I Need to Realize I Am No Longer a Friend
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: W Washington
Posts: 11,589
they will always be one bad decision away from using……..and for the rest of their lives.
thank you for this Atalose. As a former crack addict, I absolutely MUST remember that i forever remain exactly ONE bad decision away from going back......once that is embraced, life gets SO much easier. i think the addicts who are miserable in recovery and try to make everyone else miserable too, are those that cannot ACCEPT that concept.
just the other night we watched the movie Flight. i cringed to see him drinking, how he drank, when he drank, but damned if the coke use didn't have a bit of "affect" on me.....just a line or two to sober up. and that is a thought that i cannot let in.....just a line or two. i was bothered a bit but ok.....like a rash or a bunch of sand flea bites. won't KILL me, but will just irritate me for a bit.
i know hank reacted a bit too - he said, yeah it DOES sober you up quick! and there was a tiny gleam in his eye. but that is HIS stuff to manage....i had my own. i learned long ago the hard way that HIS recovery is none of my business - he'll sort it out one way or another. when i start trying to MANAGE him, his life, his choices, then i turn into a hot mess......because i'm not IN Myself, i've jumped over into HIM and the exostructure of me starts to wilt, like a plant left on a windowsill in the summer heat.
no matter what, we have to learn to breathe our own oxygen.
thank you for this Atalose. As a former crack addict, I absolutely MUST remember that i forever remain exactly ONE bad decision away from going back......once that is embraced, life gets SO much easier. i think the addicts who are miserable in recovery and try to make everyone else miserable too, are those that cannot ACCEPT that concept.
just the other night we watched the movie Flight. i cringed to see him drinking, how he drank, when he drank, but damned if the coke use didn't have a bit of "affect" on me.....just a line or two to sober up. and that is a thought that i cannot let in.....just a line or two. i was bothered a bit but ok.....like a rash or a bunch of sand flea bites. won't KILL me, but will just irritate me for a bit.
i know hank reacted a bit too - he said, yeah it DOES sober you up quick! and there was a tiny gleam in his eye. but that is HIS stuff to manage....i had my own. i learned long ago the hard way that HIS recovery is none of my business - he'll sort it out one way or another. when i start trying to MANAGE him, his life, his choices, then i turn into a hot mess......because i'm not IN Myself, i've jumped over into HIM and the exostructure of me starts to wilt, like a plant left on a windowsill in the summer heat.
no matter what, we have to learn to breathe our own oxygen.
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
Originally Posted by atalose 
We seem to convince ourselves that only the “dead plant” we continue to water in our minds, somehow is our ONLY salvation to happiness………………..so NOT true.
Thank you for this, thank you all for this thread. Just when I thought I could not learn one more thing...I do.
Hugs
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 213
Originally posted by atalose:
You understand that exactly! Thank you for saying that.
I had never known that with any other friend. I mean, I am a pretty picky person myself, I can be hard to get along with because I am used to living alone, I like things the way I like them, so I figured he was just being picky too. But when I do spend time with friends I try to cater to them, to their wants and needs because I want to be a good hostess, I want them to enjoy spending time with me as I enjoy spending time with them. And I try to be a good guest for the same reason. I have never had another friend who I felt like I was walking on eggshells around. That phrase "walking on eggshells" was one I used when thinking or talking to other friends. about the vacations I'd spent with him. Of course, they didn't know the reason he was behaving that way!
Since he was so nice to me when we first were friends, I think I kept expecting that nice guy to manifest himself every other time I spent with him. But Nice Guy disappeared along with the drug, and only came back a couple of times, and come to think of it, both those times were when he was visiting me in my home. At his place, or when we were away in a neutral place, Nice Guy was nowhere around.
It's almost like he was addicted to me, too, in a way, and if I did something that didn't fit with his expectations (whatever those were, I never knew), it was almost as if he'd paid for a drug to have a certain, expected "positive" effect and if it didn't, or if it had a negative effect, he felt he'd been ripped off. And then when he quit using, he quit using me too.
And what's so weird is that so often when men use a woman it's as a sex object. And there just wasn't any sex on the radar at all. And I did think that was odd because 99% of the time even in a platonic m-f friendship, if only one friend becomes attracted to the other, it's the male friend attracted to the female. Not that he necessarily does anything about it, or ever mentions it, but it's always sort of there somewhere in the background, you just agree not to go there. And sometimes he treated me like a "girlfriend." Just nice, small, gestures of affection. An arm around me as we walked to the car. Tucking a throw around my feet on a winter night. Wiggling my knee when telling me a joke.
Weird.
That feeling you had, the one where you learned 99 buttons not to push, then it was 100 that walking on egg shells feeling becomes a way of life when loving or living with an addict. They can be family, friends, lovers, spouses the relationship will always be based around THEIR moods, THEIR feelings, THEIR wants…..it’s really not fair nor is it a healthy kind of relationship to have with someone.
I had never known that with any other friend. I mean, I am a pretty picky person myself, I can be hard to get along with because I am used to living alone, I like things the way I like them, so I figured he was just being picky too. But when I do spend time with friends I try to cater to them, to their wants and needs because I want to be a good hostess, I want them to enjoy spending time with me as I enjoy spending time with them. And I try to be a good guest for the same reason. I have never had another friend who I felt like I was walking on eggshells around. That phrase "walking on eggshells" was one I used when thinking or talking to other friends. about the vacations I'd spent with him. Of course, they didn't know the reason he was behaving that way!
But WE feel obligated to them because they are our family or our friends. We then feel guilt when we stick up for ourselves and our feelings and wants. We feel guilt if we don’t want to be around them and tolerate their behaviors. We feel fear for them if we make the choice to do the right thing for ourselves by disengaging in the relationship, stepping back and away from their chaos. We convince ourselves that without us they’d really be in worse off shape but usually that thinking only keeps us hostage.
It's almost like he was addicted to me, too, in a way, and if I did something that didn't fit with his expectations (whatever those were, I never knew), it was almost as if he'd paid for a drug to have a certain, expected "positive" effect and if it didn't, or if it had a negative effect, he felt he'd been ripped off. And then when he quit using, he quit using me too.
And what's so weird is that so often when men use a woman it's as a sex object. And there just wasn't any sex on the radar at all. And I did think that was odd because 99% of the time even in a platonic m-f friendship, if only one friend becomes attracted to the other, it's the male friend attracted to the female. Not that he necessarily does anything about it, or ever mentions it, but it's always sort of there somewhere in the background, you just agree not to go there. And sometimes he treated me like a "girlfriend." Just nice, small, gestures of affection. An arm around me as we walked to the car. Tucking a throw around my feet on a winter night. Wiggling my knee when telling me a joke.
Weird.
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