Be my therapist?..Is my past relevant?

Old 11-05-2013, 08:56 AM
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Be my therapist?..Is my past relevant?

I know before I start typing this it will be a bit of a ramble but I really want to get it out there.

Before I met my A I was married for 18 years to a man who wasn't an A but was, well, a bully. If you had asked me at the time if it was an abusive relationship I would have said no. I came to learn afterwards it had been. He never actually raised his hands (although he did throw things at walls and occasionally at me) but he made me feel small every single day. I worked but he controlled all the money and I was given a tiny "housekeeping" budget. One time I found a condom in my car and another time a pink cigarette lighter. He talked his way out of that. Everything for all these years was about him and what he needed and wanted. I'm almost crying here remembering a time he came home and screamed terrible names at me because he was hungry and I had eaten the last slice of bread or another time when we were poor with a young family and he did a big piece of work for a dentist in exchange for getting cosmetic work done to his teeth when we hardly had food in the house.
When he eventually walked out he left me with two children, no job, and I didn't have the next months rent.
I begged him to come home for a year. At one point I became involved with DV and slowly slowly learned It had been an abusive relationship.
For the next couple of years I dated here and there but my life was all about me. I got a great job, lost weight, and got to a really healthy place for me and my kids.
Then I met my A
He was/is the opposite of my XH. He is kind and considerate and funny and charming and an alcoholic. He asks nothing of me except that I tolerate his drinking (As I type this I think "that's not really honest" He can be moody and grumpy and hungover. He can quack with the best of them. He would happily be penniless and never give any thought to the future.) But he is chalk and cheese with my XH.

I suppose my question is. Is this relevant to my struggle with not being able to imagine a life without my A? Has my experience with my XH taken me to a place where I think "just be nice to me and I am yours forever"
I vividly remember the heartache of trying to get over a man who didn't love me and was cruel to me. I can't begin to imagine trying to get over a man I believe loves me(as much as he is able) and whom I truly thought I would be happy with forever.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:14 AM
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Is this relevant to my struggle with not being able to imagine a life without my A? Has my experience with my XH taken me to a place where I think "just be nice to me and I am yours forever"
I'm not a therapist but my story goes like this:

I was in love with this amazing man who had three kids from an earlier relationship. I honestly thought he was my soulmate (hate that word now) and that we were meant to be together. So imagine my shock when I picked up the paper and saw that he had married the mother of his children. He had been seeing both of us simultaneously. I crashed. Totally. And it was in that state of mind that I met AXH. Who wanted to marry me.

I think I somewhere thought I didn't deserve better.
That I couldn't do better.
And I also think I didn't know what a good relationship looked like.

I think the conclusion I've come to is that until I'm OK with being on my own, I'm not ready to be in a relationship. I'm married to a great guy, we have a fantastic partnership, I love him to death, HOWEVER... we both have bad marriages behind us, and we've both been very upfront about the fact that We Will Take No Sh*t. We choose to be together. We'd be fine on our own. But we're together because we want to be. Not because we can't be without each other.

And I think that's the big difference. We aren't going to put up with abuse, addiction, meanness, cheating, etc. That doesn't make him optional to me -- it makes him very valuable, and it makes me never take him for granted.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:34 AM
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I may come back with more.. but to me, yes. It does play a part.

This is why I think that.. Your previous relationship left you in a place where you were capable of handling an abnormal amount of BS. So you've gotten really good at that. You're BS meter just might be skewed now. You're tolerance is up, maybe higher than it needs to be.

Only you can tell for sure though..
(Had to get it out before I forgot it)
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:38 AM
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What strange timing for you to post this. I was thinking about a similar thing today.

I was feeling like a hypocrite for even posting on f&f, because I feel it doesn't really apply to me.

My ex is a alcoholic, and he is abusive. I didn't leave him because he drank, I left because he is abusive. I was thinking today, that if the abuse wasn't there, I probably would have stayed, and put up with the A. It's one of the reasons that I don't post much to people who are dealing with an A, I tend to post to the people in abusive situations, it's like I know that part of it better.

So you got me thinking today. Thank you for that. So these are just random thoughts right now. I'm really trying to separate my ex into 2 different people right now, one is the abusive one, the other is the alcoholic. OK, so if one day he was miraculously cured of being abusive, would the alcoholic still be ok?

First, need to answer your question about whether your past being relevant to your struggle now. I would have to say yes.

Today before you brought this question up, I would say that I would have stayed even if he was a A.

Now, I don't think so. I remember all times he was drunk, and trying to act so lovey dovey while I remained the designated driver. I remember all of the parties he wouldn't go to, or slept through. I remember the times he would sit alone drinking and closing himself off from me. I was just emotionally drained. He was in love with a bottle, he would promise to spend time with me, then he would start drinking. I spent so much time at home because he couldn't put the bottle down, went to so many things alone, because he was at home drinking. Whenever we went someplace, there had to be beer. He joined all the people at bar, and left me by myself.

He would start drinking early in the morning, and I knew that our weekend was shot. He would talk to me, try to help me with some things, but he was already drunk, so we really couldn't go anyplace. I just felt alone, the loneliest I ever felt was being home with a drunk that had passed out on the couch, and it is only 7 pm.

