1234

Hello everyone.

Many of you ask this question regarding why we stay in dysfunctional relationships: What are you getting out of it?

I've been asking myself that a lot, but the waters are pretty murky. What DO I get out of it?

If you found a way to get at your own answer, how did you do it? Did it just take time? Or did some skilled therapist help you find it? Fourth step? Or is there a thread somewhere I missed?

Thanks,
1234

HoopNinja

Coming here helped a lot because often things were pretty muddled. I knew when I came I was not getting what I wanted--but could not act on it. Having people pull things out of my posts and looking at myself and my situation in its stark reality helped me put the pros and cons list together and the pros list was non-existent at that point.

1234

I'll try that. I'm wondering if ugly things like, "I have a superiority complex"
or "I secretly think martyrdom is honorable" will make it on the list, though. Maybe after reading it through or sharing it with someone things that are hard to see will peek out?

Thanks,
1234

1234

No kidding - it really is all about me. Thanks for the pep talk! Time to get crackin'.

1234

Tally

I had a reason to stay stuck. I professed I wanted change so much but really the thought of having to focus on myself, take stock of my own problems and my own shortcomings absolutely terrified me. It was easier to bury my head in the sand and blame everything wrong with my life, on him.

WizeDeb

I have to say the crazyness of me staying stems from my childhood. It was normal to me. I thought he loved me enough to stop. I thought I could fix him. I thought I was keeping my family together. I was all wrong. I never once took a look at myself and tried to fix myself. Hard lesson to learn.

coffeedrinker

good for you, 1234

my therapist was talking to me one day, and the words "your need to be needed is so strong...." that you do ____ & _____.

like i didn't know i liked to feel needed. like my heart didn't take flight when my xabf told me a couple years ago to watch the movie "for love of the game" cuz there was a message in it for me. (ending scene - high drama - he rushes to the airport and tells her he's always needed her)

i'm gonna post the link to a thread i started on what i'd like to say about the payoff. warning, i'm kinda "wordy" ! it's been a painful eye-opener for me.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...d-my-eyes.html

Summerpeach

I've asked myself this for a good long year now
I'm no where healed enough to even know at this point. Do I have a need to suffer, a need to fix, a need to be intoxicated with madness, am I in love with sadness?

There are many good parts to my relationship and I think my wounds are more about me than the relationship. I realized I am to blame for my choices. I've made some bad choices and I guess I feel I needed to punish myself.
I picked a partner with wounds as deep as mine. Were we suppose to push each others buttons to bring out the wounds so they can finally be dealth with? In that case, I didn't make a bad choice.

Not even sure why, but when I do figure it out, I'll be sure to announce it to the world
;-)

Summerpeach

Coffee, I also have a GREAT need to be needed, then I resent be needed so much

KittyP

For me, I love my husband. He wasn't always like this and I really want the man I love back. If I leave forever I can never have him back. I can move on, find someone new and maybe be perfectly happy more often than not, but I wouldn't have the man who I love. I love him far more than what he represents, sure I want a better husband and to have a family, but more than anything else I want the particular person who I love to be the man I do that with.

The point is coming that my desire to not live like this any more will outweigh my love for him. I have a number of plans for what I will do if I have to walk away permanently. And tbh, I'm starting to work on them now too. I don't want to be starting at 0 if I have to move on. I told him recently that if he didn't make a positive change I would not be sticking around for very much longer. He has now got himself back in treatment but I'm planning to still tag along on a bike trip some friends are taking that I would have gone on if he'd continued on his destructive path.

Right now I still have a glimmer of hope that he can find a treatment that works for him, along with a true desire to recover. If that happens I get to live the rest of my life with the man who I love and these awful past years will fade in comparison to the decades to come.

Freedom1990

You can count me in on that line of thinking too. My addictions in life were booze, drugs, and sick men.

Any one of those/combination of those kept me from focusing on myself.

coffeedrinker

yep. i had that exact same thinking for about the past four years. i believed that if i left him, he would be gone forever, no turning back, he would not re-open his heart to someone who had wounded him so. so i stayed stuck in the "one day".
it has been a very long journey to the realization that it may not, then probably will not, happen.

i wish the very best for you both.

