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Hi All -
Lying in bed, miserable, haven't reached out to anyone in days - so thought I'd give this a shot. I've been through so many medical tests and doctors' appointments this week... And what am I lying here OBSESSING about? Ex-AF... Endlessly. It won't stop.
I've tried listening to my Al Anon audiobook, reading old posts on here, trying to get lost in a movie... But the thought of him replacing me and no longer loving me is too much. It's destroying me, mentally/emotionally.
My mind is telling me he will get well and give our love and our life to this new random girl. Oh - what did I find out? She is even younger than I am. I am 26... He is 36... She is literally 24. What??? I'm so terrified and sad.
Appreciate all of you and your ESH.
Wait... He posted a pic of her (the new girl) and his best friend online... He barely EVER posts personal pics... Just for business. I threw up upon seeing it. What does this mean??? Is it just like I never f***ing existed? I can't dea with this. How could I?
Jaclyn, I'm so sorry you're going through this. Being sick means you have even more time to dwell on sadness, but I imagine that everyone on these boards knows what it's like to have someone they can't evict from their mind.
My experience is this. I was just as you were, devastated that my A didn't want me, completely distraught and feeling overwhelmed. I had read all kinds of good advice but it hardly made a dent on the pain I was feeling. So I began wondering why my pain was so strong. Objectively speaking, my A was not the most staggerling wonderful, principled, upright, kind man in the world. I mean, if he had been so kind, why had he left me like this? That fact alone made him kind of a big jerk. So I started to wonder why I still felt this overwhelming attachment to someone who could act like a big jerk.
I did a lot of reading and talking to wise people. What I discovered is that there are several reasons this kind of attachment kicks in. One is sheer survival - our brains think our survival is at stake. Our first experience of attachment comes when we are tiny kids. If we're walking through a store or a park and we lose our mother, we're terrified. We have no way of knowing how to find her, and we have no capacity to survive on our own. Back hundreds or thousands of years ago, for most of human history, being separated from our parents could very realistically have meant death. It feels like a life-threatening experience because it was. As little kids, when we lose our primary attachment, we are designed to go into terror at this prospect, into the I-will-do-anything-to-regain-my-person mode.
When our nurturing and upbringing have been faulty, we often preserve this intensity of attachment into our adult relationships. Our brain still thinks we're a little kid, in danger. And when our person goes and leaves, we're thrown into the same terror. The thing is that for adults, it isn't realistic. We can take care of ourselves and survive perfectly well. But it's like our brain doesn't know that, and we have to explain it to them.
I think there are two other reasons for having so much intense emotion for someone even if they have hurt us and have been a jerk. One is that if our early relationships were characterized by neglect, we try to redo them with our current person. We're intensely motivated to "get them back" because that's what we wanted to do with our parents.
The last reason is that we become addicted to our A. Like alcohol to the A, he seems to offer an answer to problems, or at least a distraction. Without him, we have nothing left but our imperfect lives. That blast of emotion and sadness can be painful to bear. So we want to get back to our "substance of choice" our A.
When we're having a lot of trouble, that means we need more support. I hope you can find some more to help you through this hard time. Are you doing the online meetings? Can you send for some of the literature? Please take very good care of yourself.
My husband started his affair while my mother was dying. I was at a weak point. He took advantage. He was incredibly nasty about it. Would it surprise you to know that I wanted him back?
My mind was completely obsessed. I totally agree with Mattie - it is primal stuff, but when we can see ourselves as a child, and take responsibility for that child - give her a hug, promising to look after her and protect her, I think it gets easier to learn to let go of things that are very clearly hurting us. I also spent time thinking about what it was in my childhood that hadn't been dealt with and forgiving myself for anything that came up. I would add that abusive behaviour changed me and made me a much more clinging person that I ever imagined possible. It is difficult to admit, but I was hooked! The good news is that you can, and will, get better and when you do you will be stronger than you've ever been. It really does get better.
So how to turn off that inner voice? I tried lots of different things. Wearing an elastic band on my wrist and pinging it every time I caught myself thinking about my husband's lover was remarkably effective. Writing letters, and then burning them. Allowing myself a fixed time frame for wallowing (about fifteen minutes to half an hour) providing that as soon as my time was up I absolutely promised myself that I will do something positive and enjoyable for me. I quite quickly got bored with the wallowing and started to skip straight to the positive stuff (very much allowed, and encouraged by my rules! ) You are already doing some good things so keep on doing them and try that elastic band - it doesn't distract too much from a good movie or a good book!
This was all balanced by doing the very best things that I could for me at the time. I started with painting my nails, wearing nice perfume, the best bed linen I could lay my hands on, eating healthily and as my strength came back I added in a holiday, a course I had always wanted to do, anything and everything that I could think of to take control of my life again without turning it into a chore - which meant learning to relax, (with the help of meditation tapes), and plenty rest.
I've noticed that when I'm poorly it is very easy for me to get back into the obsessive thinking but recognising what the source is, i.e. am I hungry, angry (you bet!!), lonely, tired? (H.A.L.T.) Dealing with those things at source helped me - i.e. eat something, journaling my anger, calling a friend or reaching out here, gifting myself an early night for instance.
It is a learning curve, it takes time, but it is so worth while. You don't deserve to let an alcoholic destroy you. (((((Hugs)))))
I know you have received some great ESH already I wanted to share my ESH.
