Learn2Live

At any time, you CAN make changes in yourself and your life to make it much better now and in the future. You're not dead you know. The past is done, those decisions have already been made. You can forget about them now.... Except that they're still bothering you... So, you made them in an attempt to try to control that which you cannot control. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. One of the benefits to being a woman is we very easily change our minds without giving it a second thought You can do that too. You can change your mind. You can say, "You know what? I made a mistake and it's bothering me all these years later and now I want to do something different." Then, you do it. Dream your wildest dreams. Leap and the net will appear.

On a side note, what has really helped me with my anger is (1) yoga and (2) learning about expectations. I was taught to look for the expectations behind my anger. (My anger is usually directed at others). Who are you angry at? YOU. What are your expectations of yourself that you are not meeting? Either lower those expectations, or go after what you want. Only YOU are able to give you what you truly want in your life.

Do you have a Higher Power? I got one about 2 years ago. I did a bible study too. I let go of all the stubbornness I had built up about "God" and "organized religion" etc and I let myself be open to it. It made a lot of sense. I let go and let God. I am still me. It didn't change who I am. What was I afraid of? What was I fighting? ..... It helped me be a lot more gentle with myself. Which in turn helped me to be a lot more gentle with other people. I've found that my expectations of others and my expectations of myself are related. When I give others a break, I allow myself to give myself a break too. And vice versa.

Your posts remind me of me. We are very hard on ourselves. It doesn't really matter why. It really only matters that we are aware of it and make conscious effort to change it. What softens you? Believing in and learning about my HP softened me. And having a clean and sober boyfriend who is focused on the same kinds of things in life that I am focused on. Someone who I know I do not need to worry about. Having this person as my partner has really made a lot of difference in my life. A lot less anger and a lot more self-control.

This post is loaded. I hope you don't think it is rambling because I was trying to be pointed. I hope something here is useful to you Cyranoak. You are obviously a very conscientious, intelligent, strong-minded person. Is your life partner the same? (((hugs)))

celticghirl

Thanks cyronak! x

Learn2Live

I am a strong believer in the Law of Attraction. Like attracts like. And you attract into your life that which you think about most of the time. For me, the biggest problems arose because I was not aware of what I was thinking (and doing). I have historically been so focused on what OTHER people were thinking and doing (usually most of the focus was on my partner), that I completely ignored what I was thinking and doing. I know now that for a long time I was constantly thinking about my needs within a relationship, and that person meeting my needs. Little did I know that thinking that way attracted into my life people who were constantly thinking about their needs within a relationship, and ME meeting THEIR needs! I was using them and they were using me. I had no idea that I was using anyone!

Slowly, beginning with Al-Anon, I began to become more and more aware of my thoughts and how I think. A lot of how I think was grounded in 18 years of growing up in an alcoholic home. I taught myself to consciously change the way I think. I have had to throw away a lot of old ways of thinking! That, in turn, taught me how to change my feelings and in turn my emotions. And once I started focusing on meeting my OWN needs and not assigning responsibility for that to someone else, I attracted into my life someone who is the same.

If you want to attract into your life a healthy person, you have to BE a healthy person. It starts with your thinking. Shift your focus away from her so that you can see yourself clearly. If the way she behaves KEEPS the focus on her, you have to get away from her so that you can focus on YOU. Then, find new thoughts and behaviors to replace the old thoughts and behaviors. It's really very easy but it is a lot of work.

Learn2Live

Me, too. I have learned a lot about myself going through this over and over and over again. I have often said if I could turn the clock back I wouldn't because it's all made me who I am today. But to tell the truth, if no one in my family was ever alcoholic or addicted, and if I never had an addict or alcoholic in my life, I would not have missed it. I guarantee my life would have been better.

But given that my Dad is alcoholic, I had to go through what I went through in order to get to where I needed to go.

Tuffgirl

No kidding, right?! I was just having this conversation yesterday about what it would be like to be with someone more like ME, instead of like the men I seem to gravitate to. Would I be bored? Unchallenged in some sick way? Or relieved that I finally got one RIGHT??!!!

Bojangles

To Cyranoak - I have been coming to this site since November and reading all that I can. I finally divorced my A after 27 years and surprisingly "fell to pieces". I didn't understand how "sick" I was and all that he had done to me.

I finally had to join and reply to this post because quite frankly....I have fallen in love with you!

