I've been seeing a lot of love stuff lately...
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My wife observed the other day: "It's very hard not to like someone who likes you." We have a need to be loved. But that's our ego speaking "I want" to be loved. I want, I want, I want... That's not love. Love is giving with no expectation of anything in return...including being loved in return, including feeling secure, including being happy. Who want's that!? Not me. That's a lot of work.
Actually, I aspire to being more loving...but I'm nowhere close to being there yet.
My wife & I were just good friends before we got together. No romantic entanglement at all. No flirting. We were close, but just friends. Then one evening she told me that she loved me. It was like throwing a switch on an electromagnet...WHAM! The brain chemicals kicked in and I was completely and utterly hooked. We were (to quote Forest Gump) like two peas in a pod.
28 years later, I shared that story with our marriage counselor who promptly handed us a copy of "Codependent No More," and "Boundaries in Marriage." I think he was sending us a message.
Duh, right?
A couple of years later, with us both working our separate AA/Al-Anon programs and we're actually farther apart that we used to be...and loving it! We've got some separation, some space, between us, and we're each able to be fuller, more complete individuals. Being farther apart has improved our relationship.
I suppose that if you asked 100 people what love is, you'd get 200 answers. Just to finish this post with a non sequitur: I was scanning titles in the magazine aisle at the supermarket the other day and a headline stuck with me: "Why it's better like her than to love her."
Actually, I aspire to being more loving...but I'm nowhere close to being there yet.
My wife & I were just good friends before we got together. No romantic entanglement at all. No flirting. We were close, but just friends. Then one evening she told me that she loved me. It was like throwing a switch on an electromagnet...WHAM! The brain chemicals kicked in and I was completely and utterly hooked. We were (to quote Forest Gump) like two peas in a pod.
28 years later, I shared that story with our marriage counselor who promptly handed us a copy of "Codependent No More," and "Boundaries in Marriage." I think he was sending us a message.
Duh, right?A couple of years later, with us both working our separate AA/Al-Anon programs and we're actually farther apart that we used to be...and loving it! We've got some separation, some space, between us, and we're each able to be fuller, more complete individuals. Being farther apart has improved our relationship.
I suppose that if you asked 100 people what love is, you'd get 200 answers. Just to finish this post with a non sequitur: I was scanning titles in the magazine aisle at the supermarket the other day and a headline stuck with me: "Why it's better like her than to love her."
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Love... a simple four letter word that causes more heartache and pain than any other word in language. IMHO an overused word forced into our emotional translation of life.
Great post, thank you.
Great post, thank you.
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Originally Posted by TakingCharge999 
Great thread,
I have learned love for others cannot exist without love for oneself, this comes first. Otherwise its a fallacy. Thus I concluded I have loved no one (at least romantically), I used them just as much as they used me, difficult to grasp then but now with some years of reflection, its obvious...
Thanks to SR I can imagine something different now. Love yourself then boundaries will be clear and when boundaries exist you can love immensely and still not suffer nor cling to any notion/fantasy about something different than reality -because you are feeding off your own love and that is more than in enough. You are just loving aspects of you you see in others as mirrors, in the end its your own journey and no one else' s.
Sounds too philosophical/impossible but now with some peace in my world lately I do believe living this kind of life IS possible and for that I am grateful.
I have learned love for others cannot exist without love for oneself, this comes first. Otherwise its a fallacy. Thus I concluded I have loved no one (at least romantically), I used them just as much as they used me, difficult to grasp then but now with some years of reflection, its obvious...
Thanks to SR I can imagine something different now. Love yourself then boundaries will be clear and when boundaries exist you can love immensely and still not suffer nor cling to any notion/fantasy about something different than reality -because you are feeding off your own love and that is more than in enough. You are just loving aspects of you you see in others as mirrors, in the end its your own journey and no one else' s.
Sounds too philosophical/impossible but now with some peace in my world lately I do believe living this kind of life IS possible and for that I am grateful.
I am always amazed at the power of recovery.
CLMI
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Originally Posted by mattmathews
We have a need to be loved. But that's our ego speaking "I want" to be loved. I want, I want, I want... That's not love. Love is giving with no expectation of anything in return...including being loved in return, including feeling secure, including being happy. Who want's that!? Not me. That's a lot of work.
