fluffyflea

Well while I was lying awake half the night not able to see sleep I was thinking of ways I've given away my power in relationships.

1. I fall into very quickly they are responsible for how I feel.

2. I abandon my life,go into theirs.

I take responsibility for both sides of the relationship, they don't have to do anything.

Does anyone have ways they give away their power?

Stung

Wanna hear something sad? I gave up my power by becoming a SAHM and getting pregnant a second time. Hard to leverage things when everything in your being and society tells you that your partner is supposed to be there for you and be supportive. When I was pregnant this last time AH was busy telling me he hated me and the whole time I was crying my eyes out and thinking "why is this happening to me?!" Had I still been gainfully employed or at least not pregnant I would have left/made him leave MUCH sooner than I ultimately did. I have my power and control back now though.

By control, I mean over myself, not of AH. I'll never be able to control his silly ass.

And now AH is paying the consequences for acting like such a jerk.

Katchie

I think this is a great post. I'll have to give this some thought, but off the top of my head, because of my 1950's outlook on how a marriage should work, I gave my power of knowledge of our finances to my AH. As a result, I have a lot of catching up to do

I modeled myself after my grandparents marriage, but their marriage was good. I learned to allow someone else to 'rescue' me. I lost the power to be my own knight in shining armor.

lizatola

I think I fell into this, as well. I had a career as a stockbroker but I wanted to stay home with our son so badly when he was born. All of my friends were becoming stay at home moms and it seemed like it was the new trend. My AH was fully on board and were fiscally responsible at the time so it seemed like the right thing to do. Then, when ds was 3 my mom talked me into looking into homeschooling our son so that we could have more freedom to travel and visit family whenever we wanted, etc. I took my power and put it into that: creating my own curriculums, joining homeschool groups and getting involved, working part time as an exercise instructor to keep myself fit, etc. It all looked great from the outside.

My AH has very antiquated thinking about the male/female roles in a marriage so my staying home fit right into his plan. At the time, I didn't think about how reliant I was becoming on his income. Here I am, though, 15 years later with no work experience (unless you count teaching yoga and aerobics, LOL) and a crappy marriage.

I know I gave away my power. I always thought I was being a good Christian wife. I was the best contemporary June Cleaver out there (well, maybe not the best but I sure tried, LOL) and my AH loved it and bragged about how wonderful I was and how awesome he had it because I met all his needs. I never once thought about my needs, it's like I shoved them down inside of me somewhere and I forgot about them. That was how I gave away all my power.

lillamy

In retrospect, I should have known upfront that AXH was looking for a powerless victim. So he picked me, an immigrant woman, who didn't have a job or solid career option, who "had to" rely on him for an awful lot, including navigating the system.

FireSprite

What a great question. I have to really think about it.

I definitely gave away my power my giving RAH's career/opportunities ahead of my own. I had expectations (!!) that once he was settled I would be able to take the time to dabble, go to school, whatever.... without having the stress of our budget relying on my income & benefits. That did NOT materialize & now I have spent years working in a JOB instead of developing a career I love despite years of supporting him through endeavor after endeavor.

Every time I voluntarily take on a responsibility that someone else is capable of doing for themselves, I give away a piece of my power. First by enabling and again later when I find that I have shorted myself on time I could have spent doing for me & DD instead.

My RAH is very street/common sense smart & talented in so many ways. He's got a lot of great qualities that he doesn't value because they can't be measured like "book smarts" can & it took me a lonnnnnnng time to realize that my intelligence across many topics, verbosity & just general ability to handle life intimidated the hell out of him, so I unwittingly accepted his passive aggressive jabs about it.

That was definitely me giving away my power. One day, when he was in early recovery & I saw this cycle I literally told him that I was never going to apologize for being "smarter" than he was.. that the idea only existed in his head anyway & was HIS to deal with. I told him I was done with the jabs & jokes at my expense, I was not going to feel responsible for his low self esteem!

hopeful4

Well my AH was looking for a mommy. And I fell for it. Two actual children later, I have realized I am tired. I don't want a child, I want a husband. Hmmm...time to shed about 190 lbs..in the form of one husband. Working on it.

