Friday Nights
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Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2011
Location: USA
Posts: 82
Friday Nights
It's a perfect, breezy spring night and I can hear laughter and the happiness of youth nearby since I live downtown... and it makes me a little sad.
I think of how he's probably spending his weekends with his enabler coworkers or friends, and it just reminds me of how I'm not going out to bars... how I'm not spending my weekends like I used to... how I no longer have [real] friends I'd really want to chill/party with (since most of them have moved out of state or have settled down into "family life")... then, it makes me miss him... which inevitably leads to the thought "it wasn't so bad"... right??
but the thing is, IT WAS VERY BAD!!!
If he and I went out to a bar, it wouldn't be comfortable. we wouldn't be in some corner engrossed in our own world (like how couples are in the beginning; like how we were...)... i'd be half listening to his latest rant on why his life sucks, and trying to politely ignore him while pretending to care (coz i gave up giving advice to deaf ears)... while, in my head I'd be wondering why he hasn't complimented on how good i looked that night or why he isn't more affectionate with me in public... then, i'd cheerfully agree leaving the bar would be better (thinking he'll HAVE to pay attention to me at home since there won't be any distractions, right?); but... i'll never have his full attention at home either - not between bottles of beer and repeated packings of bowls of weed to smoke. I'd just wake up the next day smiling @ seeing and being with him sober (mornings were our best times), but completely trying to hide my sadness that yet another night was wasted... another night i felt no true intimacy... another night i didn't feel special...
::sigh:: i hate weekends.
I think of how he's probably spending his weekends with his enabler coworkers or friends, and it just reminds me of how I'm not going out to bars... how I'm not spending my weekends like I used to... how I no longer have [real] friends I'd really want to chill/party with (since most of them have moved out of state or have settled down into "family life")... then, it makes me miss him... which inevitably leads to the thought "it wasn't so bad"... right??
but the thing is, IT WAS VERY BAD!!!
If he and I went out to a bar, it wouldn't be comfortable. we wouldn't be in some corner engrossed in our own world (like how couples are in the beginning; like how we were...)... i'd be half listening to his latest rant on why his life sucks, and trying to politely ignore him while pretending to care (coz i gave up giving advice to deaf ears)... while, in my head I'd be wondering why he hasn't complimented on how good i looked that night or why he isn't more affectionate with me in public... then, i'd cheerfully agree leaving the bar would be better (thinking he'll HAVE to pay attention to me at home since there won't be any distractions, right?); but... i'll never have his full attention at home either - not between bottles of beer and repeated packings of bowls of weed to smoke. I'd just wake up the next day smiling @ seeing and being with him sober (mornings were our best times), but completely trying to hide my sadness that yet another night was wasted... another night i felt no true intimacy... another night i didn't feel special...
::sigh:: i hate weekends.
Member
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: CA
Posts: 317
I swear I could have written this myself. It sucks and be proud of yourself. You are making the healthy choices...I felt everything you were feeling. We were always alone, just not physically now! Keep coming on here and you will not be alone!
Member
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: California
Posts: 383
I've come to the point that I'd rather be alone and happy with my life than be in a relationship and alone. It took quite a while to get to this point, but it's soooooooo much better. Hang in there, you are doing great! And you've got a ton of new friends all over the world right here who care and completely understand you.
Member
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: CA
Posts: 428
In a relationship and alone....yep that is me. If it were not for my kids I think I'd totally lose it. I am getting to the point where I cringe when Friday rolls around because I know AH will be home all day and not at work. Seems like he always tries to start something with me on the weekend. Last night I could smell the alcohol on his breath so I politely told him I would drive to the event we were going to with the kids. He came unhinged because I insisted on driving (never once told him it was because I knew he was drinking). He became this angry teenager, who refused to go and then showed up 15 minutes later. He totally ignored me in front of everyone who was there (school event)...nice. Since tomorrow is Mother's Day I told him I didn't want him going with the family since I did not trust his behavior and wanted to make sure I had a nice day. i am getting really tired of all of this.... trying to take things one step at a time, but someday I will refuse to be in a relationship and be alone!
Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Texas
Posts: 283
I have found a large part of my problem was that I kept thinking he is out drinking and having fun. He is living life large and I am here with no life. Mine is boring. Mine is sad. Mine is....
I stopped and started thinking back. I realized I need to be honest with myself here. He is miserable. He has lost yet another wife. He cannot nor will ever have a successful relationship where a real sense of intimacy is maintained.
He will never know that love. He will never know the joy of raising and nurturing a child.
