hopeful4

Someone once told me because I was protecting and enabling my XAH, he would never be well because I was protecting him from his own consequences. The only thing that MAYBE would ever motivate him to change. Once I let the consequences fall, there was no change. He simply found another enabler. This is why you have to want it for yourself. However, I stepped back and saved my own sanity, and turned him loose to do with his life what he will. Up to him.

courage2

this:

FionnaPerSe

I can totally relate to this. Except for the fact that I did have a need to check this gut feeling over and over again until i was certain that I wish to actually act upon it. And Maybe it was wrong, (and most certainly, I would do it much faster this time alright), but it was, I suppose, MY way and it had to be done in my own timing (for i was in it as long as i thought there is some meaning to all of that, together with some hope).

Same as with you i suppose... We can only do what we can do at any given moment. So i am trying to give myself some slack too, id say...

And i competely agree- to follow your gut instinct is now what im practicing day in day out....

hopeful4

Fiona, you are spot on. It took me a LONG time to trust my gut. It took me a long time to realize I could not fix the mess my XAH was in. The first time I came here to SR I left angry. I mean, these people were telling me I could not fix my XAH, and that is what I was coming for...LOL!

I came back later with a lot more understanding of addiction, and even more understanding of my own codependent personality. It took therapy, Celebrate Recovery, and many of the fine folks here at SR to help me along.

You are doing great. Keep digging deep, keep reflecting, and keep reaching out!

FionnaPerSe

LifeRecovery the only thing im wondering tho is why do they even need to bother with any woman then!? I mean, their real love is alcohol so why dont they stick with it fully!?

Dazedandconfus

LifeRecovery

Right but it would be less gut checking if it were to happen again right?

That is progress and health and recovery in process.

FionnaPerSe

LifeRecovery

I struggle with an eating disorder so I can't speak to alcohol but I can speak to food.

I use food to calm me, to try and control situations and to assist me in trying to not feel. I did this with over and under consuming food and exercise. I also did this with relationships. I would focus so much on those around me that I never listened to my own needs....to try to numb out and not feel my own stuff.

That did not negate my desire for connection and love. That did not negate the fact that I wanted a relationship....in many ways I thought a relationship would help to fix my relationship with food. To be honest it helped for some time.

I don't want to imply that you were not important to your ex.....just that his addiction was more important right now, and his addiction felt threatened. He is trying to bring his addiction back to an equilibrium.

I did not realize that when I numb out I numb the "bad" like sadness and anger but I also numb the "good" like joy and connection. It was not until many years later that I realized that anything that hampers connections hampers relationships. I was incapable of a true relationship with my disorder but did not realize it.

I did not participate in social activities at times so I could be with my eating disorder. I have at times not wanted to be open and vulnerable for the same reason. Isolation is a big part of my ED to me.

I tried to rationalize my own addiction and my ex's. I was trying to put normal thought process on something that could not be rationalized.

It did not feel like it to me at the time but the work you are doing is going to help.

FallenAngelina

Many active alcoholics do. And many active alcoholics have devoted hearts to one person. My XABF loves me to the moon and back and beyond. He is a bottomless pit of self recrimination, anxiety and need, but the love is sincere. Love was never the issue, but it takes a lot more than love to have a good life with someone - or at least, the kind of life that I want for myself.

In your efforts to understand your situation, be careful about making so many "they" remarks and assumptions. "They" are not all the same, just as we are not all the same.

FionnaPerSe

trailmix

I think this is just your pain talking (and I totally understand that).

Most break ups are not pretty and the lack of logic and in some cases feeling from an addict/narcissist etc is extra painful (I think).

I think Anvil said it beautifully:

FionnaPerSe

Milano58

He just found somebody else.. He may have even had her lined up and waiting. I still don't understand how she saw him booted out of his home for a drunken assault, do the AA thing briefly and is now actively drinking with a man she knows has lost everything from his drinking. There's enabling... And then there's assisted suicide.

​​​​​​I'm expecting an email from her at some point.. Hopefully warning me that he IS drinking round the kids. I hope she at least has my kids safety in mind when she kicks him to get curb after he does something gawd awful while drunk.

velma929

Years ago, in another life, I had my first long term relationship. I don't know now whether he was an alcoholic, I suspect he was, but alcohol doesn't have a monopoly on being a jerk. I shoulda left him after three months, but nooooo.....

