Please help me LET GO & LET GOD....(long, sorry)

Old 03-06-2009, 06:07 PM
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:codiepolice :codiepolice :codiepolice

"He had a tough life"

I also got that one from a friend that knows an exAH bf. "He's had it tough". "He is not evil, only young". As if that was an excuse for abusive behaviour. It isn't.

I had it tough too, as many people here and we are not harming anyone out there.

If you believe in God, why not let God take care of him? Its his job. Your job is to take care of you and I am glad you are posting here. It means something inside you is changing.

Hugs!
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Old 03-06-2009, 06:20 PM
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Bottom line, he is an adult who deserves respect, respect you will not apparently give him. You are treating him like a child incapable of making adult decisions. You don't hahve to agree with his choices. They may be bad choices in your eyes. But adults have the right to make bad choices and to learn from them (if, of course, someone doesn't sweep in and save them from the consequences of those choices).

If you want to continue to try an control him, to be responsible for his choices and his life, you are of course free to do so. But do not try to convince you are being anything other than a codependent enabler who is not ready to let go your drug of choice. Accept responsibility for your choices and their consequences. And don't expect a different result from doing the same thing over and over.
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Old 03-06-2009, 09:50 PM
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Originally Posted by anubus View Post
Bottom line is that I need to do this for MYSELF....if something horrible should happen to him (and I'm afraid it might if he continues the way he is), I am the one who has to live with "if I only".
I know you probably cannot see it, or don't want to, but the above is a very clear sign that YOU need help even more than he does. To say that you must mitigate the consequences of his actions in order to feel good about yourself is a very, very big indication that you have some unhealthy attitudes and beliefs going on in your life. Does it even make sense to you that you are cleaning up his 'mess' that he got himself into and calling it 'doing something for you?'

I am not judging you or saying this to be mean. I am speaking from experience. I had some major enmeshment issues that have been with me since childhood. As my therapist put it--you need to learn where you end and others begin. You do not have the power to save him, or anyone for that matter. This is not about him, it's about you believing you are that powerful.

L
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Old 03-07-2009, 04:00 AM
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dear anabus-

as a christian, we are taught to turn the other cheek, to help our neighbor, to love our enemy: to love our brother as ourselves. it might seem contrary to this teaching to abandon your ABF to the consequences of his behavior and choice.

in dealing with my ABF, I too pray to God to guide me in helping my brother. many people must learn their lessons in the “school of hard knocks”. it is most unfortunate that many must hit the very bottom until they finally cry out in their despair and poverty of spirit for help.

oftentimes, in prayer, we have a personal agenda. for example, “dear god, please help ABF see the harm and destruction of his choice on those who love him.”

the problem here is that we have imposed our will onto the situation, the right attitude is always “Thy will, not mine”.

I feel peaceful to abandon my ABF to god’s will, and in my personal case, that means for me to step aside and permit the school of hard knocks to be his teacher.

marie
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Old 03-07-2009, 04:31 AM
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Hi Anubus--
welcome back!
It sounds like you have decided to do exactly the same thing you have been doing before.

My guess is you will get exactly the same results (or worse, since this is a progressive illness we're talking about).

Your post about what you decided to do was still all about him and his mother and his fear and his needs. That makes me sad!

I think the novacaine/DUI analogy is very interesting.
It shows you minimizing the seriousness of a DUI.
It shows magcal thinking - that you assume YOUR way of dealing with fear is the example that should impact ABF, and that you asssume to know how he feels, and how he should handle HIS feelings.

By me not having contact with him, and from what his mom said, he may be running scared again now. His mom is not much help, she kinda encouraged him to leave the state and run from the hearing....urgh!!

So him "running scared" is your fault, and him leaving the sate is his mom's fault?? Is this guy a blow-up doll or a living breathing human being? I would be so insulted to know people in my life looked at me this way!! Give the man the dignity to fail or succeed on his own!