KittyP

I don't particularly believe that. He'll sink or swim with or without me. I could leave and he could still get better and meet someone else and go on to have a happy life. Or I could stay and he'll wallow like this for the rest of our lives.

He's not doing a good impression of it right now but he's a strong person, he's young, he has family and friends who care about him and he's very smart. I do think that one way or another he'll probably get better. I just hope that he gets better before he kills off my hope.

As far as I'm concerned he has a limited amount of time to get better if he wants to keep me. My patience is limited now (as are my eggs), what I want is my husband back and I'll give him my support as long as he makes a strong effort.

posiesperson

Wow, great thread. 1234, what I got out of my relationships has been to avoid being alone, first and foremost. I couldn't be alone, didn't like myself alone, didn't think I could handle it. I'd have to face all those dark and difficult places (which the 4th step is showing me aren't all that dark and difficult!).

Coffee, thanks for the link to your thread. The needing to be needed thing is big! Self-validation, self-esteem all hooked in there. My ex used to say "I want to be with someone who needs me." My ex before that said, "If I show you how to do _________, then you won't need me anymore." That was their issue, but my response to it was my issue. (Interestingly, both of them also said they loved my eyes...hmmmmmm....struck me about your post....)

It makes me feel yucky when I think about all of that complicated stuff (aka abandonment of myself) in the sense that I now want to run, run, run away from all of that as fast as I can. The dynamics seem very "sticky" and complicated and unnecessary...seems an awful lot like drama, and I'm too tired for that anymore.

Hugs,
posie

KittyP

How exactly did you come to that conclusion when what I was saying was the exact opposite? It seems one sentence jumped out at you and you added your own context instead of reading it in the context it was written.

His recovery is his own issue but he also wants to have a life with me. I want to have a life with him but that is conditional. There are only so many false starts that I can take. I'm content to stick with him through an honest recovery. I'm not content to stay with him while he is drinking and in denial about what that means. If his recovery is going to take 10 years then that's what he needs but it's not something I can live with.

I'm staying with him now but it's only because I hope he is heading for a lasting recovery. I don't want a nightmare dysfunctional marriage. I have zero desire for a project of a man. A huge part of my attraction to my husband was how together he appeared. While I can support him if he gets himself together, I can't get him better. I'm not an addiction specialist, I haven't spent 8 years studying how the mind works, I have no other experience of alcoholics. And even if I was all those things I would have no business applying that knowledge on someone I have a personal relationship with.

I want a marriage with an equal partner which is not what I have now. My husband uses drink as a crutch and hates himself. Someone who does that is not in a position to be a partner to any one. If he learns to be sober and content in himself our marriage will work probably work out. If he can't do that it won't. If he doesn't do it soon, I need to move on as I have to be realistic. There are things I want out of my life that I can't have while I am with an active alcoholic, mainly children. I really, really hope that he can take the necessary steps to find peace with himself before I find I need to leave.

Oh and my eggs are in my ovaries, they are limited because that's the way we evolved. One of only two species on earth where the female loses the ability to procreate at such an early stage in our lives - probably because we are a complex creature that needs active parenting for an extended period. But it does mean that a woman who wants children and has an active alcoholic as a husband has a series of incredibly complex problems and decisions to make.

LeaA

What do I get out of this relationship with my Alcoholic BF.

He is not always drunk and emotionally abusive....when he is not he is really smart and we have a lot in common, he is romantic and often kind.

I get to focus on his problems and defecits and not on my own stunted growth as a person. Which is hard and not something I want to do.

I get to blame someone else for things that did not work out for me instead of accepting some or all of the blame.....as in "you were drunk/raging and I could not focus"

I get to stay intoxicated in the chaos, instead of being sober.

I think he does love me, and has good will toward me despite his actions and behavior

I do not have to admit that I failed to make this relationship work (failure is not something I like to admit)

That's what I am getting out of it, funny...some of the things are bad and obviously a sign of someone in need of therapy (which I am involved in) and some of the things are sane and sound nice. Which to me shows that this is a complicated issue. If it were black and white and easy to traverse none of us would be in a bad situation with a drunk or drug addict.

