The Language of Letting Go, December 5
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The Language of Letting Go, December 5
DECEMBER 5
You are reading from the book "The Language of Letting Go."
Difficult People
Few things can make us feel crazier than expecting something from someone who has nothing to give. Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not. We may have spent years negotiating with reality concerning particular people from our past and our present. We may have spent years trying to get someone to love us in a certain way, when that person cannot or will not.
It is time to let it go. It is time to let him or her go. That doesn't mean we can't love that person anymore. It means that we will feel the immense relief that comes when we stop denying reality and begin accepting. We release that person to be who he or she actually is. We stop trying to make that person be someone he or she is not. We deal with our feelings and walk away from the destructive system.
We learn to love and care differently in a way that takes reality into account.
We enter into a relationship with that person on new terms - taking our needs and ourselves into account. If a person is addicted to alcohol, other drugs, misery, or other people, we let go of his or her addiction; we take our hands off it. We give his or her life back. And we, in the process, are given our life and freedom in return.
We stop letting what we are not getting from that person control us. We take responsibility for our life. We go ahead with the process of loving and taking care of ourselves.
We decide how we want to interact with that person, taking reality and our own best interests into account. We get angry, we feel hurt, but we land in a place of forgiveness. We set him or her free, and we become set free from bondage.
This is the heart of detaching in love.
Today I will work at detaching in love from troublesome people in my life. I will strive to accept reality in my relationships. I will give myself permission to take care of myself in my relationships, with emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual freedom for both people as my goal.
©1990, Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved.
You are reading from the book "The Language of Letting Go."
Difficult People
Few things can make us feel crazier than expecting something from someone who has nothing to give. Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not. We may have spent years negotiating with reality concerning particular people from our past and our present. We may have spent years trying to get someone to love us in a certain way, when that person cannot or will not.
It is time to let it go. It is time to let him or her go. That doesn't mean we can't love that person anymore. It means that we will feel the immense relief that comes when we stop denying reality and begin accepting. We release that person to be who he or she actually is. We stop trying to make that person be someone he or she is not. We deal with our feelings and walk away from the destructive system.
We learn to love and care differently in a way that takes reality into account.
We enter into a relationship with that person on new terms - taking our needs and ourselves into account. If a person is addicted to alcohol, other drugs, misery, or other people, we let go of his or her addiction; we take our hands off it. We give his or her life back. And we, in the process, are given our life and freedom in return.
We stop letting what we are not getting from that person control us. We take responsibility for our life. We go ahead with the process of loving and taking care of ourselves.
We decide how we want to interact with that person, taking reality and our own best interests into account. We get angry, we feel hurt, but we land in a place of forgiveness. We set him or her free, and we become set free from bondage.
This is the heart of detaching in love.
Today I will work at detaching in love from troublesome people in my life. I will strive to accept reality in my relationships. I will give myself permission to take care of myself in my relationships, with emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual freedom for both people as my goal.
©1990, Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved.
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My paper snowflakes never look like snowflakes when I make them. 
My mother was a difficult nut to crack. I wanted to be in a relationship with her, but man did she make it hard. One day of clarity in my early thirties, I pushed her off the pedestal that I had her on since childhood.
I've been noticing a trend of posts made in the forums lately about "feet of clay" and how people are going to disappoint us. That was the realization I had on the day I took my mother off the god list. She was just a human with all her human foibles. I guarded my heart with her after that. I didn't tell her things that she could/would use against me. I didn't share my fears or worries. That wasn't how I wanted it to be, but that was what I had to do. We went on to have a pretty good relationship after that.
My mother was a difficult nut to crack. I wanted to be in a relationship with her, but man did she make it hard. One day of clarity in my early thirties, I pushed her off the pedestal that I had her on since childhood.
I've been noticing a trend of posts made in the forums lately about "feet of clay" and how people are going to disappoint us. That was the realization I had on the day I took my mother off the god list. She was just a human with all her human foibles. I guarded my heart with her after that. I didn't tell her things that she could/would use against me. I didn't share my fears or worries. That wasn't how I wanted it to be, but that was what I had to do. We went on to have a pretty good relationship after that.
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TW, I am right there w/you. Over the last few days, I've been spending more time and energy than I should thinking about XAH and his seeming lack of any emotions about having lied to me and stolen from me over the entire course of our 19-year marriage, his lack of emotion when I told him I was filing for divorce, his lack of emotion other than mild annoyance when I told him I needed him to move out. WTF? Was our life together really so easy to discard? He feels nothing at all about it, not even enough to say "I'm sorry it ended like this"? Really? (And I've seen countless people at SR be in the exact same place, so I at least had the knowledge that no, it wasn't just me, it wasn't personal, that is just how A's are, but it was still hard...)
Then I remembered the old adage about trying to get bread at the hardware store. They simply don't have it, and never will.
XAH's mother told me, many years ago, about XAH as a young boy, sitting sadly on the curb as his A father headed off to the bar, having refused to spend time w/his son. It broke my heart to hear this, and the image still haunts me. I know he used to have feelings, and even early in our marriage, I think there was something there. But the alcoholism grew and grew and left less and less room for anything human as the years passed. He has become astoundingly good at putting up a facade of normality when he so chooses, but beneath it, there is emptiness, selfishness and self-pity--and doubtless pain and loneliness, if the truth were told.