Anubus - I'm beggin' ya - just step way off!!!!!!! And have you tried AlAnon yet?

peace,
b
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Old 03-07-2009, 05:24 AM
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Wow, woke up and having coffee and what did I find here, but an excellent post to help me on my day. Thank you for sharing everyone!
This all reminds me of a day when I finally realized that in my situation I had been always looking outward to the addict. It kept me from looking at my own stuff. It worked for me for a long long time even though I was completely and utterly miserable.
I had a teacher that I was talking to one day and I asked her how could I ever stop worrying about this person(my addict) and she told me to stop looking at her as though she is broken and in need of fixing. That was the beginning of a long journey for me. A journey that started me looking within myself. I took my focus off my addict and began focusing on me. The truth was that I had become broken- I was the one who had to begin to make change if I ever wanted to feel differently. I was the only one in the relationship that I could fix or at least influence:-) I was the one who was miserable!
Recently I've been doing some writing, well a lot of writing and somewhere I began to look at love and what that means to me. Love does not mean I say yes when I mean no, it does not mean I "do" anything extraordinary, in fact love is not for me a doing thing at all. Love is a "being" thing for me, and has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything to do with myself. I can not love another until I love and accept myself and all my icky parts. When I can live, accept and love myself than I am in a state of "being" in love, and I can pretty much love those around me.
When I am not in that being state of love for myself, I am frustrated with the world and the people around me. Nothing they do is good enough, I judge them and my ego gets all wacky and twisted.
When I love myself I do not have to resort to "tough" love or other means to get what I want, in fact I really do not want for anything from others around me, it is as though I am in some strange ecstasy and need for nothing from outside of myself. I am filled with joy and happiness. I am at a place where I have no desire to "change" another, and so they are free to be who they need to be.
I think you are right where you need to be, part of my own journey was to feel pain, pain is the thing that spurred me into looking deeper and finding the answers that I needed to find. Pain and misery have become friends of mine, they have served me very well, and to that I hold a lot of respect for them. When they show up on my doorstep, it is a sign for me and tells me I am resisting something somewhere, so in some respects they come to warn me that if I want to remain happy, joyous and free, I might want to take a look inside, and stop looking outward at someone else. That is all a distraction that keeps me from the joy that is always here, always waiting for me to step into. Joy does not go anywhere...it simply waits for me to slide the crude over so I can get to it.
Much love and light to you, and trust that you are on your Divine Life Journey.
~Cheryl
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Old 03-07-2009, 06:36 AM
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fear is what motivates us to enable others. everything you have done has been enabling because you have a certain fear of how his actions are going to affect you. Let Go and Let God and believe in yourself, take care of yourself, and quit putting yourself in the line of fire for his sake. don't be guilted either as being the only person "close" to him. hitting bottom can also be seen as you taking your fluffy pillow out from under his a$$. him not doing what he needs to do may be just what it takes for him to hit bottom.

one good cure for enabling is detaching. you could tell him, "it is your choice" and then you LET GO and LET GOD! you can do it.
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Old 03-07-2009, 06:50 AM
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Originally Posted by anubus View Post
His mom is NOT a good influence on him, she doesn't encourage him at all....I think in some sick way she WANTS to see him fail in life.
There are also those who will literally love an alcoholic to death. It happens. One of our young AA members shared that recently. One of his friends he was in sober living with, 17 years of age, had parents who bailed him out of every mess he made, including DUI's. He walked out of sober living one night with a blank check from his parents, stocked up on booze and drugs, and was found dead in a cheap motel room the next morning, alone. There's where the kind of love you think is 'helping' can eventually lead to.
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Old 03-07-2009, 07:06 AM
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I can't do the hard life thing as an excuse. I just can't. I've had a hard life by anyone's standards. My mum had a very bad case of diabetes and high blood pressure, it killed her 2 years ago. My dad was an alcoholic it killed him 14 years ago. My sister was a junkie who dumped her kids on my mom to raise. Starting at the age of 7 I had to help my mother take care of my sister's kids because her salary didn't stretch to cover childcare for 3 additional (then 4, then 5, then 6 additional) children. Some bad things happened to me as a child. I watched my father abuse my mother until she left him. And not only was he an alcoholic but he was a mean sob and a career billy bad butt to boot. Wah, wah, wah... Oh well. I didn't drink, I didn't do drugs. I got a job and went to work every single day God sent, rain or shine, sick or well. I don't run around hurting people. I do that whole responsible adult thing.
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Old 03-07-2009, 07:39 AM
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Yeah Flwr. "hard life", we enablers are the ones in victim roles but that "hard life" one also portrays the addict as a victim of their circumstances.

