Alcoholics can't love, right?
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by trailmix 
Time. That's the tough part, but in that time you will make progress, it's not all this painful, as you go forward it lessens.
What have you done to move away from him emotionally? A few suggestions:
1. (important one) Make a list of what he is really like, emotionally detached? Demanding? Demeaning? How often did you cry? And more specifically each time he did something mean/terrible - like walking out on you in a restaurant, calling you a name etc.
Refer to this list every time you start getting nostalgic, if that is 20 times a day initially, that's not a bad thing. This is the truth of it and sometimes that's hard to remember when you are feeling sad.
2. Take good care of yourself. Eat well, get lots of sleep, do even a few things that make you even slightly happy. That can be a netflix binge, hanging out with friends, a mini-holiday with a friend, making yourself an orange float and sitting on the deck reading, bubble baths! It all seems trivial but when you make that effort it helps.
3. Perspective. Do you have a trusted friend or family member that you talk to about this, someone that understands? Have you been to Al-Anon?
Even if those are not an option, you have us! If you need perspective, lay it out, tons of wisdom here.
Those are just a few suggestions and I hope they help. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever help, but it will get better over time, it really will.
What have you done to move away from him emotionally? A few suggestions:
1. (important one) Make a list of what he is really like, emotionally detached? Demanding? Demeaning? How often did you cry? And more specifically each time he did something mean/terrible - like walking out on you in a restaurant, calling you a name etc.
Refer to this list every time you start getting nostalgic, if that is 20 times a day initially, that's not a bad thing. This is the truth of it and sometimes that's hard to remember when you are feeling sad.
2. Take good care of yourself. Eat well, get lots of sleep, do even a few things that make you even slightly happy. That can be a netflix binge, hanging out with friends, a mini-holiday with a friend, making yourself an orange float and sitting on the deck reading, bubble baths! It all seems trivial but when you make that effort it helps.
3. Perspective. Do you have a trusted friend or family member that you talk to about this, someone that understands? Have you been to Al-Anon?
Even if those are not an option, you have us! If you need perspective, lay it out, tons of wisdom here.
Those are just a few suggestions and I hope they help. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever help, but it will get better over time, it really will.
I did take a mini vacation last week and went and saw the Grand Canyon, went kayaking on Lake Powell. I had gained so much weight from the trauma of all of this...so unlike me! I had actually gone to the doctor to make sure nothing was wrong.
Turns out, it was all his crap and my body making tons of cortisol, under so much stress. Fantastic. Still fighting to work it off. Ran the BolderBoulder, yesterday. That felt SO good!
I need to sit down and right out all the things he has said and done....it's going to tear me apart. ALmost afraid to do it.
He doesn't even miss me. He hasn't contacted me. Just slept with tons of women, because that's what he does. I feel like a complete throw away.
I'm going to reference this list.
Thank you so much!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by Bullwinkle1944
mmk11 writes>>>Please, I need reminders today that alcoholics can't love and can't be in healthy relationships.<<<
I don’t cookie cut the characters of alcoholics. “Character is what I do when no one is looking”. I’ve been married to my spouse for many years, I met my spouse in the AA fellowship.
Robin Williams was a very loving, he paid for all of Christopher Reeves medical expenses.
I don’t cookie cut the characters of alcoholics. “Character is what I do when no one is looking”. I’ve been married to my spouse for many years, I met my spouse in the AA fellowship.
Robin Williams was a very loving, he paid for all of Christopher Reeves medical expenses.
I guess, I wish that I knew he wasn't going to suddenly do better and be better for someone else. He was awful to me. Abusive emotionally and physically. It's my addiction to him that is keeping me in the holding pattern....feels like i will never heal.
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by trailmix
Bullwinkle, I understand what you are saying and you aren't the first to say it. I get that it can be kind of insulting to an alcoholic or someone involved with an alcoholic.
Thing is, there is "short-hand" used in this forum. If a poster says remind me why alcoholics can't love or remind me how quitting alcohol is not recovery - that's short-hand.
That doesn't mean everyone thinks no alcoholic can ever love another person or that quitting alcohol is not a good start to getting in to some kind of recovery (or that it doesn't take huge effort).
All that said, if every post had a pre-cursor of: Can someone please remind me how an alcoholic might have a skewed view of love and relationships due to his/her family or origin or the fact that he/she is drunk every day but is functioning at this point but doesn't appear to have the "normal" signs and reactions to giving and receiving love etc etc
This forum would be lots of posts with lots of pre-amble.
Just want you to know that we (and of course I can't speak for everyone else, but I do read here and this is what I see) by and large have a good grasp that not everyone (including Alcoholics) are "cookie-cutter". There are a lot of similarities though and there is short-hand that comes with it.
I truly hope that makes it less offensive to you.
