The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I've been reading this board all morning and I feel compelled to share what is going on with my BF who has been sober for 5 years.
He has been distant and removed lately and i confronted him about it last weekend. He basically said he was scared and didnt know how to feel. but we didnt break up, instead, we spent the whole weekend together doing nothing which is something we never do (because he cant sit still, mostly). but i had a lovely time. he came over again on tuesday (2 days later) and i helped him upload a picture that he'd had taken at work to his twitter account. he was so wrapped up in it that i wondered later if he would have added it to his online dating profile that he'd had when we first started dating. i have snooped enough to know that he hasnt looked at that profile while we've been seeing each other, but as of this week he added his new pic and has been logging in.
i dont know if he is really going to do anything with it or if this is just his fear response to me almost ending it or if this is some narcissist thing about women paying attention to him.
but now i'm obsessed and i cant stop torturing myself with looking to see if hes logged in. and i dont know how to proceed. do i confront him? i am so hurt, when i really want to be angry... i need advice on how to proceed... any thoughts?
I don't know the answer, bluerose (welcome, btw!) but I'm interested in the responses because my recovering XABF did much the same thing by keeping his online dating profile active (and continuing to correspond with women on the site) for the first 3 or 4 months that we were together.
I finally told him that I was getting mixed messages about the degree of his commitment to our relationship since he seemed to be open to meeting someone else, and he responded by getting angry and saying, "Don't fence me in!"
Anyway, the overall feeling that I got (along with some other behaviours of his) was that he liked getting attention from other women, plus wanted to keep me a bit insecure.
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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could... Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Emerson
Blue, Welcome to MIP. Glad you found us. You may not like my response so take what you like and leave the rest. I am old-school Al-anon and advice is not something I give out. In Al-anon we are supposed to share our experience, strength and hope and not give out advice.
From what I read it seems you are putting a lot of focus on him. What about you? If you are busy checking up on him, looking after him and trying to figure out what he is doing then who is taking care of you? You should be looking after you.
I have found that when I snoop it never leads me to anything good and jumping to conclusions isn't good for me either. It means I am trying to get in someone else's head and not in my own where I belong. And most of the time I am wrong so it was a total waste of time to try and figure out what the other person was doign to begin with. I also need to take a good long look at me and see what I am allowing myself to obsess about another person.
Your BF may or may not be up to no good, but he can do something without your knowledge. Only he knows why he is doing what he is doing.
If you did comfornt him how would he react to your snooping? Has the trust be viloated before? Can you trust him? Only you know the answers and only you need to know the answers.
Keep coming back. Have you been to Al-anon before? Trying meetings sounds like a good idea to me. Take care of you.
Yours in recovery, Mandy
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"We are not punished for our unforgiveness, we are punished by it" Jim Stovall
Thank you for the replies, this is what i needed to hear....
i am putting a lot of the focus on him and i have been lied to and cheated on in the past, so trust and fear are very present for me. i really do try to stay out of his way in terms of what he's doing and why, but i am so scared that i will be hurt and lied to again.
i dont imagine he'd be thrilled with my snooping, though in fairness, it is a public site that he told me he had a profile on originally. and i have unfortunately learned 'where there's smoke there's fire' and i am deeply scared that he will cheat on me because he's done that in the past to other women. i guess he could cheat without doing it online, too, but when it's out there in such a way, i dont know how to not have deep resentments about it.
i go to meetings yes, but i dont have a sponsor, so i end up sharing without much feedback.
which is why im so grateful for your response (and anyone else who has two cents).
i did a lot of snooping in the last relationship with the ex A. I didn't look at his email but his phone, tried to track where he was. I knew he lied all the time so what was the point?
I was trying to control the uncontrollable. I was also trying to get something from someone who didn't have much to give.
I can fall into that hole easily. I can expect respect from people who have no boundaries. I do have boundaries around them and patrol them carefully but respect from someone who has none for themselves, I don't think that's likely.
If you can dive into al anon I sat on the sidelines for a long long time. I certainly would not of thought of getting a sponsor (what for I had no hope no one would understand me let alone support me).
My life is far from easy. I have tremendous challenges but they are all workable with the steps and a program.
You don't say how long you've been together, but I'm guessing that it's long enough to have an exclusivity commitment? Because if not, that's a different situation.
My experience is that when I wanted to know why my ex was doing something, it's because I was looking for reasons to give him a free pass for damaging actions that hurt me. The reason I was looking to give him a free pass was that I didn't want to break up with him, whatever the truth was. I'm a master at denying reality and staying in situations that aren't good for me, and "explaining away" other people's actions (even when they weren't trying to explain them away themselves) was my way of doing it.
I think really that it doesn't matter why they do damaging things, any more than why they drink. I'm not talking about little things that we might misinterpret, like why they forgot how we like our coffee or why they didn't want to go to the barbecue. That's the kind of thing where it's always helped me assume good will. But things like canceling plans repeatedly, refusing to talk about commitment, posting on dating sites, lots of attention to other women... In those cases, I would ask them and sometimes they would "explain," and the behavior would go on. When someone finally said to me, "Look at their actions, not their words," it was so helpful. I was looking at the words, not at the actions. And the actions stayed the same, and I stayed in the relationship. Ouch.