Poor me, got it tough, green light to drink and destroy, because others will never notice my alcoholism, when I drink it will be "social", and the only ones who may get close enough to notice my sickness, if they still have any sanity in them, will part. Leaving me alone with my bottle until someone else falls for my lies. Poor me.

Bleahh!!
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Old 03-07-2009, 08:47 AM
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Heya Anabus,

I just read your second post, and it is still all about him.

I have an idea, can you post to us how YOU are doing?

Make it as in depth about yourself as you are about him.

Don't mention him, not once, if you mention him even once, start over.

Try this as an exercise, I am willing to bet you can't do it.

I will give you an example, with what is going with me.

I am having boundary issues in every aspect of my life.

Work, Home and Personal, I am having difficulty setting and enforcing strict boundaries, and then when my boundaries get crossed, I get upset, and respond in such a way that my response becomes "the problem" and my boundary issues are still there....unenforced...which makes me yet more upset....because I feel like I am just standing there saying the same thing over and over while people just ignore my boundary until I get frustrated and start losing my temper.

I have "reformatted" my boundaries with new solutions with both work and home, I have yet to see if these are viable alternatives, but I am optimistic and now have some new tools to work with.

With my personal boundary issue, I have not yet been able to be "heard" that it is in fact a boundary I am absolutely unwilling to compromise, so I need to find some new way to present it in a non threatening way but make it completely clear that this is something I feel is non negotiable, this is a boundary I am not willing to compromise about.

I also need to come up with a new and better solution to navigate it should it "present" again in such a way that I take care of myself but is not "threatening" to the other person.

How can I "disagree" without being disagreeable in other words.





OK, I have "condensed" three very volatile and troublesome situations right there in my life that involve interacting other human beings and done it in such a way that both "the problem" and "the solution" Lie within my personal area of responsibility.

Can you tell us how YOU are doing in a similar way without mentioning AH or mother even once?

Once again, I am willing to bet you cannot, but give it a try, you may learn something by trying.
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Old 03-07-2009, 12:34 PM
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And the church ladies know him too, and they both think that he does WANT to straighten out his life, but is having problems doing it. They do agree that I should not enable him though, so the issue is where to draw the line on enabling versus helping.
Anubus, what the minister, you or the church ladies think is really of no consequence because your bf will change _only_ when he becomes willing.
I know I can't cure him, but I truly want to see him put this legal thing behind him. If he screws it up again after that, oh well then he has nobody to blame but himself.
I'm not an addict so I don't have direct ESH...but I do have ESH as the mom of an addict and my part in our family story.

When we stepped out of the way and my son faced the full brunt of his own actions- he did stop. His consequences included losing his car, almost everything he owned and....spending a year incarcerated plus 4 months in a halfway facility after that. Jail was required for my son to stay off the streets and alive. He's been clean and sober for almost 3 years and lives responsibly. Not everyone is so blessed, but in his case he finally said he would do anything required to have a different life.

I'm so happy now to know that the self esteem he found in knowing that he could take care of himself as any adult should- actually helps keep him where he needs to be. His bad choices were not my fault but by doing things for him I took away his opportunity to try, fail- get back up and move on. Yes- it's a gamble to let go but the fact is that nothing good ever came out of my enabling and I am NOT responsible for somebody else's bad choices-ever. My son can take full credit for his hard won recovery.
His mom is NOT a good influence on him, she doesn't encourage him at all....I think in some sick way she WANTS to see him fail in life.
What I once thought was the worst case scenario was actually better than the best case scenario. I was wrong. One night, after my son's first arrest, I finally began to snap out of some destructive thinking and realized that by helping my son stay active in his addiction- I was party to all of it. That is the 4th C...I can contribute. I just couldn't live with that and at that point made some huge changes in my own conduct.