It took me a long time to figure out that his rejection was God's protection (insert HP if God is not comfortable). Reality is someone can't love someone else if they can't love themselves. I have yet to meet an alcoholic/addict who truly loves themselves and are not in recovery. So what an A will do (not limited to just A's either) they find their feel goods so they don't have to deal with the pain. It is a cruel way .. personally I think it is extremely passive aggressive on the other parties part .. that is opinion.
In my case I really thought there was something about ME personally that was so broken I was not loveable and part of my own healing was to realize that was not true. So please know .. you are ok .. yes you have some work to do .. as a human being you do not have to earn someone's love, chase it or loose your own self esteem or self respect to be loved .. you are enough. That was the lesson I had to learn and I'm still working on it. So just know .. you aren't weird you aren't alone and unfortunately this is what some people do both A's and not A's .. they change the haircut, location and it's about their own pain not any consideration for any one else. Know that you are enough.
DO find a way out of your pain without looking for outside feel goods .. find the feel goods inside and you will heal from the inside out. There is no healing outside in.
Hugs S :)
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Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do "faith". - Brene Brown
"Whatever truth you own doesn't own you" - Gary John Bishop
(((Jaclyn))) - Huge hugs to you - so very sorry that you are still not feeling well and without a diagnosis - prayers for answers and positive thoughts from my world to yours.
I love what Mattie shared in that probably all of us at one time or another felt as you felt. It brought back to me how utterly abandoned I felt when both of my boys were active in their disease and rejected me, all that we had worked to teach them as well as any logical form of living, loving and existing. My pain was so great that I had to take down and put away all photos from their upbringing - they brought me to tears. I also had to stop using Facebook, as it would hold me hostage to how unfair life was for me.
What he's doing is not about you. It's about him. He's not rejecting you; he's moving on. As Serenity says, he's possibly in a place with his life/disease where he's not capable of loving himself, which will make it difficult for him to love another. I am one who tends to try and project my way of doing. loving, living, caring and being onto others. It's taken me a ton of program work to realize that we all are very, very different. Set aside how different men and women are - no matter how much we think we know about another person, we only know what they've showed to us. We can not know what we don't know.
For me, when I am sick, all my emotions, especially the negative ones are magnified greatly. This is not a great time for me to deeply assess my person, my issues, etc. Perhaps if you are not finding relief within your program efforts you may need to look for support beyond the program. The only person who can heal you is you. My best tool for turning off that negative energy in my brain was to replace my obsessions with healthier obsessions - reading program literature, listening to Christian music, exercising, walking the dog, going to meetings, asset lists, gratitude lists, etc.
I too hope you find a way out of your pain. You are worth choosing yourself over him. Find your truth and have a plan to be/do different. You are not alone!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
((Hugs)) There are some great posts ahead of mine but I wanted to share that it gets better. I went through this in October and when XA decided to reach back out in December I was in a place where I "needed" him less and I was tired of the BS way more. Just keep your chin up and keep coming back here! YOU ARE WORTH IT :)
I was speaking with a sponsee this morning after the meeting and she was telling me about a recent visit she financed for a former (not) lover and some of what she said was very similar to what you are now saying and when I related to it and what I went thru with my former relationships with my alcoholic/addict I sounded so much like what I went thru when I was over dosing on alcohol...drinking and drinking till I got sick and puked (hate that word) my guts out. And then I remembered my former sponsor revealing to me that it was exactly what over dosing was. I kept going back to them to get fulfilled and I didn't get fulfilled I got ill.
Rise to the top sister and lay your head back and breathe in the air then float back to shore. In support. (((((hugs)))))
Sorry for your pain...
After 25 years with my ex husband(who since has passed away) I can only tell you my experience with the pain of betrayal.
In our 25th year of marriage the AH, sits me downs and tells me he has twin children from another woman. That they had a 10 year off and on relationship I thought he was going to tell me that he had cheated, but the twins brought a drama I never expected, they were already a year old. I was shocked but then I wasn't . Because his life had been out of control for so long, he already had a heart attack, which I nursed him thru, paramedics at our house all the time, Police , Emergency rooms, why should this surprise me. He told me he really didn't want to be with her, seems like he was, but the kids were another responsibility for him. Why am I telling you this, because I realized at that moment that even after the 10 year off and on thing and a set of twins, and even me, we could not compete with the bottle. That was really his lover, his friend, his everything.
I know your pain is your pain right now. But this new girlfriend will never compete with his real lover, the bottle.
There is a higher love ...its called compassion. If somehow you can really meditate on this and have a realization that he is not setting out to betray or hurt you. He is not in control of his life and his brain is affected by his addiction. I know it won't make you hurt less, but time will heal you and that life is a journey and can change at any moment and I am a believer that our wounds do heal and that our higher power has better things in store for us. Nothing is wasted.
Keep coming back ...
Hugs, Bettina
Wow... thank you Jaclyn for sharing. I am sorry for your pain, both emotional and physical. All of the great posts that others have shared has resonated with me. It has been exactly what I needed to hear this morning, as I am feeling sorry for my AH. His life IS out of control.
Thank you Jaclyn for sharing. This program works if you work it...
) You are already doing some good things so keep on doing them and try that elastic band - it doesn't distract too much from a good movie or a good book! 