keepinon

Wait..what book?I feel so left out

Thumper

The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson.

Surviving through - and recoverying from - the five stages that accompany the loss of love

FarawayFromCars

The way my therapist explained it to me makes a lot of sense. Background--my parents are big time enablers of my alcoholic sister. The way my therapist put things...to them (my parents), the alternative to enabling my sister--my sister out on the streets or dead--is so disturbing and difficult to accept, that they continue to enable. Was it helping my sister in the long run? No. But to them, this is their child, and they will do anything to protect her, even if it's not good for her.

BuffaloGal

Thanks for all the responses-- CLMI stated pretty much what I guessed. About once a year or so my aexh makes some noise about moving out. Last time, in response, she remodeled my daughter's room.. or it looked like a response to me, anyway. I'd never do that. I would say to myself, a man who has one foot out the door will probably leave eventually anyway, and there's nothing I can do about it in the long run, so let them go on. (Maybe I'm the alien!)

I learned not to fear abandonment. My mother died, horribly and unexpectedly, when I was not quite 9, and I totally missed any "must try harder" conditioning. She wasn't going to be any less dead no matter how hard I tried. I have to say this about death, it isn't a messy situation. There are no shades of gray, there's no conflicting messages and no room for false beliefs to take root. The person is gone and that is it. So after I grew up my philosophy was, anyone who doesn't really want me, bugger 'em. Because no matter how awful it is, it can't be as bad as when my mom died and I won't be as helpless.

And I was right, but I was wrong too. Instead of making any effort to change the other person or myself, I tended to abandon them first, to get it over with, which (after having a couple of decades to observe the results) I've decided isn't a particularly constructive approach either. I feel horrendously guilty about that. My aexh-- you know, the drunk, the person we would generally view as the "bad guy"-- accused me of being to quick to rush to leave instead of trying, and unfortunately he was quite correct, although whether or not it could have been worked out no matter how much either of us tried is a separate question.

wicked

tonight, i will put it under my pillow, and absorb it that way.
yeah, that's the ticket.

barb dwyer

Some people are sicker than others, hon.

And really, sometimes,
it's just easiest to remember that ... and keep moving.

Having been on both sides of this stick
I can say that for me
it was all about the love.

Alcoholics can't feel love
and most codies are confused as to
what they are trying to get from someone
and what love ... really is.

Well, she's headed into her own time of learning, I suppose.

Wish her well
and someday
you might be saying 'hello' to her in a meeting.

transformyself

I love this thread
Buffalo-I'm the emotional abandoner here as well, but my mother was an insane, abusive person. I never had a mother, even though she's still alive, not the kind of mother I try to be to my kids at least.

this is depressing:
I hope I haven't done that to my kids.

And about that book? I gave mine to my business partner, the Narcissist, and last I saw it was floating around in her car. Wonder how much I'll learn from it there...

theuncertainty

Wow....Jen. Thanks for that. I was having a very hard time with the abandonment thing because I like being alone - most of the time - and couldn't see how it would apply, but this puts it into a frame that makes sense.

JenT1968

I'm not blaming them, just exploring what made me, me. They have since both formed lovely relationships with people they are suited to, and are happy, it is a shame for them that they married the wrong people too young (21 and 20) and fell pregnant so quickly. They did absolutely the best they could, and did a lot "right" too, I am loved, and very lucky in many ways, a different child may have taken different lessons from it. It's been my responsibility to get past this for a long time now.