Drama = Passion?? Thoughts anyone?
Getting to my HAPPY PLACE!
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Virginia
Posts: 298
Drama = Passion?? Thoughts anyone?
I wonder if I confused the constant “drama and turmoil” in my most recent relationship with “passion”. The fact that there was always a small part of him that was elusive to me was kind of like the game of “hard to get” I suppose.
Just thinking out loud here – but I wonder if a more healthy relationship would have less “passion” than my last one? Say I met someone and he was a great guy – no addictions, normal by most standards, honest, trustworthy, etc? Am I going to feel like he’s “too nice” because I don’t have that constant yearning in my gut and the feeling of being consumed by all that he does?
I’ve ALWAYS picked the bad boy…always. I’ve been talking with/seeing a guy that is far from the usual guys I’ve dated. We have fun, he’s sweet, attentive, goes out of his way to do things for ME, does what he says he is going to do and I’m not constantly worried about what he is REALLY doing. It’s a different feeling to say the least. It’s like going from a tornado to a soft blowing, just barely felt breeze. Sometimes I wonder if I even know HOW to have a normal relationship. I enjoy him but I’m not quite used to the “normalcy” – kind of like always waiting on the other shoe to drop ya know?
Does any of this make sense to anyone?
(Note: I’m going to post this on 2 boards here for various responses. Thanks to everyone!)
Just thinking out loud here – but I wonder if a more healthy relationship would have less “passion” than my last one? Say I met someone and he was a great guy – no addictions, normal by most standards, honest, trustworthy, etc? Am I going to feel like he’s “too nice” because I don’t have that constant yearning in my gut and the feeling of being consumed by all that he does?
I’ve ALWAYS picked the bad boy…always. I’ve been talking with/seeing a guy that is far from the usual guys I’ve dated. We have fun, he’s sweet, attentive, goes out of his way to do things for ME, does what he says he is going to do and I’m not constantly worried about what he is REALLY doing. It’s a different feeling to say the least. It’s like going from a tornado to a soft blowing, just barely felt breeze. Sometimes I wonder if I even know HOW to have a normal relationship. I enjoy him but I’m not quite used to the “normalcy” – kind of like always waiting on the other shoe to drop ya know?
Does any of this make sense to anyone?
(Note: I’m going to post this on 2 boards here for various responses. Thanks to everyone!)
Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 10
This makes absolute sense!!!!! I,too, have always picked the "bad boy". There has always been something exciting about it to me. Although, now that I have been married to one for 12 years and ready to leave, I think I am quite done with the excitement and would love to have passion in a less exciting way. Don't feel alone. There is something about the "good guy" that is starting to look awefully attractive to me right now--like me liking how I feel about myself when I'm around him instead of hating life. I believe there will be many people who can understand your feelings here.
Om, Aum, Ohm...
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Punxsutawney/Pittsburgh
Posts: 4,797
Don't know if my experience counts or not: my husband and I are both in recovery. We were sober when we met, though we were both still learning to be sober (Our anniversary dates are within a month of each other, and we were each almost 1.5 years sober on our first date).
There's a string of bad boys behind me. I would swell with pride when they'd declare me the "craziest b****" they'd ever met. Life was drama then. And passion, too, I thought.
But until I read your question, I never really thought of how we can equate those two things. There was some drama in the first year of my relationship with my husband. Like I said, we were both fairly new to sobriety. But we worked hard at it--at both our personal sobriety and at our relationship with each other. He was different than any other man I'd ever met. He was a rebel, but I would not categorize him as a "bad boy." No criminal record (he is, as a matter of fact, an "officer of the court"), no tattoos, no hard drug use.
By the time we got married, we had most of our personal and collective difficulties worked out, and the primary source of drama was that we were now raising three teenagers and a pre-teen together. Even that was low-drama compared to what some of our friends were going through with their kids. We often joke that our life is "boring" compared to most folks we know--and that we prefer it that way.
