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Wow, what a week.. !! I have rode this emotional rollercoaster until I am ready to puke.. It started Tuesday when I saw a friend of my husbands ( a female ) and realized that she was out on our boat. I lost it had an anxiety attack so bad my daughter was going to call 911. I finally got myself together and called my husband ( he doesnt live at home as of 45 days ago ) . He said yes there was a group partying on the boat.. I just said I cant do this anymore I am filing for a divorce. That was my story and I was ready to get off.. Until Saturday, we talked had lunch and even made love. I told him I didnt want a divorce I wanted us to work on our marriage. We talked a few times yesterday and today and I wrote him a letter and sent it with his Fathers Day gift. I apologized for my bad behavior, for all the things that I did wrong in our marriage and ask him to choose us. Our family, I talked about the cross roads of life and which road to go down..
Now, I just spoke with him and he says he is confused. He doesnt know what he wants. Cant understand me at all one minute I say divorce the next I say lets work on it. I dont understand myself.. !! What am I crazy ?? What has changed ? NOTHING,... What is going on here ?? Why am I doing the things that I am doing ? AH !!! I am screaming inside and yet nobody can hear me. I am crying inside yet nobody sees me, I am lonely, scared, sad, mad, and desperate.. Am I loosing it ? I think I may be and that makes me more scared. Help!!
you are not crazy. That is my opinion. But I have been where you are so, if you're crazy so am I. I was reacting to a situation that the A created. When it comes out of left field like that with no warning how would you expect to react? If this were happening to a friend what would you tell her? how would you comfort her? now do that to yourself. This might be a golden oppurtunity to walk away with good communication. Or it might be an oppurtunity to grow together and stronger. If you are hurt and confused you don't have to make any decision. just take care of you.
Woman are territorial and we know that someone else is on our territory we want it back. The thing is, once you have it back will you really want it??? Can you start journaling? This way it might help you sort things out. You can refer back to it when you feel something and see what your triggers are and what makes you feel the things you feel. Here's something else I heard that rings true......"woman need emotions to feel sexual and men need sex to feel emotions". Sounds like you need to think more about all of this to figure out what you really want. Are you just upset because now you know he can have a functional life without you in it? Maybe that made you mad? It's hard to let go of something that was yours. That's the hardest part for me. I know my ah is a screw up but he's MY screw up. Eventually you will have had enough and not care that he has a functional life outside from you. Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm just trying to help and give you things to think about. ;) Good luck sweets. We are here for you. I hope you figure things out, take care of yourself.
of course you have two or more different feelings. Our A's are two completely different people.
We are in love with our A's, very much so.Yet they have a disease that turns them into someone we would never marry or give a second look.
I have not seen my A for almost a year now. I grieve for him every day. I long for him.
Then I will try to fix something he made or whatever and cuss the A disease who made him do it wrong.Or I will be doing something very hard for me to do, and cuss the disease becuz my A is not here to do it or help me.
I will go to sleep and dream of him. These days it is the horrible part of him.
It is no wonder you cannot understand yourself. We are expected to cont. on like nothing has changed, yet who is this man I loved who loved me, that is abusing me, spending all the money, lieing, getting dui's has no respect, is gross?
So dear, you look at YOU. Get yourself strong. I invite you to think about what YOU want, what you need. I know it is horrible to think that the d disease is taking OUR husbands into situations where other women may be.
I feel nothing about the woman my A lives with. I know she means nothing to him. I know the disease is using her. I know he is not cheating. Not his style. It would disgust him to be with her.
His goal is to be able to use, she has very strong meds for cancer, so.....
Anyway sending you a hug of understanding. I know it hurts horrible. Now I understand what Cher's mom in "Moonstruck" meant when she was sad that Cher loved nicolas cage.
Loving someone sets us up to be horribly hurt, more hurt than anything else in the world..
I've got to ask, were you doing part of your 9th step when you were apologizing for your "bad behavior"? Please tell me that you'd worked all 8 steps before that with a sponsor.
The reason I say this is because we tend to take on a lot more guilt than we need to. We have to balance it with what was really going on during that time. And it is like giving an Active A ammunition when you apologize for everything -- they tend to take as "Aha! I knew I was right."
You aren't nuts, you are just reacting to a whole bunch of stuff and hoping you can go to him to find a bit of calm.....I know, they aren't the best place to find calmness, lol, but they are familiar and we want them to steady us. Only they can't even steady themselves.
You may honestly be confusing him -- it's a confusing time. Learning to get your needs met in a different way is hard, it's so easy to go back to the old familiar ways. Right now, just take it one day at a time. Try to get comfortable with your feelings....even feeling the painful ones.
I think you know too that you can't ask him to choose. Right now it's more about you than it is about him. Use this time to find out what it is that Tammy needs, wants, and likes. What are the thing you enjoy. How are you living your life? (for me these were questions I had to search for the answers to)
I agree with everything Luna posted--especially about essentially doing a 9th step without a sponsor and without working the first 8 steps. My sponsor was able to show me how I took far to much on myself regarding the failures in my marriage to the AH--just as she was able to help me see where I wasn't facing up to some of the things that I actually did owe my AH as an amends.
