Thumper

I spent a lot of time compartimentalizing my life. It helped me to start looking at the 'big picture'.

So instead of focusing on a good day, or a bad day, can you look at the life you have. The complete picture as it is right now. Not what it might be like tomorrow or could be if he did..... That is not reality. Is the entire picture acceptable to you? If it is, then you work al-anon like your life depends on it. Try to find a way to detach from the unacceptable and really be open to the good parts. I have to be honest - I have no idea how to do this. It is not something I can wrap my brain around but people do it so there must be a way.

If the entire picture is not acceptable to you - then start from there. How do you create an acceptable life for you and your daughter? It is soooo hard to take the A out of the picture. I don't mean physically I mean mentally. A lot of my confusion came because when I tried to picture in my head an acceptable life he was there, like an immovable fixture, as my partner. Things circled around him. It was confusing because for my acceptable life to work - he had to change. I couldn't change him. I had to get to a place where I could mentally create something acceptable - with everything fluid and everything optional. I had to make acceptable the fixture and rotate around that. The hard part was that I had to let go of his outcomes. If he felt dispair and pain I had a very hard time creating it because I did not have defined emotional boundaries that seperated him and I.

I had hit my bottom though so I figured it out. There is more then one answer to an acceptable life. Divorce wasn't the first thing on my list but he would not agree to the other things I found acceptable and, as miraculous as it seems to me, I did not change my idea of acceptable. I came up with a different option - one that didn't require his agreement. Acceptable had become the fixture.