He had a philosophy:"I always have a Plan B." I discovered, even after we were living together, that he was still dating other women. We eventually ended up in separate apartments, not together, but not exactly broken up either. Eventually I realized I was Plan B whom he saw when other women weren't available. I packed up,my toothbrush and change of clothes from his place and walked away.

In an amusing (sort of) finale, a year later, he asked me to go to his family barbecue. He had never told them we had ever had problems or broken up.

Hawkeye13

Addicts are human beings, not drinking machines.

Of course we want connection, to feel normal, and many have the hope that another person will be the "answer" to their unhappiness. Plenty of non-addicts feel the same on that last point.

Also, many people's addiction creeps up gradually and the stress in their life increases. That's what happened with me. I drank "normally" for quite a long time, and had fun with my partner who also drank normally.

A caregiving crisis with my mother, job stress, and health issues with my spouse led to me choosing to escape increasingly into a bottle.
My "real love" wasn't alcohol: It was the feeling of freedom, numbness, and temporary escape from a life that had become nearly unbearable for me.

There is no generalization one can make about "addicts" anymore than "families and friends of addicts".

Each story is unique. I do understand that getting into a relationship with someone when you are already deep into late-stage alcoholism is a different situation, for example.

But many addicts truly are in denial of the extent of their issue, and they always hope that the new love, the new job, the new place will help them heal. Until they look inwards and deal with their core issues, they cause huge destruction to themselves and those around them.

My mom didn't set out to wound me with her drinking, but she did.
I didn't mean to hurt my spouse as my addiction grew, but I did.
I am married over 25 years now, and we have grown together--that was only possible because I owned my issues and got to work fixing myself.

I am grateful I have my relationship and the opportunity to learn from addiction at this point. I hope your addict finds healing too someday.

FionnaPerSe

HardLessons

Don't forget our addicts are using powerful drugs on a daily basis & probably have been doing so for many years. Their brains do not function like ours. They do not feel pain like we do. Their lives have been filled with crazy traumatic events - yet they just keep on chasing their addictions. They aren't like us.

It doesn't mean they don't love us. Their brains are wired differently than ours. They love us as long as we are part of their solution.

When we cross over to where we become a constant problem for them - where we no longer are constantly cleaning up their mess & taking care of them - they don't have much use for us. We become nothing but a major problem for them.

We fall in love with an addict. The relationship we have with them is far from normal. Our addicts are not (or rarely) normal. Over time, we also become very abnormal.

I had to take off my rose colored glasses - step back about a 1000 feet and take a good hard realistic look at my relationship. Its not easy to do.

Our addicts just are exactly what they are.

PS this is a very good thread with tons of great wisdom.

Amaranth

I'm revisiting the original question#

do they think about us at all?

I've been thinking about a good friend of mine who suffered years of drug addiction. My husband and I were very close with him and his then wife. She suffered for about 10 years as a result of his addictions. Getting him well consumed her and she paid him through rehab at least twice. It was a seriously major part of her life. She was totally traumatised and later developed some bizarre OCD type behaviours.

Eventually he did get clean about 12 years ago and has remained so. I am still good friends with him (despite the pain and chaos he caused in my life) On getting clean he wrote a book about his experiences. It was something he needed to do and it was quite successful. He even toured it as a stage show and took it into prisons. It's hard to read, pretty graphic and seemingly very honest.

Seemingly? I would have missed that word out until last week. After reading this thread I went back and re read some of my friend's book. What I realised was that his wife hardly gets a mention. He was everything in her life. It seems she was only a very small part of his. His book about recovery, just like his addiction, was all about him. It's not that he doesn't care about other people, he does and he does a lot of voluntary work with addicts, he's a good person. It just seems to me that he never really thought about his wife and how his behaviour affected her. It just didn't seem to come up in his very personal process.

My husband says things to me sometimes that feel weird, like he's trying to say I chose to be in the position I'm in and so he has no sympathy for me. He doesn't actually say that but that is how I sometimes feel. Things like "you knew I was an addict when you married me" (therefore I should put up with all sorts of foul behaviours because I knew what I was getting myself into?) and "You made yourself homeless" (I moved out for what I thought would be a couple of weeks because of his abuse.)

So what am I saying? Do addicts ever believe they "do" anything to anyone or do they think we do it to ourselves because we choose to be there?

So do they think about us at all? Maybe they squeeze a bit of that in in between thinking about themselves.

And equally, maybe us codies need to think less about the addict and more about ourselves.

FallenAngelina

Yes - and this includes the toxic twins of blame & resentment. We are all volunteers.