quetzal

Good Morning Everyone,

Many of you have brought up so many points about choosing to have these AH in our lives, I have this choice. I can walk away as he is not a family member. I know in time I will feel differently then I do now but I love and care for this person so much. I am still willing to be here while he gets help. He hasn't contacted me for awhile and I am okay with this as I keep hearing LET GO AND LET GOD, in my head. He is not strong right now and is seriously depressed all the time. Is it my codependency that yearns for him? I honestly don't have the urges to "Save him" like I had always done before. Listening to Melody Beattie and going to ALAnon has made me take a hard look at myself and see things that I need to change... DAY BY DAY - as I know I have always and will always have these pre set ways of thinking. I miss him, he was one of my best friends and I really do hope that he reaches out to me so that we can spend time together. I know that I cannot expect anything from him and that is why I stay away. I really do ask the universe to give him the strength to wake up and want to get the help he needs, I know that I can't provide anything like that anymore, but I feel like what we did and do have is still full of LOVE ... I guess writig it out was another way of expressing it ... any thoughts

blwninthewind

Your singing to the choir.
we know the A is not good for us but it's so hard to let them go.
distancing ourselves is so hard especially when our lives revolved around them and was so ooooooooo emeshed (is that a word) with them...
we can't just walk away and not feel...
it hurts.
we pray for them and we pray for us but still it hurts and we cry for what could have been. For the life we wanted to have with them and for the people we thought they could be ...
it's a sad painful thing...and yet it is what is best for us.
The good thing is ..
I have not yet read ONE person here who left say they regreted their decision. Their only regret is that they didn't do it sooner.

dollydo

If you love him, let him find his own way...if this relationship is mean't to be, it will happen. In the meantime, if he wants soberity, he will embrace a strong recovery program, stay sober for at least a year, then you can reconsider the relationship based on his actions.

Him reaching out to you today is a bad move move for him and you.

You sound like you are young, taking a break from the relationship is not the end of the world, and a year out of your life is a mere drop in the bucket.

In order for the relationship to be healthy...you both...need to get healthy.

lillamy

I think Al-Anon and getting out of an alcoholic marriage has removed a lot of romantic notions from my head. Some people say I've become more cynical. I don't see it that way: I say I've become more realistic.

One thing I have come away with from the last six years of recovery work is this: I have yet to meet a person I can't live without. I have yet to meet a person I wouldn't be able to walk away from if he or she was behaving in unacceptable ways towards me. The only exception to that is my children.

We think specific other people are so vitally important to our happiness. They're not. If we're not happy without them in our lives, we wouldn't be happy with them in our lives either. Because happiness comes from within. You can be happy in the worst circumstances (been there, done that, got the t-shirt) and miserable when all is well around you.

m1k3

Maybe this will help. I have been thinking about my relationship with my AW. We are separated. I spent a lot of time thinking that if she loved me she wouldn't be doing this and I wouldn't be hurting so bad.

Then it hit me, love doesn't hurt.

I can hurt for lots of reasons but one of them isn't "someone loves me".

I finally realized that she may feel lots of things about me but love isn't one of them.


Your friend,

m1k3

Maybe this will help. I have been thinking about my relationship with my AW. We are separated. I spent a lot of time thinking that if she loved me she wouldn't be doing this and I wouldn't be hurting so bad.

Then it hit me, love doesn't hurt.

I can hurt for lots of reasons but one of them isn't "someone loves me".

I finally realized that she may feel lots of things about me but love isn't one of them.


Your friend,

NYCDoglvr

It's important to pay attention to your own feelings. Are you being treated well, with respect? Is your life diminished? Do you respect and trust him? Does he love and cherish you? For me if I loose respect and stop trusting someone, then feelings of "love" are irrelevant.

tabatha

Letting go of the fantasy of what could have been (if only) is really hard. I've been there and even though my XABF is now deceased I sometimes still get these waves of yearning for that 'feeling' again. It fades though and I move on.
I realize now that it is mostly yearning for what I wanted, but never got.

quetzal

Thank you friends I will take all of your words in, I know I am still looking to him for answers that he doesn't have. I still want from him, I wish I didn't anymore. All in due time I guess. I stay busy but this last week has been so difficult for me. The pangs of pain are back and I need some sort of reassurance. I thank you all for giving me feedback, I know it's all true.

quetzal

Thank you friends I will take all of your words in, I know I am still looking to him for answers that he doesn't have. I still want from him, I wish I didn't anymore. All in due time I guess. I stay busy but this last week has been so difficult for me. The pangs of pain are back and I need some sort of reassurance. I thank you all for giving me feedback, I know it's all true.

onajourney

i know how you feel, left similar situation recently for safety of my child, it was loosing the hope for what we might have that made me feel okay to leave ( well okay with a whole new life to sort out too), at times that illusion creeps back in the "its not that bad " voice returns, today was hard but still 100% better to be out the other side,
i dont keep the merry go round go any more.

lillamy

Yes. That. Absolutely.

I go back and read my old posts here when that happens. And my journal. And my e-mails to my best friend from when I was still married. That usually reminds me of all the stuff that my brain is protecting my sanity by conveniently "forgetting"...

quetzal

I know things will fall where they need to, I have faith in the universe to steer me in the right direction. I must never forget to love myself more and take care of me. I am teh only one I have in the end of it all.

blwninthewind

When I go back and read my journal...it takes me right back to the moment and I get angry and sad. If I picked it up and didn't know the person it belonged to I would be wondering why that person stayed. Why would she be in a such a bad relationship where mutual trust and respect is nonexistant...but it's ME.

It is a choice. I'm not thrilled w/ my choice today. But it's not terrible, just difficult and there is a huge difference between those two words...

So...because I can't seem to leave..even when I know its the smart thing, the right thing...for us BOTH....

well that is why every new gf that posts about her new abf has me telling thenm to run like hell. I don't want anyone to go through what I (and the rest of us ) have unnecessarily.

I truly wish I had bolted the minute I realized there was a problem but being as how I'm a AcoA too...I'd surely be with another drug addict or Alcoholic. Hate to say that but I think it's the truth for many of us.
Which is why i go to alanon. Once is a mistake, twice it's a choice!