DII

I am a hostage.....I think a willing hostage too....but I am planning my escape.

embraced2000

in my case, my ex had complete control......it was easier to just not argue about it all and let him have his way about everything.

when i let my xah into my life again, slowly, ever so slowly, he chipped away at my psyche and i just kept thinkiing......"this is as good as it's gonna get.....he is doing the best he can, so try and find a way to live with it".

that way of thinking just about got me killed. and i truly mean that statement.

when i stropped thinking and doing what was best for me, i got sick all over again.....and just like the alcoholic, this time it was much worse than the first time.

there came a time during this that i was truly an emotional hostage....because i had become so sick. i had become so sick, i had no direction, no hope, and death seemed the only way out.

i am ever so grateful to have finally grabbed onto a shred of energy and escaped to my mothers home. my higher power was definitely at work that day.

loner1968

embraced,
We are fortunate to have gotten out alive. There are so many who don't. People say "why didn't she just leave him" Its not always so cut and dry especially when our minds are just as sick as theirs. I wrote of a time in another post when my XABF almost killed me. He really nearly killed me and it was the one time I knew that if I didn't stop fighting him I was going to die...yet I stayed with him for 10 more years!!! DENIAL is a powerful thing!
. I felt so hopeless and I really thought I couldn't make it on my own. Truth is I probably could have lived a better life without him. he was spending all the money on drugs behind my back anyway.
For many years I pushed that incident to a place in my mind where I did not have to deal with it. He doesn't remember it because he was in a blackout. I didn't even know what a blackout was back then. call me stupid but I thought it meant you passed out. I didn't know a person could we walking and talking and trying to kill you and not know.
I felt like you and and thought death was the only way out. I never wanted to "kill myself" but I might as well have been trying. I remember when he had his hands around my neck I was fading out and I just let go and accepted it. I couldn't fight anymore and I knew I shouldn't anyway. It was the most surreal feeling and I was just thinking this is it. I'm not coming back from this....and I didn't even care anymore.
I can't believe that I lived like that and WHY would I have continued to live like that if he didn't leave? And WHY did I want him to come back? I was sick for sure. I'm getting better and I'm glad we are all here to "talk" to each other.

Ago

I'm here to say "escape" is possible

and freedom awaits on the other side, and freedom feels good, the beach is fun, I can walk on the beach while the sun is setting and not stare at my feet wishing the pain would end.

Life is good, the air tastes sweet.

Rainbowsend

It doesn't have to be the beach at home alone feels pretty good :-)

strongerwoman

I can relate to the beach statement (and I am 110% envious of anyone with a beach nearby!)

When I catch myself as I'm out and about (usually driving) looking up at a pretty sky or at the changing colors of leaves on the trees, I notice them now and smile to myself and take in the beauty, and just get a feeling from somewhere that all will be okay.

I've never done that before in my life, thats one of the ways I know I am getting better, I am able to appreciate little things like that now and they make me feel good.

brundle

Wow all these posts where so good! It just keeps reminding me that escape is possible; even when it feels I'm trying to dig out of my cell with a plastic spoon! LOL!

TakingCharge999

THANKS all for this thread... your messages are very wise.

Ago, your comment hit home.. thanks a lot for that... I keep it in mind and really helped me

Right now I just left my self induced prison but I am still the hostage, my mind is so sick that I think I need him verbally abusing and only caring about his whiskey. I miss him (well only the nice side of him of course). I am trying to think he is dead and I only see the drunkard twin (I see him at work daily and right now I am on antidepressants to keep me from crying histerically whenever I hear his laughs and how he doesnt give a damn.... no, I am not exactly "stable" right now...)

It is true that many of this involves the alcoholic but it takes a lot from the enabler side to believe this twisted world the alcoholic lives is by any means good. OR that the alcoholic is actually A HAPPY PERSON! He stated he was happy so it should be true right. Why am I more eager to believe him than to believe myself?

Just starting to escape from all that sickness and it is VERY DIFFICULT!!
Very difficult in a macho society where drunkards that get girls are like these f***** heroes...

It's like I am this unknown lost girl that somehow got her life back and does not even remember what she liked and how happy she was before meeting this loser. Right now I am still staring my feet trying to figure out all this mess. Well I can't.

Keep posting you are great!!

loner1968

It's like I am this unknown lost girl that somehow got her life back and does not even remember what she liked and how happy she was before meeting this loser.

This is exactly how I feel sometimes!!!

bookwyrm

Me too! And I'm starting to have some fun finding out just what she likes now!

Silverberry1331

I was just thinking this. This is me. I still catch myself sometimes. Don might very well be entrenched in his disease, which includes above...however, I am the one that jumps out of my skin and attempts to rectify the problem...I am the one that enables. I am the one that has tried to "save" him from his bottom....sometimes I wonder "who is the hostage here?" More important, the strangest thing is that we are our own captors.

wish he'd quit

This is me to a T. I think it boils down to them having the fear of losing control. This makes them say or do anything to keep their sick little world all about them and will make who ever they are with feel hostage and unable to get out.

Ago

As a "double winner" I have to say this statement applies more to my "codie" hat then my alcoholic one.