Actually, I aspire to being more loving...but I'm nowhere close to being there yet.
Actually, I aspire to being more loving...but I'm nowhere close to being there yet.
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Originally Posted by healthyagain
My inside is twisting right now. You are so right, but my inside wants to oppose what you say. How can anyone say anything against love, the most powerful feeling of all? I, as a codependent, am stuck with this idea of love, my system of beliefs. Yet, that very romantic perception of love and idealism brought me where I am today, stuck.
Painfully true.
Painfully true.
Is the love a codependent feels for the A the same as the love the A feels for the alcohol/DOC? Not all love is healing and worth nurturing.
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Great thread.
We have a very distorted belief system in our culture of what love is... too many movies and not enough wisdom on how to choose a mate that will be truly loving and completely trustworthy and stable for a lifetime.
I tell people to choose their mate wisely because marriage in this day and age is most likely temporary and divorce is forever especially when you have kids!
Feelings are ALL chemically induced by our brains and hormones... and they feel GREAT but in 5, 10 and 20 years those fireworks and wobbly knees when you spy your mate across a room are faded and all you see is the core character of the person you married. And if he or she is now or is then a raging alcoholic the feelings you may have may be a LOT different from those honeymoon days!
Feelings fade but character, integrity, honor, trust and stability is what we want to teach our children to look for and fall in love with because that is what lasts and makes for a lifetime of true happiness and serenity.
Add alcoholism to the already gloomy marriage and divorce stats and it gets downright depressing ... so sad.
We have a very distorted belief system in our culture of what love is... too many movies and not enough wisdom on how to choose a mate that will be truly loving and completely trustworthy and stable for a lifetime.
I tell people to choose their mate wisely because marriage in this day and age is most likely temporary and divorce is forever especially when you have kids!
Feelings are ALL chemically induced by our brains and hormones... and they feel GREAT but in 5, 10 and 20 years those fireworks and wobbly knees when you spy your mate across a room are faded and all you see is the core character of the person you married. And if he or she is now or is then a raging alcoholic the feelings you may have may be a LOT different from those honeymoon days!
Feelings fade but character, integrity, honor, trust and stability is what we want to teach our children to look for and fall in love with because that is what lasts and makes for a lifetime of true happiness and serenity.
Add alcoholism to the already gloomy marriage and divorce stats and it gets downright depressing ... so sad.
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Feelings fade but character, integrity, honor, trust and stability is what we want to teach our children to look for and fall in love with because that is what lasts and makes for a lifetime of true happiness and serenity.
As they say, progress not perfection.
Your trustworthy friend,
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So that's my answer. His love is not real. There is something out there in the world called love that makes you feel good and smile. Even if that love is leaving your AH because you love yourself enough to know you are worth it! Now, tell my AH and family to leave me alone so I stop second guessing myself every time I think I have it figured out!
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Love helps all of us
How sad to think that you can't love the addict or alcoholic. They are sick to be sure. You have to love yourself and not enable them, but you can certainly love them. We are imperfect beings who need require love to live a fulfilled life, whether it is love from family, friends or wherever we find it. Addicts need that same love. They have a compulsion to use and may never find their way to sobriety, but while we can protect ourselves and our children, we don't have to stop loving someone in our lives who suffers from addiction to drugs or alcohol. We only have to stop enabling them. It's a fine line, but many have done this. Punishment and anger have no place in recovery- your own or anyone else's. Be kind to yourself and to all those you love.
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Preach it, brother. My opinion is that love was created by the brain and higher lifeforms to make us want to do unpleasant things (like get up 17 times in the night with a newborn or clean up somebody else’s poop). When that person is a child, it allows the species to perpetuate. Loving a grown-up like that just makes life unpleasant.
not to say that I don’t believe there’s any point to ever loving anyone. I know it can be fun. And I am sure there are grownups you don’t need to be taken care of like infants. But just because you love someone is not a reason to beat your head against the wall if they are not in fact a child dependent on you for survival.
not to say that I don’t believe there’s any point to ever loving anyone. I know it can be fun. And I am sure there are grownups you don’t need to be taken care of like infants. But just because you love someone is not a reason to beat your head against the wall if they are not in fact a child dependent on you for survival.
