Home again, home again, jiggity jig
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Join Date: Feb 2010
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Home again, home again, jiggity jig
Hi Everyone,
Wow, been a while since I was here but I do pop in occasionally. I realized something yesterday that was particularly profound to me and thought I'd share with my SR family.
I've been going to 4-5 meetings per week for quite a while. I've come a long, long way in terms of how I relate to people, I've let long-standing unhealthy friendships go, I've distanced myself from my family of origin so that I can take care of myself, filled up my time with healthy people (program people and non-program people) and continue to do my Alanon reading every day.
So, feeling pretty confident, I also started dating a bit (I waited about a year since my breakup from exA to get really serious about this idea). WOW. Intimate relationships really bring up the codie in me! I've had a number of single dates with different people and dated one person several times, feeling VERY attracted (it was mutual) and my sponsor kept gently warning me about the "instant, magnetic attraction" that I felt with this person.
She was right. I had heard that when we feel MAGNETICALLY attracted to someone then there is something deeper going on, that we might be experiencing a deep connection to someone who "feels" like our family of origin, despite thinking it CAN'T be so. Well, it was. I've come to the realization that this is very true, that when I feel that undeniable pull inside of myself, something that I've labelled "powerful attraction" or "connection" is really my disease sinking it's hooks into my heart again.
I met someone with whom I do not feel this way. I am attracted (and it's mutual), but I don't have that crazy-making thought process, that drive to control/monitor/hunger for contact. This is fascinating to me. That's right, I can actually like someone and NOT feel like I have to watch every single move they make. I don't know what will happen in that relationship and I don't HAVE to know. I'm shockingly calm about it all.
Until yesterday. A couple of days ago I got a text message from the person I dated briefly with whom I had that PULL. I ignored the last e-mail message, the last text message, and then came this most recent message. Finally, it had a question in it about ME. Yes, that's right, finally a question about me, and I saw the light. Ahhhhh!
I did respond, a day later, with the guidance of my sponsor. It was a very short and appropriate message that did not ask any questions and I had a very specific reason for responding that I won't go into here. But what was interesting was how easily I started to feel crazy inside, just by sending that message...
This person "makes me crazy." Of course, it's really MY craziness, but it gets stimulated by people I choose to spend time with. And after the craziness gets started it's hard to turn off. So I have to walk away in order to take care of myself and then I have to spend some time getting centered again, after having given away my serenity for a time, however briefly. And while I was in that craziness I began to question the love and support of people close to me, to question this new potential relationship, to question EVERYTHING. Ugh, what a terrible feeling and I want my serenity back so I'm working on just that and making good progress.
I hope this makes sense. Mostly I want to say that there's so much hope that we can get better. I've spent a lot of time wondering how I'd make different choices and have a healthy relationship and I think I'm really understanding more. Kinda like Coyote's thread from a while back, "What Normies Know". I'll never be a normie, but now I truly have hope that I can gain "the wisdom to know the difference" if I'm taking the time and focus to care for myself.
(Oh, and as a side note, I also heard from my exA a couple of weeks ago. I received an e-mail, wondering if I perhaps still had some belongings...!! Seriously, it's been a year and a half and POOF! they really do come back, even months and years later. The good news is that I had no desire to reconnect--NONE!--and with the help of Alanon and my sponsor I was able to handle it completely differently than I would have in the past, and am absolutely at peace with it.)
I'm so grateful for this forum, and for all of you.
Hugs,
posie
Wow, been a while since I was here but I do pop in occasionally. I realized something yesterday that was particularly profound to me and thought I'd share with my SR family.
I've been going to 4-5 meetings per week for quite a while. I've come a long, long way in terms of how I relate to people, I've let long-standing unhealthy friendships go, I've distanced myself from my family of origin so that I can take care of myself, filled up my time with healthy people (program people and non-program people) and continue to do my Alanon reading every day.
So, feeling pretty confident, I also started dating a bit (I waited about a year since my breakup from exA to get really serious about this idea). WOW. Intimate relationships really bring up the codie in me! I've had a number of single dates with different people and dated one person several times, feeling VERY attracted (it was mutual) and my sponsor kept gently warning me about the "instant, magnetic attraction" that I felt with this person.
She was right. I had heard that when we feel MAGNETICALLY attracted to someone then there is something deeper going on, that we might be experiencing a deep connection to someone who "feels" like our family of origin, despite thinking it CAN'T be so. Well, it was. I've come to the realization that this is very true, that when I feel that undeniable pull inside of myself, something that I've labelled "powerful attraction" or "connection" is really my disease sinking it's hooks into my heart again.
I met someone with whom I do not feel this way. I am attracted (and it's mutual), but I don't have that crazy-making thought process, that drive to control/monitor/hunger for contact. This is fascinating to me. That's right, I can actually like someone and NOT feel like I have to watch every single move they make. I don't know what will happen in that relationship and I don't HAVE to know. I'm shockingly calm about it all.
Until yesterday. A couple of days ago I got a text message from the person I dated briefly with whom I had that PULL. I ignored the last e-mail message, the last text message, and then came this most recent message. Finally, it had a question in it about ME. Yes, that's right, finally a question about me, and I saw the light. Ahhhhh!
I did respond, a day later, with the guidance of my sponsor. It was a very short and appropriate message that did not ask any questions and I had a very specific reason for responding that I won't go into here. But what was interesting was how easily I started to feel crazy inside, just by sending that message...
This person "makes me crazy." Of course, it's really MY craziness, but it gets stimulated by people I choose to spend time with. And after the craziness gets started it's hard to turn off. So I have to walk away in order to take care of myself and then I have to spend some time getting centered again, after having given away my serenity for a time, however briefly. And while I was in that craziness I began to question the love and support of people close to me, to question this new potential relationship, to question EVERYTHING. Ugh, what a terrible feeling and I want my serenity back so I'm working on just that and making good progress.
I hope this makes sense. Mostly I want to say that there's so much hope that we can get better. I've spent a lot of time wondering how I'd make different choices and have a healthy relationship and I think I'm really understanding more. Kinda like Coyote's thread from a while back, "What Normies Know". I'll never be a normie, but now I truly have hope that I can gain "the wisdom to know the difference" if I'm taking the time and focus to care for myself.
(Oh, and as a side note, I also heard from my exA a couple of weeks ago. I received an e-mail, wondering if I perhaps still had some belongings...!! Seriously, it's been a year and a half and POOF! they really do come back, even months and years later. The good news is that I had no desire to reconnect--NONE!--and with the help of Alanon and my sponsor I was able to handle it completely differently than I would have in the past, and am absolutely at peace with it.)
I'm so grateful for this forum, and for all of you.
Hugs,
posie
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