As an "alcoholic" I just didn't care about anyone else, if you "got in my way" I would do anything to get "around you" and if it meant going over you, I had no problem with that, if you got between me and my desires things were going to go badly for you, that meant my drinking, my womanizing, whatever...seriously no one was really that important to me, and I felt all the efforts made by my girlfriend back then were to try to "control" me, which was in fact quite true, it's just that some of her "requests" happened to be normal and healthy ones.

Watching her over the next few years after I got sober and actually did what she told me were an eye opener, I quit drinking, got a career, quit smoking, became neat as a pin, was nice, loving etc when she ran out of things to "control" is when I saw my first "codie bottom"

I was standing in front of her as she was crying screaming and yelling and remember saying, "I'm sorry, but this just isn't about me any more"

Fast forward 15 years, and I look at the relationships I was having, my behavior began as someone trying to have a healthy relationship with unhealthy people but somewhere in there I "crossed the invisible line" just like an alkie does, and my "efforts" at having a healthy relationship became in fact an effort at "control", yeah I wanted to "control them healthy" but it was still control, and when my efforts failed, I had my codie bottom, which lasted 2 years and ended up with me here, which many of you got to watch...it was awful.

For me, the funny thing is, if I am pointing at anothers behavior the truth is I am the one displaying it, My ExAGF would write these long, spiteful, hate filled emails to me "helping me" by pointing out "everything that was wrong with me" and "how it showed I was an awful person" I would be reading these emails just with my mouth hanging open wondering if she was from another planet and the truth of the matter she was describing herself and how she felt about herself, I suspect she still blames herself for her childhood and had deep rooted shame and self loathing about it, so that's what she "projected" on me.

I literally feel God puts people in our lives that display our character defects in some form or another, and that they are our "mirror" so some things are the same, and some opposite like the codie/alky dynamic and we know we still have these defects when we get angry about them, if I can forgive others for their behavior, I can begin forgiving that behavior in myself.

For me, I make no mistake, the spiritual axiom is "If I am upset, there is something wrong with me" so if I get upset today I start looking at me, not others, and basically what it boils down to today is the truth of the matter is I just can't stand frickin amateurs displaying my character defects, as I am so much better at them then they are.

There is a certain amount of humor in what and how I write, but that is an absolute in my life, "we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate, seemingly without provocation, but we have invariably found we have made a decision based on self that put us in a position to be hurt" so my job today is to find out what that decision was immediately and clean up that mess and it is NEVER as simple as ummm I let them in my life and let them hurt me, I ALWAYS had a part, though I liked to think otherwise.

Usually though it's seriously as simple as looking at their behavior and applying it to me, they are being controlling??? uh uh buddy, that's MY job, I'm the one in control. Cut me off in traffic??? uh uh buddy, don't you know who I am??? If I'm not running late, I let that guy in front of me in, if I'm in a hurry, I don't, then we have a conflict, I'm the one running late, self centered arrogant guys that think they are kinda special???

well......you get the point.

It never doesn't apply to me somehow, somewhere.

never.

not once.

Learn2Live

lillamy

This one is important, too.

PaperDolls

I'm an A and a codie. I have to say in my last relationship, which ended right after I got sober this time, I certainly felt like a hostage at times.

I think it's possible that codie's take hostages as well ..... sometimes.

For sure, it's just a generalization.

Learn2Live

This, from the OP, really helped me today. It's what I feel I have been subjected to the last two and half years of my life. Add to the list having to endure week after week of hearing someone else be blamed for everything that caused him discomfort.

fourmaggie

gosh, i remember my A/addict(one in the same person) so much TRIED to bring me down, but i had AL ANON behind me...and some guidance but most of all...a gut feeling...

this man went behind my back to back talk about me to my best friend and my aunt and uncle...they where very smart to see what he was up too...isolate me to HIM only so my family and friends would stay away from me...problem was when he would do this...he was drunk and 2 of them where in the fellowship...

so when i hear ALCOHOLICs take hostages...yep they do...

both my aunt and best friend called him up on HIS CRAP and he did not like that too much...plus me "stopping" the enabling behaviours i had...HE LEFT ME...because knowing he could not get away with anything....

boy ole boy...he sure did try a good fight....lol

Roxxxy

"alcoholics don't have relationships, they take hostages"

Without even realizing it, I basically signed over my life to alcoholic boyfriend when we first started dating. The relationship was never about us as a couple but about him and the life that he would suck out of me in order to fulfill his needs as an addict. The world was ending if he wouldn't get his way. His words were powerful that always lead to him manipulating ever situation, like a mastermind. He would be do verbally abusive and I would cry, later u would find myself apologizing for my tears.

He did take me hostage to a place far, far away in which I couldn't escape. And I allowed him to. The fear of running away made me feel guilty and most of all afraid of being
alone. My world no longer existed and the girl that I stared at in the mirror no longer looked familiar. It's as if I was slowly dying.

SoloMio

I think there's a tremendous lack of reciprocity in an alcoholic relationship because it's all built around the A's need to drink, and the "volunteer" codependent becomes collateral damage rather than a living, breathing partner in the relationship.

I have Stephen Huneck print (I love Stephen Huneck) and it shows two togs in a playful tug-of-war and it says "Love Is Give and Take" but in an alcoholic situation, there's one giver and one taker.

And so true, Ago, yes, the hostage prison door is always open, but we hostages sometimes find it hard to walk out.. Definitely an offshoot of Stockholm Syndrome.