I thought back to the words he said to me. Many times he stated how desperate he was to have and maintain those things. At the time it was not clicking in my brain that he was truly unhappy inside.
I go over his miserableness in my mind to remind me he is not happy.
If he is in a bar, he is around people who are nothing to him. No intimate ties whatsoever. No love. He may hookup or date, but he will never successfully be able to give or receive love. I know he will be lonely again and again, the rest of his life. He will die alone, unfortunately. I know his relationship with his neighbors is superficial at best; with his family, strained and sparse; with his coworkers simply acquaintenances. I know he will spend holiday after holiday in a sympathetic coworkers home surrounded by people he barely knows.
I know he is not having fun like I keep telling myself he is.
That is when I was able to begin to let go, to control my desire to drive by, check up, call. He is in a bubbling stew of loneliness, unhappiness, sadness, misery. So be it.
Abandonment:
Abandonment is about loss of love itself (in our cases I would suggest perceived love is a more appropriate term...we all know an A cannot truly love unselfishly) that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness.
Stage two: Withdrawal
Withdrawal is is when you crave the other person after the initial shock of separation has worn off. Mediated by the brains own opiod system, what you feel is similar to what addicts feel when they can't get a fix.
During the worst of it, you can't get away from your conviction that without your lost loved one, your life is over. The child in you keeps telling you that you must get your loved one back at all costs.
A primary relationship is a matter of survival for the child in you. You may try to reconnect with your lost partner many times. Even if you don't take action, you fantasize about it. You keep going back because you're not convinced that the one who left is no good for you.
The child within clings to false hope to ward off feeling of isolation, banishment, and loss.
Symptoms of withdrawal are intense. Many abandonment survivors are prepared to bargain, petition, beg, manipulated, do anything to get their loved one back.
Relationships are, in fact, mediated by the brain's own opiod system. Most people are familiar with the opiate drugs, narcotics like morphine, heroin, and opium.
Our brains produce their own morphinelike substances, including endorphins Both narcotics and the brain's own natural opiates help to block pain.
According to researcher Jaak Panksepp, when you build a close relationship, your brain produces more opiods. Conversely, when a relationship ends, the production of certain opiods decreases, and your body goes through physical withdrawal.
Biochemically speaking, then, your closest relationships are a form of endorphin addiction. What you feel during abandonment withdrawal-- the craving, yearning, waiting, and wanting, of yor lost loved one-- is psychobiologically akin to withdrwal from heroine or morphine.
The difference is that when you are in love withdrawal, you assoicate your symptoms with your emotional loss rather than with a narcotic.
In other words, the difference is the context-how you interpret the withdrawal symptoms-not the physical symptoms themselves.
Being in withdrawal is being without-without the security and percieved nurturance that you counted on or hoped for.
The irony is that people can be as devastated by the loss of a bad relationship as they are by the loss of a good one.
From: Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson I posted this elsewhere. I wanted you to see it. Wow same theme over and over again today.
I stopped and started thinking back. I realized I need to be honest with myself here. He is miserable. He has lost yet another wife. He cannot nor will ever have a successful relationship where a real sense of intimacy is maintained.
He will never know that love. He will never know the joy of raising and nurturing a child.
I thought back to the words he said to me. Many times he stated how desperate he was to have and maintain those things. At the time it was not clicking in my brain that he was truly unhappy inside.
I go over his miserableness in my mind to remind me he is not happy.
If he is in a bar, he is around people who are nothing to him. No intimate ties whatsoever. No love. He may hookup or date, but he will never successfully be able to give or receive love. I know he will be lonely again and again, the rest of his life. He will die alone, unfortunately. I know his relationship with his neighbors is superficial at best; with his family, strained and sparse; with his coworkers simply acquaintenances. I know he will spend holiday after holiday in a sympathetic coworkers home surrounded by people he barely knows.
I know he is not having fun like I keep telling myself he is.
That is when I was able to begin to let go, to control my desire to drive by, check up, call. He is in a bubbling stew of loneliness, unhappiness, sadness, misery. So be it.
Abandonment:
Abandonment is about loss of love itself (in our cases I would suggest perceived love is a more appropriate term...we all know an A cannot truly love unselfishly) that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness.
Stage two: Withdrawal
Withdrawal is is when you crave the other person after the initial shock of separation has worn off. Mediated by the brains own opiod system, what you feel is similar to what addicts feel when they can't get a fix.
