Pelican

Can I ask why you felt sorry for him?

Pelican

This is from a sticky at the top of this forum. It helps me when I feel guilt, sympathy towards another adult and start to take care of the adult:

3. Guilt

Maybe you are hooked by irrational guilt that you must think, feel and act in ways to insure that your relationships are preserved, secured and nurtured no matter what personal expense it takes out of you. You feel guilty if the your relationship partners are not succeeding or thriving without your personal resources, energy, money, time and effort going in to making such success happen. You have a problem of feeling over-responsible for the welfare of your relationship partners and cannot allow your partners to accept personal responsibility, to make choices and live with the consequences of these choices. This irrational guilt is a driving motivation to keep you tearing down your boundaries so that you will always be available to your relationship partners at any time, in any place, for whatever reason your relationship partners "need" you. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "My relationship partners and I are responsible for accepting personal responsibility for our own lives and to accept the consequences for the choices we make in taking care of our own lives. I am not responsible for the outcomes which result from the choices and decisions which my relationship partners make. My relationship partners and I are free to make our own decisions with no one forcing us to make bad ones which will result in negative consequences to ourselves if they should occur."



4. Inability to Differentiate Love from Sympathy

Maybe you are hooked by the inability to differentiate the difference between love and sympathy or compassion for your relationship partners. You find yourself feeling sorry for your relationship partners and the warm feelings which this generates makes you think that you are in love with them. The bigger the problems your relationship partners have, the bigger the "love" seems to you. Because the problems can get bigger and more complex, they succeed in hooking you to lower your boundaries so that you begin to give more and more of yourself to your "pitiable" relationship partners out of the "love" you feel. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is OK to have sympathy and compassion for my relationship partners, but that does not mean that I have to sacrifice my life to "save" or "rescue" my partners. Sympathy and compassion are emotions I know well and I will work hard to differentiate them from what love is. When I feel sympathy and compassion for my relationship partners, I will remind myself that it is not the same as loving them. The ability to feel sympathy and compassion for another human being is a nice quality of mine and I will be sure to use it in a healthy and non-emotionally hooked way in the future in my relationships."

Pelican

Here is the link to the entire sticky post:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...tionships.html

suki44883

I think that's the second time you've used the term "I set him up for failure." Hon, you don't set him up for anything. He's an alcoholic doing what alcoholics do. He is what he is and he is fine with it. You deserve better.

dollydo

I do not follow your thinking, you are enabling him by paying for everything and then feel sorry for him and want to reward him for being a lazy non contributor.

He is a child, you can dress him up in long pants and take him to the fanciest restaurant in town and he will still act like a child, because that is his emotional IQ, that of a 15 year old child and you keep feeding into it.

Do you want a husband, an equal partner or do you want to continue to raise a child? Even a child needs responsibility to become a mature, responsible member of society. You are doing everything in your power to keep him a child...why?

You do deserve so much more, a real relationship with a man...are you going to meetings? Therapy in many cases is helpful, however, meetings to me were a lifesaver. Perhpas journaling will help you to get a grip on your behavior and impulsive actions, you may want to consider keeping a journal.

You are not setting him up, however, you have expectations that he will never meet, you are trying to ram a square peg in a round hole, can't be done.

I am sorry that you are putting yourself thru this, life is only as complicated as we make it.

blwninthewind

second date to save your marriage huh?
Guess it's not working.

Look he's obviously not wanting to quit drinking. You can't control it you can't cure it and you didn't cause it.
It is however up to you to decide if you want to live with it or not.

You can't protect him from alcohol. It isn't the enemy...his wanting it is.
It really is a disease and I truly believe that you can love the man and hate the disease but you can't do anything to help him.
NOTHING.
You can only go about your day...let him find his way.
I may have missed whether your a Al-anon member...but I don't think so being what I read. I would suggest you try it.

Don't be scared. don't be afraid to cry. We all are scared and we all cry one time or another. I know someone who has attended for years and still she says all she can do is sit and cry ...
It will help YOU. They don't say you have to kick him out, take him back, or anything. It gives you good tools and the self esteem you need to make good decisions that YOU can live with. Whether it's stay or go doesn't matter.

I hope you'll think about it.