Katchie

I could have written a majority of your post word for word. My exception is that instead of finishing school and getting a job, I married, I was 'rescued' so to speak. Rescued from the hell of my upbringing and married a man who was spiritual and who I thought had it all together. As I grew spiritually, and this is where Firesprites post resonates with me, my AH took offense that I didn't have to lean on him anymore for my biblical understanding or anything else. He had married a mouse of a little girl who didn't know who she was but was maturing and growing before his eyes and he didn't like it.

I can remember when my boys were young, I was learning about something, cant remember what it was, but when he came home from work I was so excited to tell him about it. Well, he was not enthused about it and became angry with me over it. This has been a pattern throughout our marriage. So, when I finally told him I enrolled in a couple of classes at the beginning of this year it was followed by little jabs and jokes about it. Then one day he asked why I didn't talk about my classes and I told him it was because i knew he wasn't happy about me doing it. He acted flabbergasted I would think he wouldn't be proud I was doing that... WHATEVER!

What I will say is that while I have regrets for not doing more for myself, I do not regret the invested time in my 4 boys. I graduated my eldest last year from our home school. The other boys are now full time at a private school. I cherish all of their firsts I have been able to be a part of over the years.

Im trying to learn how to take my power back and figure out who I am now.

Charmed3

Thank you for this share. This definitely struck a chord with me as all 3 of those apply.

I also gave away my power when I demanded that for us to continue he would have to be sober, show respect and honesty.

Too many times to count, I allowed him to treat me badly in so many ways and forgave him with mere words of promises that I hoped would be kept, but feared they would not be.

Things may have turned out differently had I stood my ground or possibly this would have all ended 5 years sooner.

blake1989

I've thought about this a lot, Earthworm. Because I convinced myself "This time, this relationship is going to be equal, and we are working on it together as a team." I always talked to my ex about being a team, a partnership, working through things by communicating, all this stuff I read in books about successful relationships.

How did I give away my power. Not that I wanted any power over anyone, but that there was a personal core, or a chi, that I guess I allowed to be eroded in the name of love.

Anyway, ways I gave away my power:

-I deeply internalized her personal pain/trauma. I thought about it constantly and non-drinking ways to make her 'comfortable'.

-I validated her promises after each blackout incident and always told her we'll work through it, instead of backing away and trying to heal myself.

-I rarely allowed her to deal with the consequences of her drinking as it related to our relationship

-I stopped exercising every day because I felt too sick, I stopped doing anything creatively, I stopped a good part of my healthy routine that she liked about me in the first place.

I feel I never had a rescue complex, and I knew I couldn't 'save' her from her demons - I just deluded myself into thinking I was doing my 50% to make this thing work, and her constant affirmation that she's better than she's ever been really sold me and gave me hope. I was actually doing more than 50%, and the drinking just offset any efforts.

Florence

I was lucky that my family -- mostly women -- instilled in me from a very young age to never let the man in the relationship get control of your pocketbook. This came in handy later when it came time to leave him. I have always worked outside of the home, often two or more jobs at a time, to control my own finances. When I got married to my STBXAH, however, he found ways of relying on my income that did "take control" of me and my money without having to do much more than lie about his own income, hide money and receipts from me, and poison the well with his parents by telling them I was so controlling I wouldn't let him use his own money so they supplemented his secret alcoholism without me even knowing it was happening (sure explains why they hate me though!). So I just shut up. I stopped complaining, it did nothing. I stopped trying to discuss, it did nothing. When I forced the issue, he controlled me by threatening suicide or by leaving the house and disappearing until I begged him to come home. He gave me the cold shoulder, he refused to participate in the grown up business of having a family and a home and I was supposed to live on the crumbs. Having come from a family where we lived on crumbs, this was no new burden. Some nights I would shut myself in the bathroom and cry and cry. He offered no support or relief for the pain I was in, and told me I was crazy and too depressed to be a good wife and mother. When he was feeling really nasty, he told me I was just like my NPD mother.

