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.
In the reading for Monday, 10/12, the writer wanted their spouse to get sober so they could live happily ever after. The ugly disease overshadowed all aspects of the relationship, and the writer felt empty. With alanon they had to unlearn romantic nonsense, find a satisfying life in the here and now, and look to oneself for happiness. It seemed difficult to learn lessons, then unlearn them, and then try and start all over again.
Reminder: Recovery can involve as much unlearning as learning. My security cannot be be based on learning the rules, because once I truly learn them, they change. With my Higher Powers help, I will find some security in being exactly where I am today.
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I readily relate to this reading because everything my parents taught me about adult life within a family all changed. I divorced my first A and because a single parent. In my second current marriage, my hopes were dashed once again due to the disease of alcoholism, and I had to create a new life for myself along with a decision to stay married. I now live half the week an hour away from my spouse, have my own condo, and live near my son and his family. I dont know anyone else who has a situation like mine, but it doesnt matter. It allows my spouse and I to maintain our marital relationship, and I have a weekly break near people I love who are not alcoholics. My new normal of 3 yrs works for me, my spouse would rather accept this new life instead of divorcing, and I have an unconventional life of my own making. What rules should I be following ? LOL.
I can only help myself..change myself...and I am in the process of UNlearning bad thought/emotional/behavior problems...it all comes from my faulty perceptions/thinking, then the emotional upheaval, then the acting out....been really working to UNlearn these undesirable traits..the biggest of which are going to fast, not paying attention, letting my CPTSD triggers run me instead of stopping, breathing, and getting my brain to re-regulate....I CAN Unlearn this defect, but its going to be a fight and take time...Old patterns do not want to leave..they are fighting me to stay, but I have served the eviction notice...I shall persevere.....as to changing others, wishing and hoping they be what I want/hope for them to be??? I finally have let that go...I hve to make my happiness my self...within...and hopefully as I get healthier, I will draw the good, i know I deserve
THANK you for your service
Thank you Lyne for your service and share. I have always thought that your living situation would work for me - best of a difficult situation. Really, changing what you could!
It works for you and that is what matters... not society's rules in this case.
Rose, I have no doubts you will persevere!! I admire your tenacity, and self care regimen.
I can truly relate to the "ugly disease overshadowing all aspects of the relationship." I just truly wanted my life and marriage to be different than it was. I could not handle the reality. I tried... for so long, I tried. In doing so, I had to unlearn all the stuff about marriage, romance, partnership that I grew up with... b/c it just wasn't like that. In the end, the reality is that I could not live with the instability. I craved love and connection, but the uncertainty and instability was the straw that broke this camel's back. Today, I am strong enough to acknowledge that I miss my Ex, but know that it was not healthy for me, and perhaps not for him as well - although, my HP knows I tried my all-out best as a wife.
I am still learning how to look to myself for daily happiness. I am grateful for the gifts my HP has provided! &
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"The wolf that thrives, is the one you feed." - Cherokee legend
"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields... Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness." Mary Oliver
Happy Monday MIP. Thank you Lyne for your service and for the daily. Thank you all for your shares & ESH. I can relate - in my way of thinking, if only my A's would get sober, then we'd have happily ever after. Well - that's not how it has gone so far - yet, it's all OK - just for today!
What I know about me now that I didn't know before is my expectations and my choice to compete and compare myself to others get me into trouble. It's so easy to look at my life and my experience and feel less than or more than another - I was just raised that way. When I instead just keep the focus on me, striving to be the best version of me, I am simply amazed at how less important most other things are.
I often reflect with giggles on some aspects of my FOO. My mother is certainly type A, cleaned on a structured, rigid schedule and made some rooms in our home 'off limits'. I thought this was absolutely insane growing up, yet complied most of the time. As I began my adult journey, I was affected directly by this disease. I will suggest that I certainly did not prioritize self-care or a 'clean' home. So, so not priorities!
As I got sober and became more authentic, I realized I was also more anal than I knew and learned to love a clean/orderly home. I also cleaned on a schedule, less rigid, yet pulled from my mother's example.
Well - I can share that diseased or not, this 'clean gene' does not exist within my AH or my A sons. This was another area that I tried to control before Al-Anon. What I feel and practice today is the same - taking care of what's important to me, focusing on me, building a healthy day that supports me being the best version of me. I am reminded that YOLO - You Only Live Once - so if I live my life in a way that works for me but is vastly different than 'norms' - it's all good! If I decide to use my Dining Room as an inventory area or a arts/craft center instead, it's OK. Letting go and Letting God for me goes well beyond this disease and the diseased....I try to roll with that for all things. It works when we work it....creatively as needed.
