shari07

Hmmm, reading this I think I used to be a normie or or at least semi normie! My exh wasn't an a but he had a bad lying problem and liked to spend all our money on himself, I told him you do this one more time and I'm gone, he did and I was done, kicked him out and didn't really look back, what the h3ll happened to me???

sadielady

What Carlotta said! Damn that flickering hopeful shining light of potential. It's a ruse, I tell you. A fleeting ghost of a disappointment waiting to happen.

I may have to tattoo that on my forehead. I will never fall in love with someone's goddamn potential again.

LifeRecovery

Slightly off topic.

I was a codie way before I met my loved one that got me here.

I HOPE that they way to becoming a normie is when you take a codie and add recovery to it.

I think I get a little suspicious of the word normie....we all have challenges in life, but how we get through them is where the lessons come. I don't believe that anyone knows how to be in all situations. What if I took a person who did not show these tendencies and put them into a situation I was in....how would that alter the mix.

I don't like the lessons, often. I REALLY don't like the feelings that go with the lesson, but I have benefited from the learning. I always feel like if I was a normie I would not have LEARNED anything from my situation. (This is not to say I want to do this rodeo again by the way).

LexieCat

I personally have never thought of myself as "co-dependent." I wasn't raised in a home where abnormal things were treated as normal.

I was not in a healthy state, myself, when I met the men who wound up being bad for me. I think I was in a particularly vulnerable state, and something about them attracted me. I don't find those characteristics attractive when my head is screwed on straight.

But something happens when people fall in love. And I don't think it is just "co-dependents" who do that. We come to care about people. We see good qualities. With my first husband, who drank constantly, one of the things that attracted me was that he used to write letters to his nearly-blind grandmother with big magic markers so she could read them. That touched me.

Just because people are alcoholics doesn't mean they don't have endearing qualities--though those qualities gradually become more and more obscured by the alcohol. And by then, we are desperately wishing they would just pull themselves together, and keep hoping that they will, if we are just a little more patient, or insistent, or argue the point a little better.

I don't know that any of that is pathological. I think we CAN become very sick in many ways as a result of living with alcoholism, but I find the "co-dependent" label a bit too facile for the wide range of people who wind up in alcoholic relationships and finding it difficult to give up on someone we care about.

Just my opinion.

Jazzman

Yep. I was a knight in shinning armor to the rescue of a woman I knew from childhood and dated off and on since high school, and sister of a good friend. Not codependent, but married with a combined family, kids moved to new schools and neighborhoods. That's why she got two shots at sobriety and a year and a half before I filed for divorce. If we were only dating when the SHTF with her drinking it would have been a much shorter time frame before I threw in the towel.

Missus

I honestly believe a "normie" would react as we first reacted ... with confusion, and an attempt to make things better, love them more, fix whatever it is that they "did wrong" to "cause" the problem ... And before you know it, the normie is a full blown codependent.

Just my take on the question :-)

fedupbeyondall

I was a normie before I knew what a normie was. I had even managed to get out of a relationship with Mr. W. once and then, somehow, a couple years later he reeled me back in. At that time I was in a pretty vulnerable place, living with a friend, unemployed, broken really. I fell for his BS from the start. He even told me when we were just talking about getting married that the fiance before me told him they wouldn't get married unless he quit drinking....well, they never got married so, yeah. Well, I decided I wasn't going to be like that, I wasn't going to put ultimatums on my relationship, you love the person for who they are not what you want them to be. So I didn't make that request. Fast forward to now, and well......what more can I say?

fedupbeyondall

Here is some more I can say, ultimatums are one thing, boundaries are the other. I didn't know the difference back then. If I had I would have handled that way differently.

BlueSkies1

We're all just people. We don't need labels. Makes me feel better already.

OnawaMiniya

My AH' s ex gave him the boot for that too, I came to find out from his family.