Text Messaging - Al-Anon Family Group

Loupiness · ~*Service Worker*~

Text Messaging

Tiger2006 · ~*Service Worker*~

I would recommend that you set a private appt with the therapist and him and ask how to handle this. These are definately empty promises. You're right to be upset.

david62 · ~*Service Worker*~

Hi (((Lou))))

When my ex first got into AA she used to give me some of that talk too. And I just didn't buy it either. I will say that looking back now, whether the sentiments were geniune or not doesnt really matter at that point. I am reminded of the phrase "fake it til you make it" smile

. When I started in Al-Anon, I heard a speaker at a conference talking about forgiving and getting rid of resentments. He said that one thing he did was pray for his "problem person". Pray that they have every wonderful thing in their life that I wanted for mine. Now believe me sister, that was hard! But I was willing to try anything..so I did. In the beginning it really was false and ingenuine. With repetition and personal growth through working the program the prayer started being real.

I am proud of you for acknowledging how what he says affects you however. It doesn't matter what his objectives are if getting those kinds of messages upset you...then he needs to stop sending them for now...or perhaps you could just not read them at all...just delete them. Though I understand with children involved the need to communicate on some level.

I like Tiger's suggestion too!

Take care of you Lou, love ya!!!

Yours Still in Recovery,

David

serendipity · ~*Service Worker*~

I would suggest that your ex AH has problems above and beyond his addictions. It sounds like he is using the program, learning the lanugage, the phrases and using them to manipulate and punish. He sounds at the least like a pompous ass and the worst like a Narcassist. Either way, pride cometh before the fall. What I found really just wrong in his text was him telling you that he knows he is continuing to cause pain but doing nothing to stop that and him TELLING you that you will be fine? Who is this guy? GOD? Who is he to tell you anything about yourself and what you will or will not be? He is so high up he can bestow love into your heart with his words of apology. And that's it. He said he was sorry, so get over it already why don't you, geeze! Maybe he should start praying for himself and his kids. It's all about him Lou, that's for sure. When he is really sorry, really in the program he will show you he is sorry. He will be a changed person. What he is now is just another self-centered A in early sobriety. Nothing unusual with his feeble attempts at control. I agree, do not respond but do document and keep any and all messages he sends you from now on. You never know if it will be needed in the future.

barisax · Senior Member

Continuing to create? LOL... yeah, it's kinda difficult to make amends for something you're still doing.

Sometimes it's better to say nothing - you seem to have figured that out, he hasn't.

Not during, but shortly after my divorce I pretty much told my X that we really didn't have anything to talk about. I suggested a 5 year moratorium on any further attempts at a post-mortem on the relationship, amends, or anything else, and if we communicated at all, it should just be business or anything related to the (grown) kids we'd need to discuss. She seemed totally ok with that, especially since one of the biggest reasons she gave for wanting out was that she was sick of hearing me talk... LOL.

The 5 years came and went, and by that time anything there was to discuss was no longer very important. After 7 years, we had something of a chance encounter. Oddly enough, I had been thinking of calling her. Called my daughter about something else, and the X answered the phone - I didn't even know she was in town. My first impulse was to cancel my plans to meet daughter but I went ahead because of my recent instincts to contact the x. We ended up having a very pleasant conversation - literally, it's the only time since we split up where we just talked about what we had been up to in life - more like friends would do. It wasn't the beginning of anything larger, but it did feel more like a true amends than any of the stuff we spat back and forth at each other.

Seems like about once a year, I'll hear from her in an email - often with a lead-in about business (we are in the same line of work), but she'll drop in a few other things. Then I reply, and don't hear from her for another year...

My current girlfriend has never met my X, although with all of us living in the same town once again, it's bound to happen. I'm not the slightest bit concerned... certainly nothing my X could possibly say about me would have any impact on my current relationship, and she wouldn't bother anyway. We're most likely to bump into her while doing something with the kids, in which case the larger context is a lot more comfortable... being in the same room with the x and 8 other people is a whole lot different from being alone with her.

What I have noticed about the X is that whenever I'm involved in any display of affection in her presence - hugging daughter, granddaughter, etc... she looks mighty uncomfortable. Good! biggrin

I wonder how she'd feel to see me with my current girlfriend...

Barisax

maz · Newbie

I got a lovely flowery message from my A on new years eve, apologising for all the hurt and pain he had caused in 2007 and promising me a sober husband and a brighter 2008. I saved it because it really was lovely. Guess what? He has been drunk since last Sunday. So I sent his text back to him!! Maybe that was childish but it made me feel better!

ddub · ~*Service Worker*~

Well this is an eye opener!! I don't consider myself to be a stupid person but I have been had and it took awhile for all of your posts to sink in to this thick head.

I have a few of AH's notes to me from the past that did warm my heart and I carried them in my purse as they were few and far between. Now I see how they were another way to control without facing our emotional issues. A band-aid to put more "water under the bridge".......... my bridge is in need of repairs for all the water under the bridge, even flooding the bridge at times so it would not pass any safety inspection. I better get off this !@#$ bridge before it falls and is swept into the water too.

I keep digging up more things in denial and I am so angry at myself for walking around for so long with the word "sucker" on my forehead. I will be kind to myself soon, but right now I feel the fool - thanks for enlightenment. This seems to be a humbling day.

Now, I understand Lou. I, at first, thought that maybe a while from now you would appreciate his sentiments as I was suckered in still. I am glad so many could see that it is what it is. Finally, I get it, I hear you and it sucks!! I like barisax's plan.

hugs, ddub

-- Edited by ddub at 15:06, 2008-01-17

barisax · Senior Member

ddub wrote:

I have a few of AH's notes to me from the past that did warm my heart and I carried them in my purse as they were few and far between.