So, I need to change my answer from the way that I was thinking in the morning about this very subject. No, I couldn't have stayed. It wasn't a life, not one that I wanted.
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Old 11-05-2013, 09:45 AM
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My short answer is that YES, ABSOLUTELY your past is relevant to the choices you make today. My first marriage was to a man who was generally kind and loving, but who was totally incapable of taking care of himself. He had been so sheltered by his parents (and lived at home until he was 28) that he developed no coping skills. He was not an addict, but I was definitely in the controlling caretaker role. Ultimately I left because I came to understand that I did not love him the way spouses should love each other, and I didn't respect him very much. I just didn't want to have that kind of a marriage. The divorce was difficult and painful. But it was NOTHING like the heartache and trauma that has come with separating myself emotionally from my AH, who I DO love very deeply, and with whom I had a wonderful, loving relationship before he relapsed.

I'm quite sure, though, that my experience being married to someone who was more like my child than my partner left me STARVING for a passionate marriage with an equal partner. I had it for awhile, but it's been gone for over three years. I'm also sure that being starved for that kind of a partnership for so long left me willing to put up with a lot more crap from my AH than I would have otherwise, just on the hope that someday we would get that partnership back.

Originally Posted by amy55 View Post
My ex is a alcoholic, and he is abusive. I didn't leave him because he drank, I left because he is abusive.
And Amy...this is soooo true. For years I would complain to my AH about his drinking, and he would often reply that his drinking wasn't our problem. He, of course, was minimizing his drinking and trying to convince me he isn't an A. But the underlying fact of his statement was (and is) true. His drinking, in and of itself, isn't our problem. One of our problems (and the problem that has destroyed our marriage) is the way he treats me--the horrible emotional abuse. I believe his addiction has contributed to that dynamic, but it is not the addiction that is pushing me out the door. It's the abuse.
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Old 11-05-2013, 10:09 AM
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Somewhere I read, " History doesn't repeat itself, People do."

Certainly, we all have experienced circumstances in our lives that have left both negative and positive impressions.

I believe everything happens for a reason.

There is a life lesson to be learned in each and every life situation. The dilemma occurs when we do not press the pause button, and take the TIME to embrace the what the "powers that be" are trying to educate us in.

I think the fact that you are reaching out and searching for answers is the beginning of JessicaJoe finally taking the time to get to know who JessicaJoe really is.

This is not about your A boyfriend, this is about you now. We know who he is. The question is Who are you?
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Old 11-05-2013, 10:24 AM
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Originally Posted by Wisconsin View Post

I'm quite sure, though, that my experience being married to someone who was more like my child than my partner left me STARVING for a passionate marriage with an equal partner. I had it for awhile, but it's been gone for over three years.
^^^wow^^^ this is very similar to my story. Except my XH (not an A) did the leaving, because he got tired of the dynamic first. Either way, I had grown accustomed to "scarcity" from my long term marriage. So when ABF - who started out loving, attentive, passionate, present - started to slip away, it hurt, but felt weirdly normal. Like before, I had to fill in all the gaps for myself, while feeling resentful and sad. Familiar territory!

Yes, JJ, your previous marriage, and lots of other self esteem issues are most definitely at play in your current relationship with your A - they certainly were with mine.

I encourage you to keep looking deeply inside yourself, with love and compassion; start to discover why you will tolerate getting only crumbs to eat, why the scarcity is sad and lonely, yet somehow enough to get by on?

I am on that journey, too. You are not alone!!
((((hugs)))))
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Old 11-05-2013, 03:36 PM
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Jessicajoe-

All I can say is that for me, myself and I my past has played a big role.

It played a role in who I choose as a partner, why I thought certain things were okay, and why I stayed.

For me it has been about more then just past relationships, but actually as far back as my childhood (and I did not have a bad one). I just grew up with two people, both impacted by alcohol that though not struggling with alcohol addiction, both struggled in other ways. We were the perfect don't talk, don't feel, don't need or emote kind of situation.

I do best when I think about my relationship that got me here, not as I screwed up but as it was the opportunity for me to learn what I needed to and to HEAL my old stuff that I had not previously.

I truthfully am also terrified that if I don't give myself a chance to heal I am going to end up in a similar merry go round.

One piece I have learned from all of this (still working on it in relationships). I don't deserve just good enough, or "well at least he is not (fill in the blank)" I deserve relationships with people that cherish themselves enough to want to do the work involved.
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Old 11-06-2013, 03:00 AM
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Jessicajoe, I'm not in a place to give any insight right now as I am in "take mode" with this board until I get stronger or in some kind of recovery, but I just wanted you to know I care, and am sending you a hug. Well, I do have something to say - I have this book that I bought years ago, before I realized my RH was an A and decided the reasons for his dysfunctions were everything else but that. It's called If It Hurts It Isn't Love by Chuck Spezzanno (sp) they are daily topics and passages and I remember getting a lot out of it. It helped me realize I wasn't crazy for feeling what I was feeling.
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