The bottom line is: how do his actions sit with you?
Another thing I'm really good at is accepting the kind of excuse: "If you hadn't ---, then I wouldn't have to ----." As if every harmful action on their part is an inevitable result of something I did, in other words my fault. Even if I did twenty horrible things in the relationship, it's up to him as to whether to respond healthily or unhealthily. We can't make them choose unhealthy options any more than we can make them choose healthy ones.
It's not healthy or normal to feel anxious and distrustful in a relationship. I wish I had known that a long time ago. Hugs to you.
-- Edited by Mattie on Monday 10th of May 2010 04:41:47 PM
Blue, You found a great place for feedback lol if you want it you got it here :).
Maybe if you haven't found the one to be your sponsor you can ask someone to be a temporary sponsor. Cosmos started a really great thread about finding a sponsor. I believe it is his most recent thread if you want to check that out.
We also have a chatroom open 24/7 and that is another good spot to just chat with al-anoners :). I hope you find your sponsor soon, I would be lost without mine.
Yours in recovery, Mandy
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"We are not punished for our unforgiveness, we are punished by it" Jim Stovall
I like the way Mandy put it. It is true. Once we have a strong foundation of our own, we don't even think about snooping.
My thing has always been if you want to be with me great, if you don't then go. Or these are my boundaries, if you choose to not respect them, I feel you are choosing you don't want a relationship with me.
When AH used to threaten to leave I would say there is the door. I meant it too. I don't want anyone staying with me unless they want to. Does not mean it does not hurt if they do leave, but yet it is lots easier when you have a foundation.
In a relationship I feel we should be able to say what we think, ask questions etc.
Maybe you could share with your boyfriend your boundaries. Possibly say you were goofing around and saw he had updated his profile on that site. For the fact you are in a relationship and you are curious.
It is my experience the friendship part of a relationship is always first and the most important. So for me I want to be able to be open and ask what I need to. And the other person is free to ask me too.
Geez I never snooped but sadly things would show up. )o: vodka bottles in the strangest places, needles in a sock stuck somewhere.
I hope you will come back and find some comfort here. It can get so much better!
Like everything else that the A does, we have to detach, detach, detach.....
It will all be revealed if he is up to something, in its time. I am parted from the Xah, but even when we were together, if I was curious or wondering what he was up too, that means I wasn't doing for myself.
I have a saying and it worked for me "Stay in my own lane". Just because we are in a relationship, it doesnt mean we are privy to everything. Everyone has free will.
Keep coming back and stick with your Alanon meetings. It works when you work it. Luv, Bettina
This is going to sound a bit different than the others.
There is snooping and then there is protecting yourself. I have done both.
I had a gut feeling one time that something was up. Asked the A and got "Oh no, everything is fine." I listened to my gut, installed a keylogger on my daughter's computer that he used occassionally, and found out he was pursuing someone. It felt gross, I fessed up immediately - and my cowardess in my approach enabled him to turn the whole thing around to be my fault. I have a RIGHT to know if someone I am intimate with is doing something that will risk my life. And it was my computer. I feel I did nothing wrong. How I handled it was a whole different story. I let him turn it around on me when I should have kicked his fanny out the door.
Then there is the snooping - or what it REALLY is, obsessing. That is where, in my opinion, it becomes unhealthy. You can FEEL it, it eats away at you. And it seems when I am in that mode there is no conviction anyway - even if I did find anything - I am so whacked out that I am not going to take care of myself when I find something anyway!
We took a year plus off. We are back together. If I get that gut feeling again, I will have no problem asking for access. All he has to do is hand me his phone. And I would offer the same if he asked for it. The internet has put a very strange facet into relationships and it is way to easy to be dishonest. I prefer to follow my gut. Their actions, their body language, we see it even if we don't want to admit it. I will never ignore it again - but I hope I also will never let it consume me. So - I guess it is a mix of what was said here. Take care of yourself (be aware) and detach (don't obsess).
Just my take.
Tricia
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To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
My gut was telling me my RABF was up to something. I went into the relationship with him with full trust but something then was bugging me. I also installed a keylogger and got into his email and he was emailing and flirting with other women and also telling his sister he liked a girl he met in AA.
I was in SHOCK! Oh yeah, he talked his way out of it. And the flirting with the email women was all innocent but he was still doing it. And the girl in AA, he said we had broke up at the time, and he was right
Bottom line, he lied, and since, I lost total trust in him.
I am a believer in "Watch the actions not their words" but I would hate for others to do that with me since I have actions that some may interpret the wrong way and if asked, I will ALWAYS tell the truth.
People can be more than their actions. It's all about perception sometimes.
You may always tell the truth and i may always tell the truth but the addict never will. Sometimes i feel like some of the habits picked up while using stay with them even when they are sober. I always thought that if i could get my bf sober all the other stupid things he does would go away..i was dead wrong!!! I don't get it...what is there to lie about when you are sober and not doing anything wrong??
