What do you mean when you say "I love him"?

Old 11-09-2014, 07:21 PM
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What do you mean when you say "I love him"?

Open question.
Because it was one that stumped me when my sponsor put it to me back when I was still married to AXH.
I couldn't answer it.

I mean, it's obvious what "I love him" means, isn't it?

It wasn't for me. When I tried to explain that I had been so blessed in life, and then-AH had not had the love and attention and appreciation that I had growing up, my sponsor said, "that's not love, that's pity."

When I said, "he's such a brilliant, funny guy when he's not drinking" she said "that's not love, that's wishing away part of the person you're married to."

And round and round we went.

At the end of our (sometimes heated) exchange, I had to admit that my sponsor was right. I couldn't define what I meant when I said I loved him. All it meant was that I had a feeling for then-AH that I called "love" -- but that my definition of it didn't seem to have any foundation in reality.

"Until you can differentiate between love and pity," she said, "maybe you should be careful using that word."

I just wanted to share that. For me, it was a big turnaround point.
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Old 11-09-2014, 07:42 PM
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I'll play. Only because when I'm pissed off at AH when he drinks and says "I love you" I don't ask him what that means but I ask him why. Why is he saying that he loves me?

I love my husband, to me, that means that I enjoy being around him and that his presence enriches my experiences in life and enriches my little family. And really, I do sincerely mean that. That's really the catch for me here because even though his drunken moments (at this point in our relationship) are much further apart and fewer between they are still so bad that they challenge the bevy of boring and good, fun times that outnumber his drinking days.

Additionally, I think I've written on here before about the 3 boxes theory. That emotionally everyone has 3 boxes inside of them. Box 1 are the qualities that are inherently yours, box 2 are the qualities that you have learned (in my case they are mostly ****** up, narcissistic, "ism" qualities - but hey, nobody's perfect) and box 3 are important lessons that you're learning on how to be a better more well rounded person (aka, recovery). I know what my husband has in box 1 and I love that stuff. I love that he loves college basketball and gets down right giddy about it, I love that he sings songs randomly about random stuff - he and our 3 year old have a made up song about "siiiiiinnnging a sooooooong", I love that he blushes, I love that eliciting laughs out of others absolutely lights him up, I love that he warms up my feet at night because mine are always freezing and his are always toasty, he used to write me poetry and still occasionally leaves me random love notes the little romantic gestures that are seemingly effortless but the most meaningful. His box 1 stuff, that's what I love, that's who is naturally is at the core of his being.

Lastly, I think it's fine to piece and parcel him like this right now because I imagine that he has to do the same thing to me. My box 1 stuff has a lot of good stuff in it too, but a lot of it is overshadowed by my box 2 assholeness, spite and anger. I'm not exactly a peach to be around sometimes and I'm codependent in that I look to him more than I should to have my needs met. It's in this regard that I think we are at an advantage in trying to grow as a couple because we are both growing as individuals as well…if only he would stay on course.

With all of that said, I don't stop loving him because he drinks. I really do believe that love is meant to be unconditional with conditional commitments surrounding the relationship to maintain it's integrity. At this point my marriage doesn't have many commitments that are being met.
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Old 11-09-2014, 07:45 PM
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I can't say it right now.

I care about him. I miss him. (The old him - the him that cherished me when when I was pregnant with our son, the him that overcame his shyness and obtained his Master's degree, the him that melted me with his kisses and the him that I could laugh so hard with I'd have happy tears running down my face.)

I wish he would turn things around and get healthy and have a wonderful life. I truly want only the best for his future. I just know I can't be part of it. But is that love? I don't think so.
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Old 11-09-2014, 08:48 PM
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Well, I can't just like him. We've been through too much for that.

Hating him seems too labor intensive and self destructive. I need to get on with my life.

So I guess I that means I love him.
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Old 11-09-2014, 11:37 PM
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Great question, lillamy. It sounds like your therapist was trying to get you to see that you didn't love your AH the way you should in order to sustain the relationship. She might have been trying to get you to see past any denial you might have had in order to get you to face up to the truth and move on.

Well, I do love my husband as a human being and a child of God. We have had 37 years together, sometimes good years/sometimes bad, and there have been a ton of happy times in there. While it's harder to like him when he's drinking (a lot harder), I can sit here and say that I love the man.