But the passion is definitely there. Anyone who knows us as a couple remarks on it. We hold hands in public, we're not afraid to be seen kissing by our friends or our kids. A friend whom we hadn't seen in almost a year observed, "Oh, so you two are still in love, eh?" (and, of course, made gagging noises!).
So, passion and drama, at least in my experience, are not the same. When I was different, I may have thought it was, but not now. And, for the record, "difficulties" don't have to become "drama," either. I didn't know that until I learned to respond, rather than react, to life's little surprises.
Peace & Love,
Sugah
There's a string of bad boys behind me. I would swell with pride when they'd declare me the "craziest b****" they'd ever met. Life was drama then. And passion, too, I thought.
But until I read your question, I never really thought of how we can equate those two things. There was some drama in the first year of my relationship with my husband. Like I said, we were both fairly new to sobriety. But we worked hard at it--at both our personal sobriety and at our relationship with each other. He was different than any other man I'd ever met. He was a rebel, but I would not categorize him as a "bad boy." No criminal record (he is, as a matter of fact, an "officer of the court"), no tattoos, no hard drug use.
By the time we got married, we had most of our personal and collective difficulties worked out, and the primary source of drama was that we were now raising three teenagers and a pre-teen together. Even that was low-drama compared to what some of our friends were going through with their kids. We often joke that our life is "boring" compared to most folks we know--and that we prefer it that way.
But the passion is definitely there. Anyone who knows us as a couple remarks on it. We hold hands in public, we're not afraid to be seen kissing by our friends or our kids. A friend whom we hadn't seen in almost a year observed, "Oh, so you two are still in love, eh?" (and, of course, made gagging noises!).
So, passion and drama, at least in my experience, are not the same. When I was different, I may have thought it was, but not now. And, for the record, "difficulties" don't have to become "drama," either. I didn't know that until I learned to respond, rather than react, to life's little surprises.
Peace & Love,
Sugah
Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Upstate New York
Posts: 1,636
In my personal experience DRAMA=B*LLSH*T.
....and, actually, I don't find b*llsh*t to be at all exciting (stressful, chaotic, confusing, traumatic, diversionary -- yes, but "exciting" in any positive way "Absolutely not!")
A few years ago I was asked to speak at an Al Anon conference and to loosely organize my remarks around the theme of "The Excitement of Recovery." As I was thinking about what I was going to say, I remembered something that had happened in my teen years, when I found myself at one point with a "best friend" who had gotten so "into" the drama=excitement-and-really-living (lying, cheating, multiple relationships in crisis at the same time, etc..etc..etc..) thing that it was becoming just an exhausting waste of time to be around her. One day I was talking to my mom about it and my mom said to me something like:
"It sounds to me like S thinks that in order for her life to be interesting and exciting, she has to be doing something new and dating someone new and creating all kinds of chaos all the tiime. But the truth is that that is not what is really exciting in life: what is really exciting is working to actualize your inner self and to build a good life and a good relationship day-by-day, over a long time and then being able to look at what you've created and know that it's important and good and it has meaning beyond what it means to you. All the rest of that cr*p that people think is exciting is just a diversion for people who can't or don't want to or are too scared to try to make themselves and their lives into something really exciting in a meaningful way."
That was one of those things that, as soon as I heard it, I knew, somehow, that it was real and true on a very, very deep, fundamental level, and I've always remembered it.
Since I've been in program, I really have come to believe that a lot of people do get addictied to drama -- their own and/or other's -- just the same way and for just the same reasons that they get addicted to anything else: because it provides an escape and a diversion and a rush and a good excuse not to have to look at or deal with what they need to be looking at and dealing with in order to have a healthy, meaningful life...(and, of course, for many people who grow up in dysfunctional situations, it's also familiar and has the added benefit that it can be "manufactured" as needed, so one can have a limitless supply!)
As far as the relationship of "passion" to all of this goes: in my mind passion is about caring and committment -- true, deep caring and committment. Since the truth and depth of anything necessarily depends on its authenticity and its meaningfulness and since drama, of the kind we appear to be discussing here, is rooted in dysfunction and escapism, any passion that is involved in it is necessarily of a phoney and fleeting kind. That's not the kind of passion I personally want in my life.
