So sorry to read of your struggle to break free of your attachment to your qualifier as I remember the wasted years I spent with my ex-fiancé ... Much of the same overwhelming "need" to keep trying to fix or control the relationship and recovery. My XA was a chronic relapsed and I curbed him for good 5 years ago. He has continued to drink, clean up briefly and relapse like clockwork. I wasted 3 years of my life and for all my pain and anguish and money down the drain just made me as sick or sicker than he is.

My other qualifiers were my dad who died of alcoholism many years ago. Today I received the toxicology on my 51 year old brother who dropped dead in his bedroom in January. Alcohol and cocaine were the cause of death ... My 91 year old mother almost grieved herself to death three times with heart failure and pneumonia ... He was her caretaker and now I am.

Do you want a family? Kids? Normalcy? My mother married an A and I had a lousy abusive childhood. My mothered coddled and enabled my brother for decades and quite frankly contributed to his death.

Alcoholism is a family disease... If you want a family that at its center has joy and peace please block this guy out of your head.

That is my prayer for you this morning.

If your immune system were compromised, would you think it's "unethical" for your doctor to suggest you avoid sick people because it's likely to aggravate your symptoms?

I think instead of analyzing if it's appropriate for the T to say that or not, you need to focus on what was said, by a therapist. That should carry some weight. The T likely is very concerned for your wellbeing.

Hugs

Your doctor is there to help YOU not your ex or a relationship that is long over.

I certainly hope that you put as much energy and effort into researching Stockholm syndrome as you did about his alcoholism and relationships with alcoholics.

how is it unethical for your therapist to suggest that certain people, places and things are NOT healthy for you? your therapist has the best "view" of your current state of mental and emotional health and is certainly qualified to have an opinion.

I just thought that they were not supposed to tell us what to do or in this case, what not do. I understand where he is coming from though because I had no inhibitions about anything and told him things as they are.

I think he is getting frustrated with me talking about ex all the time because he asked me last week when I am going to be talking about me :( I don't know when.

Is it unethical to hound someone like this? I am sorry but there are some people on this forum who are very quick to jump on someone and others are just as happy to follow.
Actually I do not think a therapists role is to tell someone what to do. Suggest maybe....challenge us maybe - but outright tell anyone to stay or leave a partner - no.

Depends on the type of therapy and the therapist. Mine used to just get this look on her face while she tried to come up with a question that would lead me to the sane answer...after a while, I just started saying, "Wendy? You might as well tell me!"

That woman's no-nonsense no BS approach saved my life, although I didn't always like what she had to say.

Ituvia, I don't think it is unethical to inform a client or patient , in a professional opinion, what is in their best interest.

If my therapist thinks I'm walking into an emotional brushfire, I would consider it unethical for her to NOT advise me against it.

But at the end of the day, whether she advises against it or not I am still able to choose on my own whether to walk into it or not. The same goes for ltuvia.

I might be off base and certainly straighten me out if I am.

I see this same way as a medical doctor telling our A's to avoid alcohol. They are advising to stay away from something that is harmful.

We are each then given the power of free will to do as we think fit.

I would never say it's unethical for a professional (medical or mental health) to advise someone to act in their own best interest.

Just like we can’t go to AA meetings for them or read recovery books for them. We can’t get a filling at the dentist for them or get a flu shot for them, we also can’t go to therapy for them. We can’t get answers to their why’s and expect a dam thing to change in OUR lives.

what do you get out of spending your therapy time talking about your ex? for every action we choose to engage in, we get some type of payoff. what is yours? what is it you don't want to uncover about yourself, and so instead deflect by discussing someone else's issues.....?

an alcoholic doesn't have to be close to bottom to be pushing loved ones away. there can be a whole lot more digging to do.