I love the bible story about the prodigal son. The father allowed his son to fail when he stayed out of his son's business and sent him out on his way...to live on his own like any other adult does. Then the father waited (and I'm sure prayed) for his son to come to his senses.
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Old 03-07-2009, 01:03 PM
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Red Flag..

Please read what you said here..

"I need to do this for MYSELF....if something horrible should happen to him (and I'm afraid it might if he continues the way he is), I am the one who has to live with "if I only". Believe me, I had a dear friend who was murdered by her A x-husband. I knew both of them, and nobody thought he was capable of something like that."


You state a dear friend was murdered by her A ex.

Yet you are not in the slightest concerned about your safety..only that your A might

hurt himself...not you if he cracks.

And yes, he probably is scared. He will be separated from alcohol in jail.

Please re-read your posts, anubus.

This exercise can be an eye opener...

Love and hugs, and prayers.
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Old 03-07-2009, 06:13 PM
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Thank you all for the wonderful replies. I am going to take you guys' advise, since everyone seems to agree that it is for his own good. It is hard coming to terms with all this.....and whoever posted (sorry my brain is fried and don't remember who it was) about as Christians we are taught to forgive, forget, turn the other cheek, etc.....that hit the nail on the head for me. This is so awkward, that by NOT helping him, it may save him. Just backwards from my personality, as I am a genuinely sweet, giving person by nature.

As for the "test" to give myself, I don't understand. Write just about myself? Like: I am a super honest, sweet person. I'm told that I am strong, although I don't see it in myself so I know I need to work on the self esteem. A counseler once told me that I soak in negetive remarks, but when people compliment me I brush it off, and I realize this is true. And I know I need to work on patience, one of my big time flaws. I was married for 23 years, and (with God's help) saved my house from foreclosure 5 years ago. Started a home internet business 5 years ago which I LOVE, and take care of a special needs boy as a 2nd job. I have alot of acomplishments which I am proud of, I don't believe in the word impossible....I'm a BIG fixer.....lol. But I guess that is okay if it's for people who really deserve it. I believe I have been truly blessed in everything in my life including jobs, house, car that I LOVE (old one but love it) etc. I have some weird undiagnosed vertigo health issue, which does make me upset because it interfers with things I used to love to do though.

Is that what you meant to write? If so, then I think I did okay? I think I'm just too dang caring & emotional for people.....as to my situation here.

Since I've been so stressed over this, and you all say let it go, and focus on myself, I watched 2 motivational movies today, and decided I'm going to TRY really hard to work on diet & excersize for myself. I'm not fat, but previous to my vertigo issue, I used to love working out/bodybuilding. And I'd like to go tanning again, gonna TRY slowly, but again....the vertigo....urgh. Lights & movement make it worse, but I decided not to let it ruin my life.
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Old 03-07-2009, 07:08 PM
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When I look back on some of the most difficult times where I absolutely had to trust God and let go, I am thankful that I did.
I had to watch a husband deteriorate due to drugs.
A son whom I had to turn away. Can you imagine turning your own child away? He was drinking and drugging and had lost everything already.
My llife was in chaos having to deal with them.
I was exhausted all the time. I lived in fear of what would happen to them.
To make this short, one day I just laid it at the feet of God.
I had to, or I would surely be as crazy if not worse than them.

Here it is a few years later and son is in college doing well.
If I hadn't let him fall all the way down, he would still be somewhere in limbo.

I have peace now. I won't let anyone take that away from me with their crazy lifestyle.

Hold on. Don't give up. Remember it's their choice, not ours.
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Old 03-08-2009, 12:27 AM
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Bless your heart anubus, you seem like such a dear.

As one our friends on here (SR) says..

Left foot, right foot, breathe!
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Old 03-08-2009, 12:28 AM
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Yes, you did okay.
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