Lara

Dear EnglishGarden and friends and members of SR. I am currently travelling and on the island where H lives and I have my other home. I have re-read all your posts and comments and advice. I have come such a long way on my journey of personal recovery from co-dependency. It has been almost 4 months since he screamed at me to ‘Get the hell of out of his life’. I have worked hard and avoided all the places I could possibly bump into him. But on Friday night I did see him. He was just the same. But for his face which is badly scarred. My heart was in my mouth. We hugged each other and I walked away. Then he arrived at my house yesterday. I could have asked him to leave. But I didn’t. I was so happy to see him. He asked if he could talk to me. I should know better since joining SR that I would hear all the ‘lines’. The manipulations. Everything but the truth. But I listened anyway. Some of the lines “You are the love of my life and I am so sorry I have hurt you’… ‘I relapsed. I couldn’t cope – so I screamed at you – to push you away – to rescue you from me’….’ I miss you so much’…’nobody understands me like you do’… ‘I love you’…’I am so ashamed’..’I am not using cocaine…just drinking too much – but sorting myself out’
He then asked if I would please ‘give him a few months’?? Not sure what he really meant?
I did not even bother to share my feelings. What is the point??? He asked me to say something. I just said that ‘I love you. Always will. But our journey together has come to an end. That until you are in serious recovery I cannot even have a friendship with you…. And that it is your life. You owe me nothing. That I wish you all the best and I pray for your recovery”
We then hugged each other and he started to cry. I did not want to let go. I wanted to hold him forever. But I pulled away, gave him a kiss on the cheek and asked him to leave.
And I am heart sore. I miss him so much. I miss my friend. I feel such sadness and such a sense of loss. Why am I so weak???

Ann

That's not "clean" Lara, and I think you know it too. You stay because you continue the codependent dance, as many of us have done in our own way. It doesn't end until we say "enough" and decide to sit this one out.

You keep putting yourself back into the situation, letting him back into your life and your heart...but he's still the same person and the outcome will always be the same.

It's up to you how long you want to continue this. You cannot stop and go at the same time.

This might be a good time to surround yourself with support at meetings and figure out why you choose a life filled with pain...because you do have choices, Lara, you always have had. You don't have to set yourself up for pain for one more day...but the choice is all yours and not dependent on what anyone does or says or promises without action.

Hugs

incitingsilence

I don’t know I read this and thought, Yeah learning.

You listened, that is all I find anyone needs to do. We don’t need to pick the truth from the lies, don’t need to drive ourselves mad trying to make it all make sense when we know inside it won’t. Hell we can’t it isn’t ours…

And with what you wrote I find that you did share your feelings when he asked you to say something. You were concise, direct and to the point. So did you mean it all inside of you, that is what you need to look at. If you did even a little then you are on the right road for yourself.

Avoiding him will not fix a damn thing, just as seeing him wont, both are inside jobs.

The heartache and pain, this is suppose to hurt, how could it not. But the pain lessens as time moves on and we continue to work on ourselves. The pain lessens when we don’t use the pain anymore as a trigger for our own insanity. The pain lessens when we stop making what they are doing or not doing be the source of our happiness…

Keep working on you.

Hugs.

Lara

Ann thank you as always for your wise words. I know absolutely he is not clean. I meant seriously that I would consider friendship IF he practiced his recovery again. And I don't know when this will happen - or if it ever will. I feel strangely detached one minute - and then not at all the next. But I am so much stronger than a few months ago. I don't dwell on him in my mind as I use to. Obviously now as i am writing to SR.... but days go by now when I don't think about him... which is HUGE for me!!!

Lara

Incintingsilence this is how I feel. It makes no difference if I see him or not. Still the same feeling. Just important I don't become embroiled in his life choices again. Obviously much easier if I am not talking to him.
Then on the other hand I feel I am in such a stronger place. That I am able to 'listen' objectively????

incitingsilence

Lara look at you, you know yourself and trust in what you know.

If you know seeing him even briefly will have you enmeshed again than obviously you need to pay attention to that.
But I know for many myself included even when not around I could still play conversation out in my head in my more sick times … UGH

Listening objectively takes a strong recovery. I can do that. I have no issue with anyone taking drugs. If that is how they choose to live then so be it, who am I am to argue. But I also have strong boundaries and those who are in my life know that as well.

It takes time, keep working on you, that is where all the answers are.

EnglishGarden

What I know about myself and my own experience, Lara, is that when I first met my exrabf, I was messed up. I simply was not healthy. I could recite the 12 Steps by heart, and I could talk a good talk. But I was still not healthy. I had much in me from my past still unresolved, that was still controlling me--consciously and unconsciously-- sending me in unhealthy directions and into irrational thinking.

I spent a long time believing that my exrabf was the one who needed to work his program, to work with a counselor, to change his ways and his thinking and his behaviors. He was so "obviously" out of control! He was such a MESS.

What I really regret is that--due to no contact--I cannot now say to him (if he were clean and sane and safe to talk with), "It was not just you. I was messed up, too." And tell him, specifically, in what ways. In what ways I was unprepared for a healthy relationship with a healthy man (had he been one). In what ways I was responsible for the experience I had with him back then. Neither of us was okay. I was not healthy. We were both messed up.

And if he came back today, I have to admit, I'd need more time. I know I'm not yet out of the woods. I have an inner critic in me that wants to sabotage me. It wants to bring me down.

As long as I have this voice inside me that criticizes and shames me, then I am not ready for relationship. I will doubt myself, I will allow myself to be controlled because I doubt myself. Because I have that harsh voice inside me.

Addicts are usually very volatile on the outside. And I think codependents, without any recovery work, are very volatile on the inside. It is a bad mix.

Lara, he needs recovery and so do you.

So I am glad you are ready to work on that.

oooopps

When we are caught up in a destructive emotion, we lose one of our greatest assets: our independence. - Dalai Lama