Thing is, there is "short-hand" used in this forum. If a poster says remind me why alcoholics can't love or remind me how quitting alcohol is not recovery - that's short-hand.
That doesn't mean everyone thinks no alcoholic can ever love another person or that quitting alcohol is not a good start to getting in to some kind of recovery (or that it doesn't take huge effort).
All that said, if every post had a pre-cursor of: Can someone please remind me how an alcoholic might have a skewed view of love and relationships due to his/her family or origin or the fact that he/she is drunk every day but is functioning at this point but doesn't appear to have the "normal" signs and reactions to giving and receiving love etc etc
This forum would be lots of posts with lots of pre-amble.
Just want you to know that we (and of course I can't speak for everyone else, but I do read here and this is what I see) by and large have a good grasp that not everyone (including Alcoholics) are "cookie-cutter". There are a lot of similarities though and there is short-hand that comes with it.
I truly hope that makes it less offensive to you.
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Join Date: Nov 2016
Posts: 8,647
Originally Posted by PhoenixRising211
I need to sit down and right out all the things he has said and done....it's going to tear me apart. ALmost afraid to do it.
Member
Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by OpheliaKatz
This pretty much sums up what I felt I experienced with my addict husband. First he was my partner, then a stranger, then a zombie man, then he was a monster. By the time he was a stranger, he was also cheating on me. What I didn't understand is how anyone could find him appealing in his stinky, dirty, perpetually high or perpetually withdrawing state. Maybe he got someone who wanted to "fix" or "help" him. Or maybe it was another addict.
They go to hell and relationships are a journey for two.
They go to hell and relationships are a journey for two.
Thank you for posting, this really resonates. Hugs!
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by Leelee168
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm still struggling with "what happened to that good guy I used to know" and so I made the list. I had recorded a verbally abusive rant in the car one day and I played it back for myself. The impact of hearing myself cry on top of his drunken, abusive diatribe made me sick. If I had heard another man talking that way to a woman I would think he was an abusive, pathetic butthole--well, someone talked to me that way and I need to afford myself the same concern.
It's hard. I invested a lot of my life in this person. Someday...I will get past it.
I'm still struggling with "what happened to that good guy I used to know" and so I made the list. I had recorded a verbally abusive rant in the car one day and I played it back for myself. The impact of hearing myself cry on top of his drunken, abusive diatribe made me sick. If I had heard another man talking that way to a woman I would think he was an abusive, pathetic butthole--well, someone talked to me that way and I need to afford myself the same concern.
It's hard. I invested a lot of my life in this person. Someday...I will get past it.
I need to go back and remember it all, so I can tell myself I am worth so much more.
Glad you're in a better place!
Hugs!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by qtpi
My xha had 3 sides to him. The good kind loving ethical side I fell in love with and started to see less of as the years progressed. The zombie....drunk disengaged disconnected prone to snapping and seeking more inebriation. And then there was the madman... Maybe in withdrawal...surely wanting to drink...mean, angry, critical, resentful,entitled, and blaming. His misery was all my fault. How dare I be happy when he wasn't. This is the side of him I could no longer tolerate. This is why I left. I often dreamed the first side of him would return to stay but it wasn't to be.
He has his ebbs and his flows, I think. I have no idea his state now. I truly wish i could just forget him. I still truly love that man he started out as, that was a relationship that could've been something really incredible. Even he said so. Even he said, all he could remember about the end was that he was "drinking a lot". But he couldn't or wouldnt connect the dots enough to say that his drinking had a huge impact on the end of our relationship.
I wish I could just forget him, but something inside me won't let me. He is happily numbing himself with allllll the alcohol and allllllll the women.
Wish I could forget him as he has so easily forgotten me.
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Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 77
Originally Posted by PhoenixRising211
Thank you Bullwinkle. That quote is from the original poster.
I guess, I wish that I knew he wasn't going to suddenly do better and be better for someone else. He was awful to me. Abusive emotionally and physically. It's my addiction to him that is keeping me in the holding pattern....feels like i will never heal.
I guess, I wish that I knew he wasn't going to suddenly do better and be better for someone else. He was awful to me. Abusive emotionally and physically. It's my addiction to him that is keeping me in the holding pattern....feels like i will never heal.