I ache for him, for me, for all I thought I had that turned out to be illusion, but it's time for this:
And so we pick ourselves up by the bra straps and soldier on. We've learned a lesson that will serve us well in time to come, however painful it is right now.
I'm with you, TW, I'm there with you.
Then I remembered the old adage about trying to get bread at the hardware store. They simply don't have it, and never will.
XAH's mother told me, many years ago, about XAH as a young boy, sitting sadly on the curb as his A father headed off to the bar, having refused to spend time w/his son. It broke my heart to hear this, and the image still haunts me. I know he used to have feelings, and even early in our marriage, I think there was something there. But the alcoholism grew and grew and left less and less room for anything human as the years passed. He has become astoundingly good at putting up a facade of normality when he so chooses, but beneath it, there is emptiness, selfishness and self-pity--and doubtless pain and loneliness, if the truth were told.
I ache for him, for me, for all I thought I had that turned out to be illusion, but it's time for this:
We stop letting what we are not getting from that person control us. We take responsibility for our life. We go ahead with the process of loving and taking care of ourselves.
And so we pick ourselves up by the bra straps and soldier on. We've learned a lesson that will serve us well in time to come, however painful it is right now.
I'm with you, TW, I'm there with you.
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My paper snowflakes never look like snowflakes when I make them.
And it will, and I'm going to make them anyway. Nanny nanny boo boo!
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Hugs, Tropical Winter, hugs for both of us. An awful lot of us have pretty similar experiences to each other, and really, it's such a source of hope. I can probably trust what they tell me, from their experience. And if someone else can live thru it, come out the other side and be happy, then so can I. And so can you.
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Thanks so much for posting this honeypig, this is just what I needed to hear today. This applies to many relationships in my life, but perhaps most difficult of all has been my relationship with my sister. We grew up with two alcoholic parents and as children we became very enmeshed with each other for support. But as adults, we have both dealt with addictions that have made us unable to be truly supportive of one another. I am in a good place today, sober, with a career I love, and expecting a baby (my first child) in March. But my sister has continued to struggle, and I have continued to struggle with my unrealistic expectations for a loving and supportive relationship with her. She struggles with an addiction to pain killers and with alcoholism. She has claimed for the past few years to be sober, and she does seem to be doing a little better, but I know that she is at the least still drinking sometimes. She lives far away, so it's hard for me to know for sure. She is also addicted to worrying about her health, and to the unhealthy attention it brings her, and she periodically has health scares that are difficult to deal with. I worry a lot about her, and I struggle to keep my expectations for the relationship realistic and protect myself from disappointment.
Today she wrote me an e-mail saying that she spent the past few days in the hospital for pancreatitis. She built this up as a dire situation, as she often does with her health crises. I hadn't heard from her in a week or so, but she didn't ask how my pregnancy is going or how I'm feeling.
In the past I have spent a lot of time researching her supposed maladies, trying to figure out whether the situation is really as serious as she says, worrying about her and panicking, and then eventually feeling angry when the malady turns out to be not as serious as she seemed to think. And through all of that, I have felt so frustrated that she can't be the loving and supportive fantasy sister that I built up in my head as a traumatized child.
But today I think I made some progress at detaching with love. I told her that I was sorry she had been unwell, and hoped she would be feeling better soon. And I let it go. I didn't try to find out her symptoms and research them, or get myself in a knot of anxiety. I forgive her for not being capable of being supportive of me and my pregnancy. It's just not in the cards right now. Maybe this health scare is something serious related to her drug and alcohol abuse, or maybe it's another scare that she's using to get attention and more pain meds. Time will reveal more. I don't need to obsess over it, and I don't need to try to force her to change her ways. That would be exhausting for me, and it would get me nowhere. I love her enough to let her work through this without my interference, and I love myself enough to focus on having a healthy pregnancy and taking good care of what I can control in my own life!
Today she wrote me an e-mail saying that she spent the past few days in the hospital for pancreatitis. She built this up as a dire situation, as she often does with her health crises. I hadn't heard from her in a week or so, but she didn't ask how my pregnancy is going or how I'm feeling.
In the past I have spent a lot of time researching her supposed maladies, trying to figure out whether the situation is really as serious as she says, worrying about her and panicking, and then eventually feeling angry when the malady turns out to be not as serious as she seemed to think. And through all of that, I have felt so frustrated that she can't be the loving and supportive fantasy sister that I built up in my head as a traumatized child.
But today I think I made some progress at detaching with love. I told her that I was sorry she had been unwell, and hoped she would be feeling better soon. And I let it go. I didn't try to find out her symptoms and research them, or get myself in a knot of anxiety. I forgive her for not being capable of being supportive of me and my pregnancy. It's just not in the cards right now. Maybe this health scare is something serious related to her drug and alcohol abuse, or maybe it's another scare that she's using to get attention and more pain meds. Time will reveal more. I don't need to obsess over it, and I don't need to try to force her to change her ways. That would be exhausting for me, and it would get me nowhere. I love her enough to let her work through this without my interference, and I love myself enough to focus on having a healthy pregnancy and taking good care of what I can control in my own life!
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