The tears are falling as I write this because "oh God, how I understand"!

chicory

I have heard it said that if people who grew up in dysfunctional homes meet a normal , well adjusted person, they find that boring.

i used to be attracted to those wild, dysfunctional men, and got burned a lot. I learned why it all was happening in ACA meetings. (adult children of alcoholics)

now, after many years, those same characteristics that once attracted me repulse me, and the healthy ones still bore me, so I am scr@#*d.

Cyranoak, your post made me sad . I hear your pain.
hugs,
chicory

LifeHappened

Wow. I had to read that twice because its like my own thoughts, and the last few years of my life appeared in front of me. I HATE that I think like that now, I used to be so trusting. I hate what I've become, and I hate what she's become before my eyes.

There are people on here that I'm amazed by, and I think I could be one of those people. But I don't want to do it 5 or 10 years from now, when my life becomes a sh!tstorm of vodka (or whatever the "flavor" of the month is) breath and puke cleanup detail. Heh, I just described the last 3 days. Joy.

Thank you for your insight, OP, thats the single most inspiring, mind-blowing, wish-it-wasn't-about-me-but-it-is post I've ever read anywhere.

coyote21

Because of recent behavior problems with LMC, I was researching around, and found a book at the library, "Giving the Love That Heals", by Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen Hunt.

I started reading it today, and it is a parenting book based on this husband/wife teams theory of relationship therapy called IRT. Kind of interesting, and along the lines of who we are attracted to and why. Here is an excerpt from Wiki:

Imago Relationship Therapy is a form of marriage therapy founded by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., author of Getting The Love You Want: A Guide For Couples, Keeping The Love You Find: A Personal Guide, and Giving The Love That Heals: A Guide For Parents.


IRT claims to integrate and extend western psychological systems, behavioral sciences, and spiritual disciplines into a theory of primary love relationships. Its basic premise is that:

* We were born whole and complete.

* We became wounded during the early nurturing and socialization stages of development by our primary caretakers (usually inadvertently).

* We have a composite image of all the positive and negative traits of our primary caretakers deep in our unconscious mind. This is called the Imago. It is like a blueprint of the one we need to marry someday.

* We marry someone who is an Imago match, that is, someone who matches up with the composite image of our primary caretakers. This is important because we marry for the purpose of healing and finishing the unfinished business of childhood. Since our parents are the ones who wounded us, it is only they who can heal us. Not them literally, but a primary love partner who matches their traits.

* Romantic Love is the door to marriage and is nature's selection process that connects us with the right partner for our eventual healing and growth.

* We move into the Power Struggle as soon as we make a commitment to this person. The Power Struggle is necessary, for imbedded in a couple's frustrations lie the information for healing and growth.

* The first two stages of marriage, "Romantic Love" and the "Power Struggle," are engaged in at an unconscious level. Our unconscious mind chooses our partner for the purpose of healing childhood wounds.

* With conscious effort and dialogue, our Imago love partner is most compatible with us and able to help us to resolve unfinished issues of self-wholeness.

So any way, based on this theory and my choices of wives, my Mom and Grand parents must have been something else. They were never mean or hateful or anything, but I believe there was a LOT of dysfunction passed on to lucky ole me.

And I believe it probably stemmed from my Grandfathers drinking (alcoholism?), but I'll never know for sure because all the players are dead. There are large chunks of my childhood that I have zero recollection of, and most memories are of semi traumatic events.

It would be nice to break this legacy, ya know?

Thanks and God bless us all,
Coyote

TakingCharge999

If it was me I would go back to that dreadful night when XABF arrived to my house drunk demanding sex. I wish I had told myself: "You are NOT a call girl. You are TC999". I would have yelled him to get the hell away and let me, this wonderful woman, get her sleep.

But no, I opened, glad someone paid me any attention left with him to a party. Tried to have sex with XABF in his car but he fell asleep. In the morning, tried to convince him not to drive. Drived him safely to his home. Forgot my Sunday plans. When I stayed by his side, on his bed, he asked "don't you have anything else to do?". I wish I had answered "yes", left and never came back. Oh well.

Thanks for letting me vent.



Hugs Cyranoak... I felt sad reading your thread. I would like you to know that this thread and your other posts have made a huge impact in my life. Thank you for sharing and I hope you and your kids keep healing.


PS coyote, you are breaking this legacy.

naive

if it was me, i'd have to go back to the first date. we'd met the night before and agreed to go to the beach in the morning. he was all full of talk of how he missed his little girl, showing me pictures of her, one even tatooed on his arm. i fell hook line and sinker, thinking how sweet. little did i know the mother had fled to a refuge because he was physically abusive towards her.

the next morning, i woke early, baked a quiche, made a thermos of tea, and sat waiting at the agreed to time. no xABF.

an hour late, he shows up with two coffees, saying he had waited out last night after we'd met and he was hungover and couldn't drive. i said i'd drive, he said he wasn't up to it and we could go tomorrow.

gee, talk about red flags!

it won't happen again.