I am off to get some things done before my volunteering this afternoon/evening. Make it the best day possible all - love and light.
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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
From all your shares I was reminded of a funny situation. Well now it is funny but at the time I found it disturbing. As my career was in the field of mental health I worked with lots of people. For a while I drank my water out of a coffee cup, just because Ive always been a bit clumsy and was afraid of knocking it over. I had one client who just could not get over my putting water in a coffee cup. She gave me a hard time every time I saw her. It felt uncomfortable to me each and every time she confronted me about my choice. I drank my water in a coffee cup as long as I wanted to, and I will give myself credit for that! But now it is actually funny to mewho cares what you drink from???? On the scale of life, does it matter???? LOL.
Lyne, you are not alone! When I was at work, I also drank water from a coffee cup. Somehow it just felt and tasted better that way! No one ever commented on it. However, I am really happy to know that I am not the only one.
What a great discussion to wake up to and sit in on. You ladies rock and rock my recovery...Thank you HP for these gifts of enlightenment and love.
The memories that come with reading these posts are blessings and only one of them comes from a friend of my alcoholic/addict who I was visiting one afternoon. She told me about a gal friend at work who she overheard taking a phone call from her alcoholic who wanted to come back home and reunite with her. He was anxious to do that and she not entirely. My friend told me that what she over heard was her friend telling the alcoholic, "I love you...I like having you here...and...I don't need you". That blew my mind and sense of balance and I left her house quickly. On the road away my Higher Power caught up with me so that we could spend time together and I pulled off of the street, turned off the engine to the car and sat in reflection of the statement ending with "and I don't need you". I realized that all three parts were true for me also and I was free of the addiction I had to the addict/alcoholic. I missed my wife, alcoholic/addict much and didn't need her to have my life.
I am back in the town that happened in and still feel blessed for having first heard and learning it. It was the same as saying to a person or friend who was offering me a drink, "No thanks...I've had enough" which was also a lesson I got from a sponsee fighting to keep his sobriety intact.
HP has soooo many tools for me to learn from. This morning MIP is one of them. Mahalo Ladies. ((((hugs))))
For me it.was not so much romantic notions. For me it was realy low self esteem, being easiy or I should say willingly manipulated by others (alcoholics being absolute masters of manipulation).
I know it was also about a hiuge hole in the notion of being cared for, accepted and known. . I had so little caring as a child growing up in.an abusive family. I would settle happily for crumbs of attention. In fact crumbs felt like a huge gift to someobe as desoerate as me. So I tolerated and accepted the intolerable: car accidents, infidelity, chaos and of course abuse, lots and lots of sbuse.
Deprivation was a huge part of my childhood. Financial deprivation was one part of it but the main deprivation.was the unreal expectations of my parents who really expected children to raise themselves in a vortex of violence, fear and of course plenty of addiction; gambling, alcohol, food, religion.
In fact one of the #hooks# the qualifier offered me was the intermittent few crumbs of attention and a mirage of #commitment# . The only thing the qualifier was ever committed to was his addiction. Bottom line that was the first priority. I leapt at these crumbs every time. in fact I saw those crumbs of intermittent attention as something I had been wating al my iife for. The
I hsd to have years of love and acceptance from al anon.before I could see how cruelly I had been maipulated. Abuse comes in many.forms. i had no ability to discern what I could say no to
For me it is not about unlearning it is about seemg how I was te perfect set up for an acholic relationship. Unlearning is a bot too.simolistic. Learning seems like a choice. In was trying to survive. Now I have to go beyond survival
Romance became an excuse for outting up with inexcusable behaviours. Romance was a reason not to delve into why I found it so difficult to let go of relationships in any.form
I know I also had really dauntng overwhelmig loneliness
This time of year was particularly hard for me
This time of year was like an abyss. I could barely deal wth tge sense of loss, dread, emptiness and despair that it brought up for me. Ironically of course I always had partners who made an art out of abandoning me at that time.
I felt raw abandoned and totally in despair.
Those dreadful feelings have been something I have been abe to work in in al.anon. in al.anon I found some skills to manage these desperate times
So for me it wasnt so much about a way to unlearn, it was a way for me first to survive. After that it was a way to reflect, grieve and tolerate unbearable feelings
of loss, betrayal and despair. Al anon gave me the gift of hope, peace and acceptance. Acceptance particularly of the way I felt at Christmas and during the holidays was extremely difficult. Nevertheless I got to a place where I could believe better times were really possible for me
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