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Really glad this got bumped- and doing it again!
Right now, my husband and I - both in our 4th yr of sobriety, and I am also the ACOA - are working on love, in its many meanings, with my 21 yr old step son. WOW is it surreal at times because now I am the "parent" to a child I identify with- in the negative. My empathy is great for him - and it is also 99% because of pain, addiction, depression, etc that I have been thru and work so hard to stay on the other side of. There is hope while each of us is alive- but that is indeed so diff than love.
This is also brilliant from above - and it is what my husband and I frame our relationship with, which is completely different than our respective first marriages:
"Feelings fade but character, integrity, honor, trust and stability is what we want to teach our children to look for and fall in love with because that is what lasts and makes for a lifetime of true happiness and serenity."
Thank you all! This is such a good example of why I believe those of us in AA and Al Anon (moreso if one or both of us needs both!) need and can learn from each other.
Right now, my husband and I - both in our 4th yr of sobriety, and I am also the ACOA - are working on love, in its many meanings, with my 21 yr old step son. WOW is it surreal at times because now I am the "parent" to a child I identify with- in the negative. My empathy is great for him - and it is also 99% because of pain, addiction, depression, etc that I have been thru and work so hard to stay on the other side of. There is hope while each of us is alive- but that is indeed so diff than love.
This is also brilliant from above - and it is what my husband and I frame our relationship with, which is completely different than our respective first marriages:
"Feelings fade but character, integrity, honor, trust and stability is what we want to teach our children to look for and fall in love with because that is what lasts and makes for a lifetime of true happiness and serenity."
Thank you all! This is such a good example of why I believe those of us in AA and Al Anon (moreso if one or both of us needs both!) need and can learn from each other.
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I too firmly believe I was loved by my XF as much as it is possible to be loved from someone with alcohol addiction. I too TRULY loved him with all my heart to the point where I did set up boundaries as soon as I fully figured what was going on with him (as he was hiding it for quite some time from me) and therefore, I decided to call off the wedding IF he isnt ready to drop his addiction and seek out help/full on recovery. He wasn't ready for that!
So, I do believe My gift was REAL (meaning, unconditional) love in the form of first, the READINESS to leave once I was certain what was going on, and also later on, ACCEPTANCE of him ''choosing" alcohol instead of our relationship.
Also, I've decided to HONOUR his decision (and statement) to "have his own experience no matter the quality of it"and he too, managed to honour my decision to "not participate in that type of experience". We did both SUFFER genuinely tho (i believe do), each in our own way (we even both acknowledged it), due to the shattered dream we both shared (he pictured me as someone who was suppose to accept him WITH alcohol, so he also got sincerely disappointed and disillusioned when that didn't happen), but we DID manage to somehow BOTH also "let each other go now that we found the way to keep somehow more than a broken vow"
So, I do believe My gift was REAL (meaning, unconditional) love in the form of first, the READINESS to leave once I was certain what was going on, and also later on, ACCEPTANCE of him ''choosing" alcohol instead of our relationship.
Also, I've decided to HONOUR his decision (and statement) to "have his own experience no matter the quality of it"and he too, managed to honour my decision to "not participate in that type of experience". We did both SUFFER genuinely tho (i believe do), each in our own way (we even both acknowledged it), due to the shattered dream we both shared (he pictured me as someone who was suppose to accept him WITH alcohol, so he also got sincerely disappointed and disillusioned when that didn't happen), but we DID manage to somehow BOTH also "let each other go now that we found the way to keep somehow more than a broken vow"
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Thank you August, yes, I have dug really deep to connect the dots. I am proud of myself that I did it with him. He is a tortured soul. I have seen him beyond the masks. I believe his soul has seen mine too. And that is where I find my peace. As something real WAS communicated, after all. Apart from that, We all are prisoners of our conditionings in a way. And we all suffer with our stories- one way or another. I myself am learning to let go of holding onto everyone else's tho, and in order to truly OWN up 100 percent to my own first. hope that makes sense.
Lots of love
Lots of love
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