Cyranoak

The next years were a very predictable roller coaster of pain, learning, more pain, more learning, and ultimately a divorce. What an incredible relief.

The next two years were very relaxing, and it was beautiful to not have to come home to a pathetic, whiny, "poor me," drunk. I didn't have to deal with the break up other than feel the pain I was feeling, along with the relief and freedom. It was catharctic.

Then, and this is how nutty I am, after a sustained period of sobriety (white knuckle, not working a program) she approached me and asked me if I would give us another chance.

You know where this is going.

Three more years of pain, learning, more pain, more learning, then jail. It appears that jail may have been her bottom. That was last year, and she is now very actively working an outpatient program, and also AA, with no signs of relapse (and after 8 years in Al-Anon I'm no longer blind to the signs, nor do I use denial to deal with them). She has become a different woman, and we are learning to live together in a sober relationship. It has been very, very hard.

The real victim in all of this, much more so than me or my wife, has been our now 15-year old daughter. She, more than anything else, is why I should have left.

Let me close with this-- despite the fact we are together today, and that I love this woman very, very much, if I had it to do over again I would not. THERE IS NO QUESTION OF THIS. I would never advise anybody to go through what I did, for as long as I did, just to end up where I am now.

Many people, and God Bless them, say they are glad they went through this because it made them who they are today. That is a very legitimate view, and is their truth. I am not one of those people. I was happy before her-- very happy. I'm not happy now.

Before, I lived, and looked forward to each and every day. Now I just exist, and try to make it to the next day.

Save yourself.

Take what you want and leave the rest.

Cyranoak

Learn2Live

This makes me sad.

coyote21

Many people, and God Bless them, say they are glad they went through this because it made them who they are today. That is a very legitimate view, and is their truth. I am not one of those people. I was happy before her-- very happy. I'm not happy now.

I not sure I'd say I'm happy I went through this, I'm a better man because of it, but I was pretty O.K. with just being an ignorant turd, B.A. (Before Alcoholism).

I'm ecstatic to be "out of it", and I can say with confidence I'll NEVER go back.

I'm wondering why you would chose to spend your one precious life unhappy? You are allowed to change your mind.

Thanks and God bless us all,
Coyote

coyote21

It is sad. But I can't let it make ME sad.

That'd be kinda codie.

Thanks and God bless us all,
Coyote

wicked

Me too coyote.
I spend a lot of time trying to make my new "friend" laugh.
Scary being just me, but it is too much work to be someone else.
dammit.

posiesperson

When I broke up with my exA I had people who congratulated me. I trusted that, it helped me in some of my darkest moments. This, too, Cyranoak, is helpful, even though it's sad to read how unhappy you are. I have yet to meet a person who has told me that they thought they would have been happier staying with their A, whether or not they are with them today.

I am single on Valentines Day for the first time in 24 years. In that time I've had 4 relationships, each of them lonely in their own way, each relationship getting significantly shorter than the one before it. I am alone, and not lonely, for the first time in my life.

Wow. Wish I'd known that sooner, but am so, so grateful that I know it now

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and story, Cyranoak.

Hugs,
posie

brokenheartfool

Must say---
DO NOT DO THIS.
Do not try to finish unfinished business with parents in a romantic relationship.
It dam*n near about killed me, because the same issues were unresolved the same way.
Daddy issues.
No need to repeat history in life. Free yourself by NOT going down that road again.
Thinks this advice in this book could near kill somebody.

brokenheartfool

And Cyronak--

There is only today, and possibly a future. Yesterday is gone. Find your happiness now--follow wherever it leads you.
Do this for YOU.

Love your posts!

Thumper

I can see now how I completely and totally married my Imago match.

I don't think alcoholism fits because it renders the last stage 100% unattainable.
With conscious effort and dialogue, our Imago love partner is most compatible with us and able to help us to resolve unfinished issues of self-wholeness. My childhood wasn't perfect but it wasn't traumatic. Both my parents came from a place of childhood trauma.

Cyranoak I am sorry for you difficult position today. Please remember that you are free in every moment. You are as free in this moment as you were 10 years ago. I wish you only peace and I pray for your daughters peace and recovery as well.