I can totally relate to this feeling of "what if they're better for someone else?" I think what helps is to try and reflect back on things as objectively as possible. It's hard when you have had so many deep feelings wrapped up in the situation. In my case, I think that I spent so much time in denial that it was almost as if the man I was experiencing in front of me at the time wasn't the REALITY of who he is. He talked a big game about wanting to settle down and have a family (and I think a part of him does want those things), but the reality is that he has issues that make those goals unattainable at this time - regardless of who he's with. Someone who has a longstanding history of using alcohol (or other substances) to numb themselves from life has inevitably lost their ability to connect with others in a healthy way. They're not even fully connected to THEMSELVES. I've learned that the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg ... there are so many issues below the surface that must also be dealt with in order for a person to be fully capable of a healthy relationship. It's not as if the next girl these guys meet is going to have some "magical" quality that will absolve them of their alcoholism and its related issues with the wave of a wand. They have to want to do better and be better for themselves - and even once they've decided to do that, it's a long, long process. Plus, I don't know how old your ex is, but mine is almost 40. I'm not saying there aren't great, single men over a certain age, but if someone is older (like past their early to mid 30s) and hasn't ever had a healthy relationship, that's something to look at as well. Mine had a gf about 8 years ago whom he dated/lived with for about 6 months and kicked her out out of the blue because he "got bored" with her. Then he had a 4 year on-and-off relationship with another girl he eventually proposed to, only to take the ring back from her 4 months later (out of the blue as well)!! He literally took the ring from her nightstand while she was at the gym. Who does that?? Sorry this response turned into a novel, but I guess what I'm saying is, try to look at the overall picture of this person's life/behavior - not just the brief few months of bliss early in the relationship. It helps me come back to reality! Lol
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by Looking4Clues
Hey PhoenixRising,
I can totally relate to this feeling of "what if they're better for someone else?" I think what helps is to try and reflect back on things as objectively as possible. It's hard when you have had so many deep feelings wrapped up in the situation. In my case, I think that I spent so much time in denial that it was almost as if the man I was experiencing in front of me at the time wasn't the REALITY of who he is. He talked a big game about wanting to settle down and have a family (and I think a part of him does want those things), but the reality is that he has issues that make those goals unattainable at this time - regardless of who he's with. Someone who has a longstanding history of using alcohol (or other substances) to numb themselves from life has inevitably lost their ability to connect with others in a healthy way. They're not even fully connected to THEMSELVES. I've learned that the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg ... there are so many issues below the surface that must also be dealt with in order for a person to be fully capable of a healthy relationship. It's not as if the next girl these guys meet is going to have some "magical" quality that will absolve them of their alcoholism and its related issues with the wave of a wand. They have to want to do better and be better for themselves - and even once they've decided to do that, it's a long, long process. Plus, I don't know how old your ex is, but mine is almost 40. I'm not saying there aren't great, single men over a certain age, but if someone is older (like past their early to mid 30s) and hasn't ever had a healthy relationship, that's something to look at as well. Mine had a gf about 8 years ago whom he dated/lived with for about 6 months and kicked her out out of the blue because he "got bored" with her. Then he had a 4 year on-and-off relationship with another girl he eventually proposed to, only to take the ring back from her 4 months later (out of the blue as well)!! He literally took the ring from her nightstand while she was at the gym. Who does that?? Sorry this response turned into a novel, but I guess what I'm saying is, try to look at the overall picture of this person's life/behavior - not just the brief few months of bliss early in the relationship. It helps me come back to reality! Lol
I can totally relate to this feeling of "what if they're better for someone else?" I think what helps is to try and reflect back on things as objectively as possible. It's hard when you have had so many deep feelings wrapped up in the situation. In my case, I think that I spent so much time in denial that it was almost as if the man I was experiencing in front of me at the time wasn't the REALITY of who he is. He talked a big game about wanting to settle down and have a family (and I think a part of him does want those things), but the reality is that he has issues that make those goals unattainable at this time - regardless of who he's with. Someone who has a longstanding history of using alcohol (or other substances) to numb themselves from life has inevitably lost their ability to connect with others in a healthy way. They're not even fully connected to THEMSELVES. I've learned that the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg ... there are so many issues below the surface that must also be dealt with in order for a person to be fully capable of a healthy relationship. It's not as if the next girl these guys meet is going to have some "magical" quality that will absolve them of their alcoholism and its related issues with the wave of a wand. They have to want to do better and be better for themselves - and even once they've decided to do that, it's a long, long process. Plus, I don't know how old your ex is, but mine is almost 40. I'm not saying there aren't great, single men over a certain age, but if someone is older (like past their early to mid 30s) and hasn't ever had a healthy relationship, that's something to look at as well. Mine had a gf about 8 years ago whom he dated/lived with for about 6 months and kicked her out out of the blue because he "got bored" with her. Then he had a 4 year on-and-off relationship with another girl he eventually proposed to, only to take the ring back from her 4 months later (out of the blue as well)!! He literally took the ring from her nightstand while she was at the gym. Who does that?? Sorry this response turned into a novel, but I guess what I'm saying is, try to look at the overall picture of this person's life/behavior - not just the brief few months of bliss early in the relationship. It helps me come back to reality! Lol
He had a long term relationship some years ago (I am friends with her on FB, but not him. He's not talking to her now. And I told him I dont care to be in touch. His long term ex is a complete doormat and has a severe drinking problem, herself). I feel like he's too broken over her leaving him in 2013 that he can't ever have another real relationship, again. He just wants to sleep with every woman he meets.