I'm a sentimental person at heart. Strange as it may seem, I still have a small number of little things like that from the x. A little note or trinket. They are put away in a safe place. I don't keep them to hold onto her, or the past - just as a memory of how they made me feel at the time. And the way I felt at the time was that they were sincere expressions of love and affection on her part. And they were few and far between. Fewer and farther as time went on. The most precious of these is the last one - and I probably can't explain to another person why it's precious, and I've never tried. It reminds me that in spite of all the rhetoric since, there was a moment, a time, when I was appreciated and acknowledged.

I am quite certain my X has kept no mementos from me. In fact, it's quite likely that any mementos from me to her that still exist are in my posession somewhere... she left with almost nothing, I think a deliberate statement that she wanted to keep nothing from "us".

So why do I keep the stuff? Because it belongs to me. My feelings in that relationship were real. If I were to just trash everything, I'd be following my X in her belief that it was all "sham". Perhaps it was to her; it wasn't to me. I don't think that makes me a sucker. I sure did for a long time though. But my feelings, my memories belong to me. I refuse to give my X the power to invalidate a decade of my life just because she said so. I was there, it all happened - whether she believes it or not. I don't need her to go on with my life, nor do I need her to honor the memory of the love... MY love... that was.

I was not ready to enter into another relationship until I knew in my heart the truth of the past, and my part in it. Preparing myself to love again involved a broom, a dustpan, and some forgiveness of myself. It didn't involve an eraser.

"We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it" - the AA 9th Step Promises

Barisax

-- Edited by barisax at 15:42, 2008-01-17

maresie · ~*Service Worker*~

The A I was with and many many many people in my life minimize a lot of my issues. I have had to learn over many years of smashing my head agains the wall to stop begging them to hear me. If someone is a huge trigger for me I put lots of boundaries in there. I avoid them. No need to be "emotionally incontinent". I make a huge point not to be in touch with anyone who knows the A. I do not need to know what he is "doing". I care but to hear he is having a whale of a time or a difficult time is a triggers for me. Expecting someone who is an addict to be empathic is not a good idea.

I had a friend who kept telling me to get rid of my pets. The suggestion upset me enormously. I put a lot of distance in that friendship. I do not "invite" him into my life much anymore. That helped. I found that setting my boundaries helped me. I could tell people who upset me to stop it for ever more. In the end I had to stop it, I set boundaries, I avoided them, I did not invite them into my life. I did not keep on with the same message to them for some reason that seemed to invite them to do it more.

I told the A many many many many times during the course of our relationship what his behavior, actions did for me. I know I told him enough times he does not need to hear it again. He didn't respond. I do not need to go looking for something that isn't there.

I think this issue has been very difficult for me. I think "boundary" day in day out.

Maresie.

round3 · Senior Member

Ddub - Don't feel alone. Gosh - I was feeling a little touched by the text sent by Lou's ah. Geez....I'm a bozo, huh? I, too, carry around a letter that I got some time back from my exBF A. It's not important what it said, but suffice it to say that it said some things that I had wanted to hear from him for YEARS (since our nasty, vile breakup 11 years ago). The note felt good.....and it felt especially good because he wrote it without an ulterior motive (he was in a long-term relationship, and overseas at the time)..so there was nothing he wanted from me.

I also LOVE what Barisax said about his mementos.
_______________________________________
"I am quite certain my X has kept no mementos from me. In fact, it's quite likely that any mementos from me to her that still exist are in my posession somewhere... she left with almost nothing, I think a deliberate statement that she wanted to keep nothing from "us".

So why do I keep the stuff? Because it belongs to me. My feelings in that relationship were real. If I were to just trash everything, I'd be following my X in her belief that it was all "sham". Perhaps it was to her; it wasn't to me. I don't think that makes me a sucker. I sure did for a long time though. But my feelings, my memories belong to me. I refuse to give my X the power to invalidate a decade of my life just because she said so. I was there, it all happened - whether she believes it or not. I don't need her to go on with my life, nor do I need her to honor the memory of the love... MY love... that was."
_________________________________________

Those could have been my words VERBATIM. When my A and I broke up 11 years ago (the time before this most recent breakup), it was because of his extremely active alcoholism, and things were so horrible that I nearly lost all of my sanity (I lost a good bit of it, but held on to just enough to keep me out of the psyche ward!). Anyway - when he broke it off with me, I told him I wanted all of the letters back that I had written him (I wrote him volumes of letters while he was in rehab). He refused. So when he left his apartment one night (to be with her), I let myself in his apartment and retrieved all of my letters. I later explained to him that those letters were me spilling my heart and soul out to someone I loved. The person he became was someone else, and I didn't want that person to have posession of them.

Last year when we re-ignited our relationship, he brought those letters up again. He hadn't forgotten them, but was curious why I hadn't burned them. I had to explain (once again) that those represented a very real part of my life, and my very real feelings of love. That relationship was part of who I am. Not to be erased. Not sure if he EVER got it.

-- Edited by round3 at 19:36, 2008-01-17

carolinagirl · ~*Service Worker*~

I sometimes reply to emails/texts on here and then it feels like I got it out even though he never reads it. Although... you never know do you? I think silence is the best response. They usually get riled up and then just go away eventually. It's ok for you to be angry, you wouldn't be human to not be angry in this situation given all the crap he's put you through. My A tries to talk the talk, he used to say my sponsor said...... which was just crap manipulation. He tried the he's better and I'm sick angle, I just quit talking to him and when he pulled it I would just use it as another example to myself of what a sick ahole he is and how I don't ever want to be there again! I don't know if you're there yet. It's amazing how much we can take. Now I think hey, I only get one life, why waste it being miserable?

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