cry. The real trouble comes when you are beyond tears, beyond the ability to show anger and it is all repressed. That indeed is worse than bawling your eyes out.
So cry. It is NORMAL! Especially with your nana not well.
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 13,560
Oh honey, my heart hurts for you. I am sorry you are hurting, and I am sorry about your Nana. I do think you are just now letting yourself feel, and that is overwhelming at first. And when you are feeling like that, every single little thing just makes it harder.
As far as your text, I would say it was healthy to get those feelings out. The thing about the addict is that while they work on themselves and try to get a new grip on things, we are still left with all that old junk and hurt. No magic wand wipes it away.
Do you attend Alanon or have face to face support? I ask b/c that is a truly great way to have people who support you, who understand. It's also a great way to learn how to deal with all of that junk and hurt you have stuffed for so long that is now surfacing. Just a suggestion.
We are here for you. Keep us updated and have a safe trip.
XXX
As far as your text, I would say it was healthy to get those feelings out. The thing about the addict is that while they work on themselves and try to get a new grip on things, we are still left with all that old junk and hurt. No magic wand wipes it away.
Do you attend Alanon or have face to face support? I ask b/c that is a truly great way to have people who support you, who understand. It's also a great way to learn how to deal with all of that junk and hurt you have stuffed for so long that is now surfacing. Just a suggestion.
We are here for you. Keep us updated and have a safe trip.
XXX
Member
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 1,792
You know, the addict was our drug of choice before we got into recovery. "Caring" for them meant we had to put our own needs somewhere on the back burner. They were our anesthesia away from life, just as the bottle is to the alcoholic.
You feeling these emotions is a sign of your healing! I am SO happy for you. Your higher power will be all you and your Nana need right now, as well as the support of your friends.
You feeling these emotions is a sign of your healing! I am SO happy for you. Your higher power will be all you and your Nana need right now, as well as the support of your friends.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 13,497
I am so sorry about your Nana. Wishing you and your family comfort and healing, and that time with your family will comfort you.
I was reading in 'Codependent No More' just last night.. about this very situation. One important thing I read was, and I quote this-
"So the alcoholic says," How dare I be angry now? I should be ecstatic. I should be grateful. There's something wrong with me."
'Then everyone feels guilty, because everyone feels angry. And everyone feels angrier because they feel guilty. They feel cheated, and mad because sobriety did not bring the joy it had promised. It was not the turning point for living happily ever after.........
'It's a lot better hwen people become sober. But sobriety is not a magical cure for anger and relationship problems. The old anger burns away. New anger fuels the fire. The chemical or problem can no longer be blamed, although it frequently still is......
Often, codependents can no longer even get the sympathy and nurturing we need from friends. We think its wonderful that the A has quit drinking or the problem has been solved....
'The alcoholic may expect and want to start fresh-minus the dirty laundry from the past-now that he has begun a new life.
'So the A says, "How dare you get angry now? We're starting over."
'And the codependent replies, "That's what you think. I'm just getting started."
Not saying you are codependent! Just this applies whether you are or not.. you have a lot of anger that you have the absolute right to be able to deal with now. and sometimes, for me, great anger comes out as depression or great sadness, until I face it, feel it and express it.
big hugs to you. hope you don't mind the excerpts, but this is a common issue, when someone gets sober/clean and does not want to take responsibility for the pain they caused another. That has to be dealt with too, not swept under the rug.
heck, you have the right and responsibility to yourself now to decide if you want to be with him or not! Its not all up to him!
hugs again.
Chic
I was reading in 'Codependent No More' just last night.. about this very situation. One important thing I read was, and I quote this-
"So the alcoholic says," How dare I be angry now? I should be ecstatic. I should be grateful. There's something wrong with me."
'Then everyone feels guilty, because everyone feels angry. And everyone feels angrier because they feel guilty. They feel cheated, and mad because sobriety did not bring the joy it had promised. It was not the turning point for living happily ever after.........
'It's a lot better hwen people become sober. But sobriety is not a magical cure for anger and relationship problems. The old anger burns away. New anger fuels the fire. The chemical or problem can no longer be blamed, although it frequently still is......
Often, codependents can no longer even get the sympathy and nurturing we need from friends. We think its wonderful that the A has quit drinking or the problem has been solved....
'The alcoholic may expect and want to start fresh-minus the dirty laundry from the past-now that he has begun a new life.
'So the A says, "How dare you get angry now? We're starting over."
'And the codependent replies, "That's what you think. I'm just getting started."
Not saying you are codependent! Just this applies whether you are or not.. you have a lot of anger that you have the absolute right to be able to deal with now. and sometimes, for me, great anger comes out as depression or great sadness, until I face it, feel it and express it.
big hugs to you. hope you don't mind the excerpts, but this is a common issue, when someone gets sober/clean and does not want to take responsibility for the pain they caused another. That has to be dealt with too, not swept under the rug.
heck, you have the right and responsibility to yourself now to decide if you want to be with him or not! Its not all up to him!
hugs again.
Chic
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Northampton
Posts: 97
Sorry but I had to laugh of this poignant scene of you bursting into tears because the locker wasn't big enough. i can relate in how I sobbed in the shower when i was at a low ebb because there was nothing else I could do to fix it.
Sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss.
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: somewhere south
Posts: 510
I think you are just finally acknowledging all that repressed sadness over your relationship. For 7 long years you ignored and repressed the cheating, gaslighting and abuse. That was your coping mechanism.
Part of your healing is to ackowledge you didn't deserve to be treated that way.I felt the same way when I started to work on my codependency issues. It was as if the flood gates opened and everything made me cry. I still feel waves of it from time to time but they fewer and farther apart than in the beginning.
Hang in there, it will get easier and you will get stronger and happier!
Part of your healing is to ackowledge you didn't deserve to be treated that way.I felt the same way when I started to work on my codependency issues. It was as if the flood gates opened and everything made me cry. I still feel waves of it from time to time but they fewer and farther apart than in the beginning.
Hang in there, it will get easier and you will get stronger and happier!
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Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: pittburgh pa
Posts: 8
I am going through the exact same thing. My exabf were together for seven and have been apart for 2 months ..he broke up with me because our relationship is toxic for his recovery....cut me off because talking about things were too painful and made him want to drink...meanwhile pretty sure he's drinking. Anyhow I find myself crying all the time...out of the blue...met with my therapist today who explained that it's so necessary to feel the grief..it's part of the grieving process....so sorry you are going through this too..hugs
Member
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: New york
Posts: 144
Aww sweetie,
I cried over shutting the car door on my dress. Threw my hands in the air and sobbed that I couldn't take it any more. One time my sister sent me out to pick up a pizza. I tried for over 30 min to find that stupid pizza place and gave up sobbing.. Went back to house cried my explanation of why no pizza and left their home sobbing.
Grief, depression, anxiety play havoc with our emotions.... Stay strong...
I cried over shutting the car door on my dress. Threw my hands in the air and sobbed that I couldn't take it any more. One time my sister sent me out to pick up a pizza. I tried for over 30 min to find that stupid pizza place and gave up sobbing.. Went back to house cried my explanation of why no pizza and left their home sobbing.
Grief, depression, anxiety play havoc with our emotions.... Stay strong...
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