chronsweet

Thank you for reposting this. I mean, Holy Tamale. If that wasn't my boyfriend who wrote that, then I don't know who did it. I am on to his game and I am beginning to find myself now. What a great validation for ME to be able to read what I have been trying to say for years! Sigh, living with alcoholism/addiction makes a heart quite heavy, doesn't it?

NewbieJ

Oh my god. Was this written by an actual abuser? It's almost...psychotic, the *manipulation* that goes into this. It is exactly what I am living right now. I can't even pick something to highlight as a similarity because it all fits. It all. Fits.

ZiggyB

This is a great article and totally seems spot on with what I have been through

Tuffgirl

On the website is a comment "you are a target, not a victim". I think this is really important to remember for most of us here.

Thanks for the bump, Ziggy.

Titanic

The same lines can be heard when one tries to get marital counseling with an alcoholic/addict:
Well, aren't we all different people? Weren't we different when we first met? Didn't we communicate when we met, dated, got engaged, got married, had kids, etc.? Isn't the very essence of communication having two different people on the same page, connecting, speaking the same language? How was that done all these years then? So we were incompatible from the start and at every marker and milestone? You mean you're averse to work even though you're a workaholic? You mean doing something for our family and us is a waste of time? Don't tons of couples get marital counseling for communication or other differences? One can't make "sanity" out of the A's "insanity."

What's really going on is "self-will run riot," the "isms," the "stinking thinking" surrounding the "addictive" or "self-loathing" core of the A's brain. A brain in need of Sobriety-Recovery. Generally, the alcohol and addiction must be dealt with first. That seems to be the answer.

owathu

This is so my soon to be ex-husband...everything. Scarily accurate.

lizatola

I've read this before but felt the need to print it today! I'd say that 90% of it applies to my A. Crazy stuff!

WishingWell

Boy, I can say that none of this applies to my husband.

But I wonder if any of it applies to me? Hmmmmm . . . it's very interesting to turn this all around and use "he" instead of "her". I'm not sure this only applies to the person with the addiction -

"if I let my partner get into my head, I will be under his rule and will be smothered. I will lose myself. To prevent this, I will subconsciously and consciously distance myself from my partner to keep him from overtaking me, while giving him fleeting moments of tenderness to keep him near me."

Sowelu

I have also printed this today, 100% accurate and a great reminder to watch for the signs and get out early before things get too emotionally difficult

Lulu39

He has not allowed me to finish a sentence in over a year.

Yep.
My opinion about ANYTHING is wrong.


Bingo.

cli

JenT1968, that was my first thought as well! It's important for us all to realize, whether we're the abused or the abuser, that these are not purposeful Machiavellian evil conspiracies. No one consciously "targets" a "victim" with the ultimate endgame of sucking the life out them.

Yeah sure, ultimately the life was sucked out of me, but it wasn't because my RAXBF consciously and consistently invented new ways to demean me. He just wanted what he wanted, and he said and did things to get what he wanted immediately at the moment. (Of course I happily gave him my whole world, but that's between me and Al-Anon now.)

I do appreciate these "inside the mind of..." posts, but from my own experience, true evil is not that smart!

Titanic

Except for some psychopaths.

ZiggyB

I really have to wonder. I mean, my ex repeated the same patterns of verbal abuse and anger with every woman he has been seriously involved with in the last 10 years. In spite of the fact that he must have known he was hurting people, he never tried to get any help. Of course why I stuck with him for so long, yeah that's totally my crap to deal with but anyway..... at least when I have a problem I will try to resolve it through therapy, meditation, or any means possible.

cli

Yes, exactly! I'm not excusing psychopathic behaviour, I'm merely pointing out that it may not be as systematically cruel and evil as it seems to us "victims" in hindsight.

Real-life villains don't plan their evil deeds from the beginning, like in a movie. Psychopaths are still just people, who may be incapable of caring how their actions hurt others. They may pretend to care, pretend to apologize, pretend to make amends, because they need to keep their friends. Because friends give them what they want...

As much as I despise my RAXBF at the moment, I don't doubt that he started our relationship with an open heart. He didn't fall in love with me because I was an injured lamb, ripe for his slaughter. He didn't look at me and consciously think, "Yeah, I'm going to ruin that powerful woman's life and have fun doing it."

No, he was simply a jerk. A psychopath. An addict. He wasn't capable of empathy, seeing things from other's POV, so all he saw was what he wanted and how his "loved ones" could be controlled to give it to him.

Of course I'm only speaking from my own experience. Perhaps y'alls partners truly are genius super villains, evil plotting from the day they met you, just like in a comic book. But I must content that you're probably giving too much credit to a dipstick. A mean and very dumb dipstick.

Tuffgirl

Well said, cli. My experience reading in the alcoholism forum and the newcomers to recovery forum is most don't set out to become what they are today. And most are genuinely horrified at how they treated people. But addiction is driving their brain and behavior.

Its not an excuse for bad behavior; it is an acknowledgement of compassion. And because I can have compassion doesn't mean I have to put up with bad behavior. But I can attest to compassion being an antidote to anger.

Titanic

Did Ted Bundy really "fall in love" with that girl in college who dumped him and broke his "heart" before he began killing her lookalikes? Was he capable of "love" as an untreated psychopath? Are there people who are incapable of any loving/empathetic feelings? If so, would most of them fall in the non-A camp because a great number of As drink to numb, repress or mask feelings?

I don't know the answers.

cli

Hey Titantic. Come on. You're so awesome, and I know you know better than this... Not all psychopaths are serial killers, and not all alcoholics are psychopaths. I actually prefer the term "sociopath" instead. It means exactly the same thing, but without the Ted Bundy associations...

Sociopaths have feelings, but only their own feelings. The suffering of others doesn't phase them very much. It's most marked by the lack of empathy or remorse, especially when it was suffering that they caused themselves. I'm not psychologically diagnosing anyone, or even calling anyone "crazy", but doesn't that blatantly selfish behaviour sound a bit like an addict to you? Especially an abusive addict..?

cli

I adore this! Compassion, but without sympathy...

Titanic

Thanks cli! I wasn't drawing any conclusions ... just throwing out some food for thought and asking for enlightment ... "If so" was a poor choice of words ... and I learn something new every day!

I agree with you that there probably are some alcoholics who are sociopathic.

cli

Oh, of course! Titanic, you didn't make a poor choice of words, or say anything wrong whatsoever. I just happen to be very passionate about this issue, so I springboarded straight into my own rant...

Speaking of which! All I meant to say was that abusers, alcoholic or not, sociopathic/psychopathic or not, are still just humans. The train of thought outlined in the OP isn't literally what the abuser was thinking. Most likely, he or she wasn't thinking at all except for how to get more booze or more money for booze, and to invent new excuses to keep the "loved ones" just barely happy (or especially totally unhappy and/or trapped) enough to not leave them. It's not so Machiavellian. It's more just plain stupid...