However, in my case, what I would need to have someone point out to me is not the love, but the contract part of the marriage relationship. I really agree with Stung. What breaks down in the alcoholic marriage are the commitments. When the AH/W is drinking, all the promises fall through the cracks--all the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" agreements. Suddenly no one is scratching your back. No one has your back, and a marriage needs to be equal. Maybe not equal 100% of the time--sometimes the balance shifts, and that's an agreement, too. So someone might say, I'll support you through med school, and then you will be able to financially support me. But when one partner is doing the heavy lifting, and that isn't what that person signed up for, the marriage winds up being a broken contract. So then what's the point? Love or no love, it needs to be fixed.

Sometimes I try to let myself rest on, "Well, what if he had Alzheimer's? I'd still be committed to the marriage, even though he couldn't fulfill his part of the bargain. And alcoholism is in the DSM as a disease--right?" But that whole thing about choice remains. And most sick people want to get better, and do what they can to recover. Alcoholism is a strange disease because the patient's response to it is often to choose sickness over health, which kind of is the deal breaker when it comes to the "in sickness and health" part of the marriage vow.

So the relevant question then becomes, what does it mean when you say you love yourself? Do you love yourself with the same abandon you love them or others? If you truly do, can you see what is best for you? Does doing what's best for you come easy? If it did, what would that look like? As we often say, if you put your situation in a friend's shoes, what would you want for your friend? What would frustrate you about your friend's actions? What would be difficult to understand about the relationship your friend has with their A loved one?

And because you are a child of God/the Universe/Your Higher Power, if the alcoholic lifestyle is putting barriers in the way of your living a life that you are meant to, isn't it your responsibility to yourself to get those barriers out of the way? Loving ourselves is the job our higher power gave us to do in this life. We can still love our alcoholic partner, and I do love mine, but my big question is, can I live with him, and still be 100% sure I am honoring the life my HP gave to me? Am I able to perform my calling here? Am I loving myself?
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Old 11-10-2014, 12:27 AM
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I think it changed over time.
From " I appreciate you for the beautiful person that you are - you touch me deeply and inspire my soul"
to " I allowed you to hurt me deeply and I will protect my soul from you - I don't want you to die."
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Old 11-10-2014, 04:16 AM
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Your question made me go digging through my old posts - I wrote this in a response to another thread months ago.

I can deal with RAH baby-stepping through recovery at his own pace because ultimately I truly, deeply love the silly SOB. I find him funny & fun to be around when we aren't mired in recovery-speak. I am still physically attracted to him on a huge level & we've managed to keep a strong sex life despite everything. I love his gentleness with children & animals & his incredible talent as a musician. I love when he gets out his acoustic guitar & sings to me on our back deck like we're at a private concert for 1. I love that he makes me feel sexy & special & loved. I love a lot of things about him that were clouded or buried under his addiction & that the further he gets into recovery are starting to show through more brightly again. I love that he wants to be better & is striving for that even if he isn't a smashing success at it every step of the way.

I also love that he is the first to volunteer to help a friend or family member in need, but is also learning to put up some boundaries around that for those times when he's being taken advantage of. I love that I can tell he's been talking to family in TN because that slow, syrupy Southern Drawl in his voice (which is typically suppressed) takes front & center. I love that he is so much less judgmental than I am, all the while being generally more forgiving & capable of letting go & moving on. I love that he & DD dance around the house making up hilarious song parodies. I love that he's such a survivalist & if I'm ever lost in the wilderness I really hope he's there to help keep my City A$$ from starving & dehydrating. I love that he's literally pulled a man from a burning vehicle, saved people from drowning, has volunteered to help our fire & police depts. over the years & that he does it because he truly loves helping others. I love that he & I can throw Simpsons quotes back & forth & laugh like kids even though we've heard those jokes & seen those scenes countless times over 2 decades. I love that we have as much fun running around Disney World as we do going to a heavy metal rock festival.

Stung reminded me about the little notes he sometimes leaves me - post-its on mirrors or pillows or my books which run the gamut from sweet love note to x-rated suggestions with a few jokes thrown in from time to time. I love the way he randomly just texts me a simple "I love you" in the middle of a workday. I really love that he Accepts & Trusts & Believes in me more thoroughly than I sometimes do myself.

He's got his flaws, for sure. But I can't deny the love.
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Old 11-10-2014, 07:21 AM
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You know, for all that I put a smiley face in my last post. It's really not a joke. I love my STBXAH because I haven't found a way to simply like him yet, and hating him would hurt too much.

I've been thinking about Stung's 3 box theory, and reading FireSprite's beautiful list of her RAH's qualities.

For a good many years now, since I started realizing my marriage was failing, I been struggling with how much of my STBXAH's personality is legit, and how much is a con game. Adding to that is the fact that has some seriously messed up parents, whom he's increasingly patterning himself after as he gets older.