An exapmle: A few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend to whom I have kind of been a mentor for almost 30 years. She had "gotten" a memory and a feeling from around a core wounding/trauma in her childhood. It was a pretty big thing for her and she was really struggling with working with it. We talked for an hour and a half and, I won't get into details, but part of what I was able to share with her was a healing exercise that I had done several years ago, that I had only remembered because I "happened" to be looking through some old journals while cleaing the day before (There are NO coincidences!) and it truned out to be just what she needed to hear at the time. But anyways, it was a long, very "hard," very intimate, very emotional/spiritual conversation -- and a huge gift from HP for both of us.
Now, to an uninformed objective observer that conversation a few weeks ago would probably appear "boring" as h*ll compared to one of my conversations 35 years ago with my "dramatic" friend -- all about who was cheating on who and who was going to do what to who and who was being thrown out, or beaten up, or running away from home, or......what-the-hell-ever. But the truth is that what was being worked through and what actually "happened" in the context of the recent conversation is just about as exctinig and as passionate and as presently authentic and alive as it can get, while the conversation with my friend in my teens was nothing but BS and was not going anywhere...and, obviously, I had a good sense of that even then.
...and actually, in all honesty, I do have to say that, after I got off the phone, I realized that I felt -- mentally, emotionally and spiritually -- just as "spent" and just as "satisfied," on a very deep, core level as I feel after really great sex with someone with whom I can be truly intimate on many levels......and if that doesn't say "passion," then, as far as I'm concerned, nothing does.
freya
....and, actually, I don't find b*llsh*t to be at all exciting (stressful, chaotic, confusing, traumatic, diversionary -- yes, but "exciting" in any positive way "Absolutely not!")
A few years ago I was asked to speak at an Al Anon conference and to loosely organize my remarks around the theme of "The Excitement of Recovery." As I was thinking about what I was going to say, I remembered something that had happened in my teen years, when I found myself at one point with a "best friend" who had gotten so "into" the drama=excitement-and-really-living (lying, cheating, multiple relationships in crisis at the same time, etc..etc..etc..) thing that it was becoming just an exhausting waste of time to be around her. One day I was talking to my mom about it and my mom said to me something like:
"It sounds to me like S thinks that in order for her life to be interesting and exciting, she has to be doing something new and dating someone new and creating all kinds of chaos all the tiime. But the truth is that that is not what is really exciting in life: what is really exciting is working to actualize your inner self and to build a good life and a good relationship day-by-day, over a long time and then being able to look at what you've created and know that it's important and good and it has meaning beyond what it means to you. All the rest of that cr*p that people think is exciting is just a diversion for people who can't or don't want to or are too scared to try to make themselves and their lives into something really exciting in a meaningful way."
That was one of those things that, as soon as I heard it, I knew, somehow, that it was real and true on a very, very deep, fundamental level, and I've always remembered it.
Since I've been in program, I really have come to believe that a lot of people do get addictied to drama -- their own and/or other's -- just the same way and for just the same reasons that they get addicted to anything else: because it provides an escape and a diversion and a rush and a good excuse not to have to look at or deal with what they need to be looking at and dealing with in order to have a healthy, meaningful life...(and, of course, for many people who grow up in dysfunctional situations, it's also familiar and has the added benefit that it can be "manufactured" as needed, so one can have a limitless supply!)
As far as the relationship of "passion" to all of this goes: in my mind passion is about caring and committment -- true, deep caring and committment. Since the truth and depth of anything necessarily depends on its authenticity and its meaningfulness and since drama, of the kind we appear to be discussing here, is rooted in dysfunction and escapism, any passion that is involved in it is necessarily of a phoney and fleeting kind. That's not the kind of passion I personally want in my life.