We had something really great going originally. I want to believe it was genuine, but a part of me wonders if I was just being used to try and get her back. As soon as things went south in her relationship, he went after her and dropped me.
I feel forgettable and unlovable.
But I see what you mean, he has so much work to do, that he can't even begin to acknowledge before he'll be able to do better in a relationship.
Thank you so much for your response.
Hugs!
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Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 296
Originally Posted by Looking4Clues
Hey PhoenixRising,
I can totally relate to this feeling of "what if they're better for someone else?" I think what helps is to try and reflect back on things as objectively as possible. It's hard when you have had so many deep feelings wrapped up in the situation. In my case, I think that I spent so much time in denial that it was almost as if the man I was experiencing in front of me at the time wasn't the REALITY of who he is. He talked a big game about wanting to settle down and have a family (and I think a part of him does want those things), but the reality is that he has issues that make those goals unattainable at this time - regardless of who he's with. Someone who has a longstanding history of using alcohol (or other substances) to numb themselves from life has inevitably lost their ability to connect with others in a healthy way. They're not even fully connected to THEMSELVES. I've learned that the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg ... there are so many issues below the surface that must also be dealt with in order for a person to be fully capable of a healthy relationship. It's not as if the next girl these guys meet is going to have some "magical" quality that will absolve them of their alcoholism and its related issues with the wave of a wand. They have to want to do better and be better for themselves - and even once they've decided to do that, it's a long, long process. Plus, I don't know how old your ex is, but mine is almost 40. I'm not saying there aren't great, single men over a certain age, but if someone is older (like past their early to mid 30s) and hasn't ever had a healthy relationship, that's something to look at as well. Mine had a gf about 8 years ago whom he dated/lived with for about 6 months and kicked her out out of the blue because he "got bored" with her. Then he had a 4 year on-and-off relationship with another girl he eventually proposed to, only to take the ring back from her 4 months later (out of the blue as well)!! He literally took the ring from her nightstand while she was at the gym. Who does that?? Sorry this response turned into a novel, but I guess what I'm saying is, try to look at the overall picture of this person's life/behavior - not just the brief few months of bliss early in the relationship. It helps me come back to reality! Lol
I can totally relate to this feeling of "what if they're better for someone else?" I think what helps is to try and reflect back on things as objectively as possible. It's hard when you have had so many deep feelings wrapped up in the situation. In my case, I think that I spent so much time in denial that it was almost as if the man I was experiencing in front of me at the time wasn't the REALITY of who he is. He talked a big game about wanting to settle down and have a family (and I think a part of him does want those things), but the reality is that he has issues that make those goals unattainable at this time - regardless of who he's with. Someone who has a longstanding history of using alcohol (or other substances) to numb themselves from life has inevitably lost their ability to connect with others in a healthy way. They're not even fully connected to THEMSELVES. I've learned that the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg ... there are so many issues below the surface that must also be dealt with in order for a person to be fully capable of a healthy relationship. It's not as if the next girl these guys meet is going to have some "magical" quality that will absolve them of their alcoholism and its related issues with the wave of a wand. They have to want to do better and be better for themselves - and even once they've decided to do that, it's a long, long process. Plus, I don't know how old your ex is, but mine is almost 40. I'm not saying there aren't great, single men over a certain age, but if someone is older (like past their early to mid 30s) and hasn't ever had a healthy relationship, that's something to look at as well. Mine had a gf about 8 years ago whom he dated/lived with for about 6 months and kicked her out out of the blue because he "got bored" with her. Then he had a 4 year on-and-off relationship with another girl he eventually proposed to, only to take the ring back from her 4 months later (out of the blue as well)!! He literally took the ring from her nightstand while she was at the gym. Who does that?? Sorry this response turned into a novel, but I guess what I'm saying is, try to look at the overall picture of this person's life/behavior - not just the brief few months of bliss early in the relationship. It helps me come back to reality! Lol
I thought that's what I was getting. He was doing AA, was sober, then doing a line with this other woman and I felt gutted. Felt so discarded especially as it was my actions which forced (police) to get into AA and to quit. Fast forward a couple of months and he's quit AA, back drinking, back getting drunk on a regular basis. She has what I kicked out! He has not sobered up, hit rock bottom, got into recovery. He has not improved, fallen in love, quit for her. He is the guy I said no to. She can have that guy. The only guy I'd ever consider back in my life would have to be in full-time recovery. He's bringing all his baggage from his 20yr old drinking habit, recent police, child custody shame, anger, loss of wife, home, family to a 'relationship'. Its a rebound...need for validation of the worst kind.
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