No one looks into the crowd and says "hey that guy/girl looks like a real loser who will ruin my life...lemme see if I can make a life with him/her"

It just sort of ends up a mess....it takes time and dedication to get to this level.

That's what I think anyway.

LeaA

LeaA

I like that you said this. No one picks someone who seems to obviously be a total mess to try and make a life with. My boyfriend made a big deal out of telling me how together he was and how easy going...what plans he had for the future as an attorney, and how he planned to make all that happen for himself.

He did not appear to be an out of control drunk (which he is quickly becoming) I think for many alcoholics appearances are all they have and they cling to them and protect them with all their might!

KittyP

Some people kind of do though. They see someone with problems and want to be the one to fix things. It's why the bad boy always gets a girl.

When I met my husband I was 23 and he was a year older. I along with all my friends were basically living extended childhoods. We were pretty much all college graduates who travelled around intent on saving the world while having a good time. We dipped our toes into our chosen careers to make cash to finance or escapades and we all lived on peanuts most of the time. Everyone described themselves as a freelance-whatever-degree-they-had. I was a freelance journalist and I hung out with freelance film-makers, freelance accountants, freelance engineers and freelance web-designers. Real freelancers work very hard and prioritise their work to some extent, we were just over-grown kids who didn't want to be what we studied but wanted to be something.

But he wasn't like that. He was actually working in his field and was successful in it. (Ironically he actually works freelance.) He knew what he wanted from life and was throwing himself into it. He had a huge amount of friends, real proper friends who clearly loved him. He was surrounded by alternative types but had the confidence to dress in the casual clothes he felt most comfortable in, despite being an ex-goth. He also dedicated time to charity and volunteer work. He just exuded togetherness. The more I got to know him the more he impressed me as a person.

Unfortunately he's also very hard on himself and he works in a tough competitive industry. He takes knocks very personally and a series of professional set-backs, a need to emigrate for work, followed by more set-backs made him judge himself very harshly. And his response was to drink himself to sleep at night. And as we all know drinking eventually makes things worse no better. He was upset about things going badly at work would get drunk, go to work the next day hungover and have an even worse day, get drunker, be more hungover, have a worse day, etc. When we lost our baby he just completely lost it, which he hated himself for, drank more, hated himself more, drank more, etc.

It's been like a vortex of drinking and loathing, going around in circles so fast that it acquired it's own gravity and has been sucking him in more and more. And it sucked me in too for a bit. But I'm out of it now and there is only so long I can watch him go around and around. I want to have a life, I want that life to be with him so I am hoping he can find his way out too. But frankly there is only so long I will wait for him. I'm not sure how long that is, it's not like I can say be done by October 23rd or thanks for all the fish. But I can feel myself starting to give up on us little by little. I know that I can put this all behind us and move forward with him, if he moves forward. But I can't stay in this place much longer.

1234

Thank for all of your posts.

Some of my reasons are easy for me to see. I can say that I enjoy someone's company enough that there's room for negatives. I can say I feel social pressures. I can say I see improvement. Stuff like that.

But the main thing for me is I feel like my scale is broken - like my ability to balance positives and negatives is whacked. And it's hard for me to see where or why so that I can fix it.

I'm thinking some of it is because I'm afraid of anger. My own or the anger of others. So if I have a relationship where I get angry a lot, like if I think the other person is often selfish, for example, I have a huge need to change that feeling. Right away.

I either convince myself that I'm not actually angry, or that I shouldn't be angry. If they are angry, I need to placate them, and make sure it doesn't happen again. Barely suppressed rage was a terrifying thing in my alcoholic family.

So I end up feeling trapped in relationships where I keep having to give myself pep talks. "You can do it, 1234. Find a way to ignore or rationalize behavior that annoys or even enrages you, because you SHOULD."

How patronizing is that? I can't imagine how disgusted I'd feel if I knew someone was always needing to psyche themselves up to be around me. Ick.

So I lie to myself about how I feel, I think. I'm trying to practice feeling my feelings without judging them, in the hopes that I can be more truthful with myself about whether a relationship is "worth it".

1234

skope

This is how it is for me too. Other ppls perpectives really help.