True dat ^.

http://s8.postimg.org/3ze79qtyd/scre...3_06_52_pm.png

I know what you guys mean and I have to make a conscious effort to not talk about my ex to my T all the time but I am not able to help myself. I do realize that this is my obsession and I think I am getting slightly better but the progress is slow. There are people here and out in the world who have gone through worse and have been married for years before they left their As but to me it feels like my pain is greater. of course to each their pain will seem greater. I also recognize that there were things that were horrible and things I have suppressed that will come out in time. Despite all this, my heart years to look at him. Even after my T telling me that A exhibits personality issues and whatnot, I felt like alcohol was a major factor. It's difficult to accept even though it's so true. On my birthday last year, we went and had dinner at a posh five star hotel and he got me Moto smartwatch which I returned recently. It doesn't matter if he texts/calls on my birthday but still somehow that nagging feeling is there deep within. It's going to be three months after the break up and one month of NC absolutely.

Cut yourself some slack love, you are only three months in. It gets better with time. Believe me, it is not until you have distanced yourself from this situation for quite a while that you can really see the extent of the disfunction in the relationship. NO CONTACT, NONE is the only way you can start to heal.

As far as your therapist is concerned...
Funny thing, many moons ago when I was going to marriage counseling my therapist told me I needed to get a divorce. I was PISSED! I couldn't believe he would say something like that. I guess I was just not ready to hear it and abruptly discontinued therapy. Guess what? He was correct and I did eventually. I also started going back to him almost immediately afterward and continue to use him to this day 13 years later, monthly. Lol.

Time takes time ..... You'll be O.K. Keep posting.
Ro

It sounds like you are quite aware, which is good. I too tend to go back to the same thing over and over w/my T, which is protecting my children and the frustration of them dealing with my XAH. My T just told me that I have lost myself and now it's time to form a plan to find and work on ME. It's hard to grasp but I am letting all of this with my XAH take over my life, and that cannot happen.

It's a work in progress, and that is good enough. One moment at a time friend.

Ituvia,

Have you done any reading about Stockholm Syndrome? Sometimes I think it's a kind way for a therapist to say, c-ptsd. (Complex post traumatic stress disorder)? I was diagnosed with that. My ex most likely also had some kind of a personality disorder, but he was never officially diagnosed, so I can't state that as a fact.

Now, I can't even tell you how much time I spent walking on eggshells, trying to find just the right words so that he would not explode, trying to understand, going through each scenario over and over in my mind to see if I could have done things differently. See, I developed a one track mind, and it was all about him, him, him, him. I lost my ability to think about me. I was losing my own identity. Really, everything I thought was about him, him, him, him. Can you understand that? Do you feel like that?

I can empathize with you. When they leave and they don't tell you why, it's truly the worst feeling that you can possibly go through, especially when you are in the state that you already are in. It's like they can treat you like you walk on water one day, the next day, they can look right through you and past you, like you don't even exist. It's like your soul is crying out, "I'm right here, I exist, can you please treat me like I am a human, like I exist"? But they can't.

Did he ever love you? I'm going to say that he probably did, or he thought he did, but I don't think he is capable of loving anyone since it seems he doesn't love himself.

I was going to a therapist with my ex, she started out just being his therapist, but she had wanted to meet me. I met with her individually once, and I brought a tape with me that had a conversation between me and my ex on it. She told me that doesn't sound like the person that she meets with, that the person she sees loves me so much, doesn't want to hurt me.

Well long story, short........ my ex and I went together to see her the next time. I brought a list of 147 things that he said was wrong with me. Therapist read the list, then gave it to my ex and asked him if he agreed with the list. He read it, and said yes, except for maybe 1 or 2 things.

She turned to my ex and said to him, "I don't know why you are wasting your money seeing me, when you did not listen to anything I said", then she turned to me and said, "if you want to continue to see me while you go through your divorce just call me". She had fired my ex as her client and brought up the divorce word without us even saying that we were considering a divorce. She was one smart cookie.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that sometimes we need a shock to get out of the state of mind that we are in. To start thinking about ourselves, and to get off of that one track mind that we have developed.

I'm not going to say it's easy to go no contact, and to give up that illusion of a dream or illusion of the person that we thought loved us. It's not, but it's harder to live on that constant roller coaster that we got use to.

My advice to you is to for once in your life, think about how you want your life to be. Also remember that you can't change a person into who you want that person to be.

(((((((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))))))
amy