An exapmle: A few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend to whom I have kind of been a mentor for almost 30 years. She had "gotten" a memory and a feeling from around a core wounding/trauma in her childhood. It was a pretty big thing for her and she was really struggling with working with it. We talked for an hour and a half and, I won't get into details, but part of what I was able to share with her was a healing exercise that I had done several years ago, that I had only remembered because I "happened" to be looking through some old journals while cleaing the day before (There are NO coincidences!) and it truned out to be just what she needed to hear at the time. But anyways, it was a long, very "hard," very intimate, very emotional/spiritual conversation -- and a huge gift from HP for both of us.
Now, to an uninformed objective observer that conversation a few weeks ago would probably appear "boring" as h*ll compared to one of my conversations 35 years ago with my "dramatic" friend -- all about who was cheating on who and who was going to do what to who and who was being thrown out, or beaten up, or running away from home, or......what-the-hell-ever. But the truth is that what was being worked through and what actually "happened" in the context of the recent conversation is just about as exctinig and as passionate and as presently authentic and alive as it can get, while the conversation with my friend in my teens was nothing but BS and was not going anywhere...and, obviously, I had a good sense of that even then.
...and actually, in all honesty, I do have to say that, after I got off the phone, I realized that I felt -- mentally, emotionally and spiritually -- just as "spent" and just as "satisfied," on a very deep, core level as I feel after really great sex with someone with whom I can be truly intimate on many levels......and if that doesn't say "passion," then, as far as I'm concerned, nothing does.
freya
Last edited by freya; 03-05-2009 at 08:51 AM.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Miles from Nowhere
Posts: 396
Many of my relationships with men were full of drama too.
Read WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH by Robin Norwood. It's all about how women from dysfunctional families in which their needs weren't met are attracted to addicts and other unavailable men, and find nice men "boring."
Read WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH by Robin Norwood. It's all about how women from dysfunctional families in which their needs weren't met are attracted to addicts and other unavailable men, and find nice men "boring."
aka Miss Scarlett O'Hara
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 364
I don't think that drama = passion, but I do think that a lot of people do think that. My abf has told me several times that I'm not "passionate" enough. He is always surrounded by drama. He EXPECTS everything to be over-dramatic including feelings in relationships. He thinks that I should feel like I can't live without him. I mean literally like if he dies that I will to. I've had to tell him, sorry, but if you die, I plan on sticking around. And then he got all sad and says, well that doesn't feel good. You just told me that you can live without me! I mean it's not really a choice. Unless we die together in a car accident or something, I'm going to keep on living!
I think that lots of addicts always want MORE. More of EVERYTHING including emotions and feelings. Kind of ironic then that many also use their DOC to cover these same emotions.
I think that lots of addicts always want MORE. More of EVERYTHING including emotions and feelings. Kind of ironic then that many also use their DOC to cover these same emotions.
Getting to my HAPPY PLACE!
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Virginia
Posts: 298
I think that lots of addicts always want MORE. More of EVERYTHING including emotions and feelings. Kind of ironic then that many also use their DOC to cover these same emotions.
It was lust at first sight!
Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Upstate New York
Posts: 1,636
Well, you know, ladies, I got nuthin' against lust.....In fact, I've found it to be very re-creational way to spend some time and energy at certain times in my life 
......but the problem and the drama enters into the siutation if I start to imagine, or force, or try to pretend that a situation/"relationship" that truly and honestly has no potential beyond the "lust" factor is, can, or should be something more and something "bigger" than what it is.
Trying to force (or manipulate) something or someone to be more than what it or they are is defintely a tried-and-true recipe for drama -- and disaster!
freya
......but the problem and the drama enters into the siutation if I start to imagine, or force, or try to pretend that a situation/"relationship" that truly and honestly has no potential beyond the "lust" factor is, can, or should be something more and something "bigger" than what it is. Trying to force (or manipulate) something or someone to be more than what it or they are is defintely a tried-and-true recipe for drama -- and disaster!
freya
Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Baghdad
Posts: 2,822
Originally Posted by lovtolaff 
Say I met someone and he was a great guy – no addictions, normal by most standards, honest, trustworthy, etc? Am I going to feel like he’s “too nice” because I don’t have that constant yearning in my gut and the feeling of being consumed by all that he does?
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