Regarding all of the questions that you are asking yourself, you are not crazy. I think that they are to be expected in the situation in which you are living. I know that in my experience, when I put the focus on my AH instead of myself, I can get swept back into the insanity, the denial, obsessive questioning and analyzing and last, but by no means least, the hopelessness. Then, when you add sex into the mix, it is easy to believe that the world is spinning off of its axis. That false sense of real intimacy, that really only lasts a short time, is very powerful and can play games of its own with our heads!!
When I find myself falling back into my old behaviors, I have to remind myself that it is not about the A, it is about me, what I need--physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. The A can't give me the answers to the questions that I have, and he certainly could not while he was active (and I wrote a letter too, a letter that he told me was merely an attack on him instead of a letter in which I poured my heart out to him, begging him to pick me and to live a happy life together).
What I have learned after working the Steps is that the answers have to come from me--with the help of my Higher Power. The stronger my connection with him, the less I am swayed back and forth by the power of this disease. When I lose that connection, I lose my focus on myself and seem to be much more vulnerable to all of the Aisms.
Stay strong and stay close to your Higher Power.
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Do not be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will look after itself. The Bible, from Courage to Change, p.138
Aloha Tammy...yep compared to when I use to do that stuff it pretty well defines crazy!!
It's okay to admit to being crazy because honesty works best in our program and admitting to it keeps me from wading around in the river called "De Nile".
Fortunately for us we have the 2nd step; "Came to believe that a Power GREATER THAN OURSELF could restore us to sanity." So go latch on to the HP you understand and "Let go and let God."
When I was using my will and power and control tactics I did the very same things you stated and more. I tried to manipulate and control with gifts, dinners, talks (pleading for compassion and understanding from a drunk is not talks) threats of divorce, suicide, murder, legal action, sexual gymnastics, promises and much more. The alcoholic was always confused because of the drinking and alcoholic lifestyle and I confused her more. I was in danger or harming myself and everyone and everything around me; just ask my dog who was glad to go to another home.
It can happen!!
I got the definition for sanity in this program and I use it to measure whether I am flirting with fairies on a yellow brick road, making a decision whether to use an umbrella or stay indoors while it is storming, eat when I am hungry, drink when I am parched, figure out what day of the week, month or year it is up to and including guiding a sponsee thru the paces of this program. "Sanity is the progressive and orderly process of thought." If I am on that I can trust my self to not be a threat to my HP, myself, my family and society and able to take care of some of the stuff on my agenda for the day (program). When I am not on that I put myself in a safe place and act like a member of a can of mixed nuts until I take 3 to 4 seconds break, reach out for my HP and say, "I'm done now, can I go outside to play?"
Insanity is temporary for those who work this spiritual program...and a choice.
The metaphor for my insane character reads like the recipe for a fruitcake. And yet the second step allows me to change with a POWER GREATER THAN Jerry F. How awesome.
Sponsors help! Meetings help! Slogans help! Knowing when I am and am not insane helps! Having another option and the willingness and courage to change helps! Being in this program helps best!
(((((hugs))))) work better than a strait jacket. Don't you agree?
I think your reactions are reactions normal of a person who has been deeply affected by A'ism. Its the emotional rollercoaster of living in fear, fear of being abandoned, fear of relapse, fear of infidelity. Lots and lots of fears. Then there is anger, resentment, depression, all rolled into one. It is maddened isn't it and yes I have felt crazy myself. Some days I can say o.k. I'm having a crazy moment like before. I can catch myself now and see when those fears come over me. I start projecting on those fears and before I know it, I have my whole life of misery mapped out in my head and I'm feeling all the feelings of it as if it were the real present. I snap back into reality and have to say a prayer because its not reality, its my mind and those fears playing tricks on me.
My AH played this cat and mouse game for a long time, he still wants to play the game when he gets angry. I just don't play anymore. I don't believe the threats and even though he still wants to make quick decisions based on fleeting feelings, I have to step back before I make a decision. I have to allow myself to take time and let the initial reactive feelings pass because usually underneath those first initial feelings of shock, fear, disbelief, whatever, is how I truly feel about something. Yes it takes me longer to make a big decision but then what race am I running here? It's my life and I just can't continue to make quick decisions based on a reaction to my A anymore. Take some time for you, get to a quiet place, do whatever you like to do to center yourself, a meeting, your sponser, whatever you need to get underneath to the real feelings you have. You control your decisions and its not a choice or decision for your life until you say it is, does it matter if you choose in 10 seconds or 10 days?
As always, take what you like and leave the rest. Wishing you a peaceful day.
Hugs, Twinmom~
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"The people who don't mind matter and the people who mind, don't matter". (Dr. Seuss)