I also stopped doing creative things -- he pouted and said I spent too much time on them. I also stopped working out -- he was a smoker (as was I, but I worked out regularly) and it made him feel weird, so I stopped doing it myself.

I'm pretty sure he cheated on me while we were dating. I've all but been told directly by his old coworkers that he was getting with a waitress at his restaurant behind my back. I saw enough evidence to know he probably did. He never admitted it. I married him anyway. Why would he lie to me?

Yeah. So he has a GED and some college, and was intimidated that I had a college degree. He used to tell me it was "unfair" when I stood my ground because of all my "rhetoric," like I was wielding my education like a weapon. At some point it came time for me to apply to grad school, and I had a definite in for a PhD track, and I passed it up because, I think deep down, I didn't want to leave him behind. People sometimes ask me why I missed that opportunity and I joke about academic life and underwater basket weaving or whatever, but missing out on that was an extremely painful loss. Instead, I took a terrible job with a terrible company that gave me ulcers for the insurance coverage. He never would have been the one to get a job that pays the bills and gave the family insurance when he could follow his dreams at $10 an hour, 25 hours a week. And man, I signed on for it.

In hindsight, I don't know what kind of insanity I was thinking about. Gods honest truth, I just loved him and I thought this was just another phase in a long relationship and that he would get it together. I didn't think he was leeching off of me. I thought some of these were regular bumps in the road. We had fun for awhile. Until I stopped having fun.

Insaneshame

Good question!!!! I'm not sure if I gave up my power though. I mean, in some aspects, yes, I enabled by allowing the situation to continue. Maybe I'm just weird, but I think that I may have gone the opposite direction. Instead, I took over total control of everything, which I'm sure a lot here did. But I mean this is an almost obsessive way. When he had some input into what he thought we should do, I would just roll my eyes and tell him no, we're not doing it that way, we're doing it my way, because hell, you drink too much and have no idea what you're talking about anyway and I know what's best. Or, I would let him tell me what he thought and make him think that I was listening and going to do it his way, but in reality, I just blew him off. Somehow, I feel like we changed "roles". I, the woman, was the head of household, making decisions, budgeting our money, taking the "lead" and he went into more of the female role, backing down when I told him what we were going to do, he allowed me to "take over", and quit sharing his feelings and communicating properly. Is this the way life is with an A? Or am I just crazy and really did give him my power and am just too stubborn to realize it?!?

SparkleKitty

I gave away my power every single time I accepted the unacceptable, every time I let something slide. I consider myself extremely lucky to have yanked all my power back from my XABF before it started to become second nature to give it away (like it was growing up with my AMom).

FireSprite

I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

To me, control does not equal power. Especially obsessive control.

Control equaled the false sense of power, mostly because I never really had the level of control I thought I did anyway. It's just a smoke screen.

For me, all that mind-time spent making decisions for someone who should be capable of doing so him/herself qualifies as giving away my personal power. That's all time & energy I could have spent in a much more constructive way.

Insaneshame

Touche FS!! Thanks for that new perspective!!! You're absolutely right! I've recognized that I have control issues, but am still working on letting go. It's a lot easier with him not in the house, but I still have to catch myself with the kids!

spiderqueen

I began to view myself through ABF's lens. I "routed" my experiences and feelings through him. If he felt ok, I was ok. If he was scared, I got scared. If I felt great, and he couldn't respond or be there (often) I felt invisible. My feelings were nullified.

I lost myself. I think that qualifies as giving away my power!

blake1989

All of this.

fluffyflea

I just thought of other things,

Becoming passive.

Not speaking up for myself.

Not asking enough questions.

Trusting too early.

fourmaggie

YES! to all of these...omy! thats me to a tee....

JustAGirl1971

I gave away my power by giving up on my own dreams and plans. It didn't happen over night. It was more of a gradual winding down. Kind of like how a wind up toy will slowly lose momentum until it just stops moving. To be honest, I feel kind of like Sleeping Beauty. But, I'm awake now and I'm reclaiming my life