cece1960

Beautiful boundaries...notice all of the "I". We can't control them but we sure as heck have a say in our own lives.

hello-kitty

Boundaries are for you and they should be I statements. They are not for changing someone elses behavior. They are for changing personal behavior.

Boundaries should have consequences if they are violated.

For example:

I value respect. Therefore if someone is disrespectful to me, I will remove myself from the situation immediately.

I value honesty. Therefore if I suspect someone is lying to me, I will end the discussion and walk away.

I do not want to be around people who use drugs. Therefore if I suspect drug use, I will ask you to leave or I will leave.

Drugs are illegal and I respect the law. Therefore if someone brings drugs into my home, I will ask them to leave. If they do not leave I will call the police.

Boundaries are meant to be enforced. If you draw them and then do not enforce them, it means you didn't really mean the boundariy in the first place. Therefore, only draw boundaries that you are willing to follow through on.

I wrote my boundaries down. I made sure that my ex knew what they were. He violated them. We are no longer together.

Learn2Live

Hi Vegas,

Wow, you seem stressed, to say the least. I hope you have gotten some quiet time tonight to gather your thoughts. I'd like to ask though, have you been able to recognize what you are feeling? Is it sadness, panic, fear, discomfort? Or something else?

You really have got a tiger by its tail, or a wolf by its ears, right? And man it feels like if you let go, all hell is going to break loose and THEN what will you do? But let me ask you something, Vegas, IF she really IS taking these pills, how does that affect you? What is going to change or occur if she has relapsed? What are you anxious about?

Snooping and checking up on the addicted person feels awful, doesn't it? I know, I've done it so many times just wanting to know THE TRUTH. Because then, if I knew the truth, I could make the right decisions for myself. But you know what Vegas? You don't need to know HER truth to make the right decisions for YOU. When we get in the kind of state you have gotten yourself into we keep looking at what the other person is doing, and we keep looking at the relationship, in order to decide what to do next. We want to be assured that everything is going to be okay. But Vegas, everything IS okay and everything is going to CONTINUE to be okay. I think that you have just placed yourself under so much stress and it is really wearing you down.

Do you have time to hang out with your friends? Do you have other social supports available to you that you like to spend time with, like family members or going to Al-Anon, maybe playing basketball? If not, you may want to consider making some plans for the upcoming weekend to get some distance and get your mind off what is going on with your GF.

When the ladies on SR get stressed out, I always highly recommend bubble baths. Of course men can take bubble baths too but I just am not sure that is something men enjoy doing? Perhaps there is something that you really like to do that always calms you and takes you away from it all that you could do this weekend. Whatever that is, I recommend it highly. I personally like mowing the lawn or digging holes in the dirt to get my frustrations out. For some reason it relaxes my mind.

You take care of yourself. Make sure you're eating right and if you can't sleep, try taking a calcium supplement at night. It works for me every time!

HeidiW

Every single time I suspected my husband of using, he was... I may have denied it, pretended but my gut nor the evidence never lied to me. Only I lied to myself.