I no longer know which qualities go into box 1, and which go into box 2. Both regarding his good qualities and his bad qualities. I don't know which are intrinsic and which are learned. All this in a man that I've known for a quarter of a century.

Yes, our marriage is ending, and I'm cool with that, but it still freaks me out. It's not ok with me, nor do I think it should be, that I can't pin down with certainty his intrinsically lovable qualities. I struggle with this, not so much as an x-wife, but as a human being.

I refuse to believe that my love (whatever that meant) was wasted on a con-man, or a Body-Snatcher Pod Person, who was incapable of valuing the love I gave him. I don't think that was the case, but I'm still parceling through the why's, and how's, and what's of it all. There are days when I remember only great things about him, like how he could spend hours in the floor playing barbies with our daughter, or how he seemed to get oddly turned on by my goofy sense of humor, or how he figured out that the best way to calm me down after an argument was with tawdry gossip from his job. Other days all I can remember are his lies. The lines are blurred, and I don't want the lines to stay blurred. A year from now, five years from now, whenever, I want to be able to say. "That was my husband. We aren't married any more, and that's ok. I still love him. He's a good person." I'm just still trying to figure out if that's true. Is he a good person? Was he? Is my love based in reality?
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Old 11-10-2014, 07:31 AM
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For what it is worth....I believe that there is a distinction between remembering the lovin' feeling.....as opposed to actively experiencing the same thing in present time.

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Old 11-10-2014, 07:34 AM
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I don't think I ever really loved my X. I felt a lot of pity for him. I felt protective of him because of all he had been through. I felt the need to take care of him and help him. None of those things are love.

I love our children so I will never regret our being together. I still feel pity for my X, but if he were not the father of my children he is someone I would not have any contact with at all because our morals and values are not the same at all.
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Old 11-10-2014, 07:50 AM
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I had a similar conversation with my therapist. Like you, I couldn't even explain my love for him. I realized I loved the person he was before he started using. And I was hanging on to that person and hoping for him to come back. That's the person I love but he doesn't exist anymore.
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Old 11-10-2014, 11:23 AM
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I had to differentiate between love and need. I admitted I didn't trust, respect or like him but contended I loved him. What it came down to was denial and rationalization to continue an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. I needed the drama and a self-destructive part of me felt I deserved that treatment, a realization I had when long out of the relationship. Recovery takes brutal honesty, especially with oneself.

I've read that at the heart of all addiction, including codependency, is low self-esteem and now I clearly get that. But it took a lot of hard work in Alanon.
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Old 11-10-2014, 01:08 PM
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Originally Posted by SeriousKarma View Post
I refuse to believe that my love (whatever that meant) was wasted on a con-man, or a Body-Snatcher Pod Person, who was incapable of valuing the love I gave him.
I relate to this! Saturday, in between his Friday drinking-fest and his Sunday drinking-fest, I had suggested he come with me to a local event I was interested in, on a topic I've increasingly been pursuing as a really deep-seated interest.

He said yes right away, enthusiastically. My "con-man" feelers went up. We went, and on the way home he was so excited. He was asking my questions on the topic and being enthusiastic overall, and my thought was, are you just saying this? Is this another form of manipulation? Do you really care, or is this just another chit in the I-can-make-her-adore-me bank?

Does he value the love? That's a great question.
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Old 11-10-2014, 05:56 PM
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For me, at the worst points of the drinking, it was a mixture of compassion, affection for the good I could see in him underneath the alcohol, and a lot of romantic nonsense/blather.

If you subtract the romantic nonsense/blather, I could say that I loved him, even though I was no longer "in love" with him. I was "in love" with the IDEA of being "in love." But I no longer wanted to live with him and with all the chaos that goes along with the live of an active alcoholic.
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Old 11-10-2014, 09:43 PM
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Originally Posted by LexieCat View Post
If you subtract the romantic nonsense/blather

Oh H#LL No, Lexie my dear. H#ll no.

They'll have to haul me off kicking and screaming before I "subtract the romantic nonsense/blather". This disease may think it's got the best of me, but it ain't never gonna get the best of me. I was a hopeless romantic coming into this marriage and I'll be a hopeless romantic going out. Maybe I'll find another man someday. May I'll become a nun. Maybe I'll live my life happily single, with my cat, and my popcorn, and a constant loop of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy running on my TV. I dunno, but this hopeless romantic will never surrender the romantic nonsense/blather. It's the best kind of blather there is!

Huzzah!!!
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