Yogagurl

Would like to hear stories about addicts who have come back and thanked their loved one (codie) for tough love. I am tired of focusing on the negative! Would like to hear some positive notes for a change.

cynical one

"Tough love" is something you practice on yourself - not others. So, go ahead and thank yourself for putting boundaries for yourself in place and enforcing them.

headcase1

I thanked a nurse who got tough with me when I wanted to leave voluntary commitment.I ended up staying an extra 2 1/2 days but it made a huge difference in my life.Thanks Kim wherever you are!

zoso77

Define positive, YG. My definition may be a lot different than yours...

glitterdeva

I thanked my mother and step-father for showing me tough love. I was in high school and I was doing drugs. I decided that I didn't want to apply to college and wanted to hang out at home instead after graduation. They weren't mean, just said that I am gonna have to leave and be on my own. As a result I worked 3 jobs my senior year in high school and then spend whole year after graduation working my butt off just to pay for rent and my partying. I got so depressed that I decided to change my life - applied to college and left town and a drug addiction behind. It took me many years to be thankful for it. I was mad at my mother for a long time. If they didn't kick me out and cut me off, I would have probably stayed in that little town, getting high and not accomplishing anything. I got hooked on crack, so it was hard to kick. Their cutting me off was the best thing for me though. Also, it was such a huge lesson - no matter what, I have no one but myself to relay on.

I think with tough love - you either get out of the rockbottom and become a better person, wiser or you don't.

hopeful4

YG, I would not count on your X to thank you at any point. Many times the people on these forums who are addicts are deep in denial. They are many who are also personality disordered or have other mental issues. For that reason, I don't think many of them come back and say thanks.

I agree with cynical, thank yourself for sticking to your boundaries and getting off the crazy train!

XXX

Ann

I agree with Cynical One, tough love was tougher on me than my son.

I got tough with myself and no longer enabled...even though every piece of my heart wanted to do "something" to help.

I got tough with myself when I no longer listened to lies and pretended to believe them.

I got tough with myself when I chose to not allow my son in my home because he stole every time and turned it onto a war zone...what kind of mother turns her son from her home?

I got tough with myself when I held back from doing for my son what he should and could do for himself.

And I got tough with myself when I turned my illusion of power over to God and let Him take over when I had failed so many times before.

The best tough with myself was when I "made" myself go to a meeting with a bunch of other tough people who found peace with life, no matter how bad it had been. I stopped pretending to be tough when I sobbed through my first 3 meetings and finally began to take care of myself.

Thank myself? No, but everyday I thank those who went before me and showed me a better path and shone their light on it until I could find my own. And I thank every member of SR who walked with my on my dark day and held my hand through the scary parts, because it turned out I wasn't so tough after all.

Thanks for the thread, Yogagirl. You set my brain to pondering.

Hugs

Ilovemysonjj

Thank you Ann for this eloquent message.

Needabreak

Yogagurl, are you saying that by breaking up with your ex, you considered that practicing tough love on him?

Because I thought that what you were doing was protecting yourself, saying "enough" to some really atrocious abusive addict behavior on his part.

If what you were really doing was giving him an ultimatum, then no, he probably won't ever thank you for that. Based on what you have written about him, he doesn't seem to have much in the self-reflection department.

BeavsDad

I didn't get a "thanks" per se, more of an acknowledgement that creating and sticking to my boundaries helped my son break the cycle and stick to a recovery plan.

DanCO

My wife has and continues to give me tough love

We've been together for 9 years. I drank in excess through most of those 9 years

She quit drinking for my sake. She supports me through every slip and sad day. She not once chastised me nor made me feel worse

I'm getting sober for us. I'm getting sober to be the handsome, strong and successful man she met all those years ago

When I think about drinking I think about her, her beauty, strength and understanding of this frustrating disease

zoso77

YG...

I would consider you walking away from him a "positive" development for you. It may not have been what you wanted, but it's certainly what is best. And now you're in a position where you can make decisions about your life and your future.

So for me, having options available as to how we live our lives is in and of itself a positive thing. My hope is you soon recognize this to be true and make that slight cognitive shift in your thinking.

