velma929

I was a cashier in a convenience store, and had just checked out a very young woman (just graduated high school). The next person at the register asked, "Was that Jane ___? Isn't she marrying Joe ___, the teacher?" I told her it was. She watched the very young woman back her car out of the lot and drive off. The second customer was Joe's second wife. She wished there was a way to warn Jane that the day she said "I do" Joe would be a different person, but on the other hand - Wife #2 hadn't believed Wife #1 when she tried to warn her.

LifeRecovery

LovelyKayla

There was an affair in the break up of my marriage. The affair forced me to deal with the alcohol use that I had been avoiding. One of the things I struggled with as we were separating was that I thought that my husband's behavior was coming from a place of health and well being. I believed what he told me, just like I had about his drinking

Four months after the affair had come out I had a chance run in with the ex of my husband's affair partner. He commented to me that "I would be just fine when I started to date again.....like him.

I realized then that I was judging my own healing by crazy behavior. I needed to get a different grading scale.

I had to start singing the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the other...." to keep myself sane over the next number of months. It was the only way that I got to have any sense that it was okay to be different.

NewHeart

I have received the same advice from you. My al anon group told me you would see co dependent behavior everywhere and the people's lack of ability to be alone. I understand that because that is my co dependency problem but it isn't healthy and it isn't the modeling we need when leaving a relationship.

I very much connect with what you saif about believing your husband's behavior came from a healthy place. I used to think my ex's behavior came from a healthy place even as it was driving me crazy. Now I wonder why I made it my yardstick

PeacefulWater12

Many thanks for the sharing here. Gosh, yes. A healthy yardstick to be able to discern if behaviour is healthy or not.

I found and still find this very difficult coming from such a family of generations of dysfunction. Behaviours I had thought healthy I am now discovering are not.

The latest one being I had a couple of long term friends who I never knew what I was going to find when we met/spoke on phone. Either the manically high version of them or the deep depressing considering suicide version. I found this exhausting and stressful.

It is only now a more healthy person has come into my life who is stable in mood and is the same every time we connect that I realised. This friend is comfortably in the middle. I now cannot connect with the old friends, I just cannot. My body will not let me. Every part of my body warns me to keep away!

The healthy friend is comfortable and energising to be with, the other people are not.

So I suppose my yardstick could be how my body reacts to people, places and things. I think our gut reactions do know, but our minds which have been trained by our dysfunctional upbringing tells us to over ride it.