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Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Denton Texas
Posts: 92
Still waiting
Well, my A still hasn't called. I guess he's still thinking about whether he wants to work on our relationship. And yes, I did call and leave a message. Its hell being 41 and the man you're in love with screens your calls and won't return messages. Why don't I get it? Someone said an interesting term the other day. They were describing a "toxic" relationship. Can you tell me more?
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
Hi CajunGirl
Someone may be able to do a better job of explaining...Smoke is always so good with words, but a toxic relationship is poison, usually to both parties involved. We may be attracted and only see the good side, turning our denial toward the pain, but in the end we just hurt each other. We try and we compromise, and we live a lie, but the toxins keep accumulating until we are very sick indeed.
The antidote is to let go, to work on our own recovery and well-being. Not an easy pill to swallow, but in the end this is what keeps us sane.
Hope this helps.
Someone may be able to do a better job of explaining...Smoke is always so good with words, but a toxic relationship is poison, usually to both parties involved. We may be attracted and only see the good side, turning our denial toward the pain, but in the end we just hurt each other. We try and we compromise, and we live a lie, but the toxins keep accumulating until we are very sick indeed.
The antidote is to let go, to work on our own recovery and well-being. Not an easy pill to swallow, but in the end this is what keeps us sane.
Hope this helps.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: That's what I'd like to know.
Posts: 2,416
HI Cajungirl...
The word toxic always makes me think of the time we had the great methadone debate in the GR and NA forums about a year ago. I went to look up some info on a pharmaceutical site about it, and found the phrase "methadone is not toxic". Duh. Of course not. A toxin is a poison that derives from an organic source (plant or animal), and methadone is synthetic. The company was being deliberately misleading. It's not toxic, but it is poison and can kill you.
I don't know who coined the phrase "toxic relationship", but I think Ann described it well. There are all kinds of toxins. The kind that's in poison ivy just makes most people itch, snake venom can kill you. But I think the image that works best with the relationship allegory is bee venom. Except in rare cases, the first sting makes a little welt. But your body becomes sensitive to the poison. The next sting, your whole foot swells up and you get a fever. The reactions get more severe with each injury and eventually can be deadly.
There are exceptions. Some people get DEsensitized with successive stings, and some are so sensitive in the first place that they are lost to the first one. But I think "toxic relationship" is what I described above. Increasingly sensitive reactions to what is essentially the same injury.
I got tickled when you mentioned phone call screening. I tried to call Dino yesterday. I simply had seen something very cool on the web that I thought he would get a kick out of. He did not return my call. I puzzled, and remembered that there was something he said he would do that he has not done and guessed that he was ducking me for that reason. I had forgotten all about it because I never figured he would do it in the first place.
Go to Ann's excuse eliminator ("how to have fun when you don't feel like having fun" post). Find yourself some things to occupy your mind that have nothing to do with the motherless cretin who will not return your calls. There are all kinds of people in the world who DO know how to use a keypad. Talk to THEM.
Hugs,
Smoke
The word toxic always makes me think of the time we had the great methadone debate in the GR and NA forums about a year ago. I went to look up some info on a pharmaceutical site about it, and found the phrase "methadone is not toxic". Duh. Of course not. A toxin is a poison that derives from an organic source (plant or animal), and methadone is synthetic. The company was being deliberately misleading. It's not toxic, but it is poison and can kill you.
I don't know who coined the phrase "toxic relationship", but I think Ann described it well. There are all kinds of toxins. The kind that's in poison ivy just makes most people itch, snake venom can kill you. But I think the image that works best with the relationship allegory is bee venom. Except in rare cases, the first sting makes a little welt. But your body becomes sensitive to the poison. The next sting, your whole foot swells up and you get a fever. The reactions get more severe with each injury and eventually can be deadly.
There are exceptions. Some people get DEsensitized with successive stings, and some are so sensitive in the first place that they are lost to the first one. But I think "toxic relationship" is what I described above. Increasingly sensitive reactions to what is essentially the same injury.
I got tickled when you mentioned phone call screening. I tried to call Dino yesterday. I simply had seen something very cool on the web that I thought he would get a kick out of. He did not return my call. I puzzled, and remembered that there was something he said he would do that he has not done and guessed that he was ducking me for that reason. I had forgotten all about it because I never figured he would do it in the first place.
Go to Ann's excuse eliminator ("how to have fun when you don't feel like having fun" post). Find yourself some things to occupy your mind that have nothing to do with the motherless cretin who will not return your calls. There are all kinds of people in the world who DO know how to use a keypad. Talk to THEM.
Hugs,
Smoke
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
My son doesn't have a phone, but will avoid all contact when he is "doing his thing". I have suggested that he leave a message on my home machine when he knows I am at work, just to let me know he is alive, but he doesn't do that either.
This is the action of Jerks...yes even my son can be a jerk, and it really gets me miffed....
This is the action of Jerks...yes even my son can be a jerk, and it really gets me miffed....
Member
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: The Basement
Posts: 724
One thing i have learned from being in the same place you are with the screening is that it's not about you. I know it is so hard not to take it personally but it's about their own self-centered fear, the fact that they don't like themselves very much, and the shame that they feel a lot of the time. I used to get so angry at my husband for turning his cell phone off when he didn't want to talk to me. I felt that it was very disrespectful to me. However, when we went to couples therapy one time he said he did things like that because he was feeling inadequate and that everything he says seems to upset me and he just couldn't handle that right then. Funny isn't it, I was probably annoyed that he wasn't acting the way I thought he should in some situation where he needed to be responsible and wasn't or needed to remember something and didn't......I am new to this board as well and I am learning that I have been so busy looking at the character defects of my A that I wasn't able to see my own.
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