Re: your husband...I think the day he comes to you and thanks you for "tough love" is a low probability event. And even if it did, you shouldn't have to need that sort of validation. Healthy validation comes from within in terms of how we treat ourselves and how we make decisions. Never forget that.

Ilovemysonjj

I got a thank you but it was short lived and for the most part it was thanking me for helping him since he said he would never have been able to do it alone. still waiting for the lightbulb to go off that the "thanks" is to God.

Ilovemysonjj

And to clarify: The thank you was during the time I let him come home last year and did everything for him he should be doing for himself!!

allforcnm

Im not sure of your definition of tough love, but with my husband... he has thanked me for helping him get proper medical care for his addiction. I didn't use tough love IMO but I encouraged him to entering rehab where he got the help he needed; did a lot of the legwork to pick out a few I thought would work best for him. he didn't want to go exactly (so maybe I used tough love?) I pushed it with the help of his brother and a doctor.

I did other things which might be considered tough love like suggesting he move out when he was using and didn't want to stop. He hasn't thanked me for that, and there is no reason he should. In our case, moving out didn't help him.. he got worse and used more drugs.. At the time I was angry, I didn't want to live with his behaviors and I thought odds were he would see from this he needed to stop.. I didn't know much about addiction at that time or I wouldn't have made that choice. I have actually apologized to him.

For the most part, his being healthy again is like a living thanks.. seeing him with our son, having him back with us, the way he was before the addiction took him over is all I ever wanted.

incitingsilence

Yoga girl can you write your own positive story … be the star!

StormyWeather33

I enabled my XAB for a couple of long horrible years. We had two years apart with no contact. He contacted me again when he had a year sober and we began exploring a new relationship (although it was now long-distance because he had moved 1,000 miles away). We talked alot about what had happened and he was truly remorseful and begged me to please stay away from him if he ever relapsed. Of course he was adamant that he was done with that life and was never going back to it. After a few months his behavior began to change and I realized that he had relapsed again. He denied it and got a little ugly. I did as he had asked previously - I went no contact. That's about as tough love as I can be, and in his sober time he is thankful for that. While he's using, I believe he's also thankful for it because he doesn't want to hurt me any more than he already has.

Chino

Cynical then Ann describes perfectly my evolving thought processes and behavioral changes, then Beavs Dad sums up the end result (so far).

When I practiced tough love at and on my daughter, the result was awful. It was just another attempt at controlling her. When I practiced tough love on myself - finally controlling myself! - my daughter (and everyone else for that matter) was free to deal with herself instead of me.

She has said many times since then that she never would have begun recovering if I had kept enabling.

The relationship we have now - full of mutual respect and admiration - is the best thanks I'll ever have

Lily1918

No. I have never been thanked for sticking to my boundaries and refusing to enable. XAH#1 still refers to me as a selfish expletive expletive.

I'm not exactly sure that I have ever thanked anyone for giving me "tough love" hmmm... this thread is very thought provoking. You see... it never mattered whether they enabled me or not, I was going to do what I was going to do regardless of their decisions. I was always my best enabler anyways.

My current AH is in prison until the end of the summer, and at his sentencing he did thank the judge for " this opportunity to reflect on his decisions, and the time away from the world to spend his first two years of recovery in a controlled environment." I'm not sure how sincere he was. He may have been sucking up and it worked. False gratitude is just another form of manipulation.

Twofish

Dear YG,
The more I read the comments these wise members have given to you, the
more I think about my own situations with my two RADs. My daughters
never "thanked" me per say, but I also never "thanked" SR...
for all the many hours and months they spent with me.
Teaching me and showing me what tough love was all about.
And you know what? They worked a miracle. I couldn't fix my children
but I could and did find my way to fix the broken part of me. (on going fixing!)
So let me kidnap your thread, for a moment, and properly
thank the members of SR who walked with me, talked with me,
dried my tears and literally "saved" me from my own distructive
codependency self. I'm not "cured" but I am better, healthier.
Thank you SR members (you know who you are and there are many!)
who never gave up on this momma. My life shines brighter these days and
I am alive and I have hope.
Respectfully,
TF