During the worst of it, you can't get away from your conviction that without your lost loved one, your life is over. The child in you keeps telling you that you must get your loved one back at all costs.
A primary relationship is a matter of survival for the child in you. You may try to reconnect with your lost partner many times. Even if you don't take action, you fantasize about it. You keep going back because you're not convinced that the one who left is no good for you.
The child within clings to false hope to ward off feeling of isolation, banishment, and loss.
Symptoms of withdrawal are intense. Many abandonment survivors are prepared to bargain, petition, beg, manipulated, do anything to get their loved one back.
Relationships are, in fact, mediated by the brain's own opiod system. Most people are familiar with the opiate drugs, narcotics like morphine, heroin, and opium.
Our brains produce their own morphinelike substances, including endorphins Both narcotics and the brain's own natural opiates help to block pain.
According to researcher Jaak Panksepp, when you build a close relationship, your brain produces more opiods. Conversely, when a relationship ends, the production of certain opiods decreases, and your body goes through physical withdrawal.
Biochemically speaking, then, your closest relationships are a form of endorphin addiction. What you feel during abandonment withdrawal-- the craving, yearning, waiting, and wanting, of yor lost loved one-- is psychobiologically akin to withdrwal from heroine or morphine.
The difference is that when you are in love withdrawal, you assoicate your symptoms with your emotional loss rather than with a narcotic.
In other words, the difference is the context-how you interpret the withdrawal symptoms-not the physical symptoms themselves.
Being in withdrawal is being without-without the security and percieved nurturance that you counted on or hoped for.
The irony is that people can be as devastated by the loss of a bad relationship as they are by the loss of a good one.
From: Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson I posted this elsewhere. I wanted you to see it. Wow same theme over and over again today.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2011
Location: USA
Posts: 82
thanks again, everyone--yes, although i have friends that are gone... it is good to know people all over the world on here understand exactly what i have gone through and am going through.
passionfruit -->
i hate to admit that the thought of him being alone and miserable makes me smile, but it does. i wish it didn't. you are right. he was lonely and unhappy when i met him... and i was stupid and young and innocent and "romantic" enough to believe that "love would save [his] the world", but you are right through and through. he will always be lonely.
in fact, during our last fight (part of the reason i feel/felt guilt recently is because) i told him "as an alcoholic you wont have any relationship stick, but even if you aren't actively an alcoholic you'll at best have multiple marriages because you have way too many mental problems". i feel like it was a hit below the belt, but then again--all boundaries i ever had were crossed by him repeatedly many times before.
glad it's sunday... and this weekend is over
passionfruit -->
i hate to admit that the thought of him being alone and miserable makes me smile, but it does. i wish it didn't. you are right. he was lonely and unhappy when i met him... and i was stupid and young and innocent and "romantic" enough to believe that "love would save [his] the world", but you are right through and through. he will always be lonely.in fact, during our last fight (part of the reason i feel/felt guilt recently is because) i told him "as an alcoholic you wont have any relationship stick, but even if you aren't actively an alcoholic you'll at best have multiple marriages because you have way too many mental problems". i feel like it was a hit below the belt, but then again--all boundaries i ever had were crossed by him repeatedly many times before.
glad it's sunday... and this weekend is over
A jug fills drop by drop
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 6,784
A therapist told me "we are always alone"
I sometimes get it, most of my friends have babies now, or are in a relationship. I need fellow working single girlfriends and also I need good male friends that are healthy.
I wish we lived in the same city to put on makeup and dress up and hit the bars and have a good time! well I have started to "get out" more... but then I meet some jerks, or worse, drunken jerks and I miss watching the E! channel on my bed with the cats.. lol
PS You can feel special and have fun while doing it, its such a cliche but you don't need anyone to make you feel anything. You are the source. What can you do to make your day special? what makes you smile? what makes you laugh? what makes you realize you are worthy- just as worthy with a crowd cheering you on or in a remote place alone in nature...?
I sometimes get it, most of my friends have babies now, or are in a relationship. I need fellow working single girlfriends and also I need good male friends that are healthy.
I wish we lived in the same city to put on makeup and dress up and hit the bars and have a good time! well I have started to "get out" more... but then I meet some jerks, or worse, drunken jerks and I miss watching the E! channel on my bed with the cats.. lol
PS You can feel special and have fun while doing it, its such a cliche but you don't need anyone to make you feel anything. You are the source. What can you do to make your day special? what makes you smile? what makes you laugh? what makes you realize you are worthy- just as worthy with a crowd cheering you on or in a remote place alone in nature...?
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