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I am having a hard time with the detaching with love thing. How do you detach and still have love? If I detach I need to be totally detached. I am having a hard time grasping this concept I guess I see love as doing/saying what he wants me to? I just can't hold on to "loving" and detaching at the same time.
Her children wanted a dog. She said no. They wanted a goldfish. They kept dying. All finally agreed on a gerbil. Inevitably the gerbil got out. In the ensuing months, every time someone saw the gerbil it would be a "There he is! Get'em!" And, of course, the terrified creature would run away, and avoid the family for another set amount of time. Finally, one day, as the gerbil scurried across the floor, he stopped cold and stared straight at Melody, to which she said, "Fine. Do what you want. I'm done." Apparently, she says, she really meant it. Time passes. One day, the gerbil, of its own volition, comes to her, and allows itself to be placed in its cage.
Detachment involves, to a very large degree, surrender. The "with love" part involves that we don't do it with a sense of vengence, resentment or anything other than letting that person be in the hands of their higher power. We simply let them be treated with the care of their higher power.
We let them be. We let them make choices that work for them. And we learn from them. Watch and learn. Listen and learn. Even if it's something we already knew (i.e., drinking and driving will get you arrested), we learn what the consequences personally are.
That is a great question. Very tough for me at times. I have older children and that helps me a bit. When my 21 yr old was 16 he wanted a motorcycle. Now, for his own good I made it clear that when he was employed and paying for all his own insurance he could have 20 of them.
The writing about detatchment says it is neither kind or unkind, I don't think detatchment is done without love if you don't do it with ... a hug and a kiss.
For me the detatchment with love... is seperating what I am detaching from. I am detatching from the A behavior that I have no control over. Not my wife. I have very few oportunities these days to test that because she is immersed in her disease right now.
Hang in there and keep trying... it's good for you, and in the long run the most loving thing you can do for the A in your life.
Take care of you!
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"Good judgement comes from experience... experience comes from bad judgement" - unknown
wish i could reply to this eloquently because i have strong feelings and experience and hope on the subject - but i am totally drained these days and short on words,energy,etc.
i can tell you tho that from my experience, it is absolutely possible.
i have detached from my husband of 15 years....with so much pain and difficulty, but eventually with love and ease. it sort of comes along with trusting the higher power. you just see things as they are...know love permeates it all...and let go.
i also detached from my a bf recently....with him, it was important to do it actively,verbally and lovingly during sober moments. with him, it was putting my well being first - knowing i was worthy of a peacefull life and his disease ruined that....i loved him and told him and said i honor love and life above all tho, and your disease is destructive to that which i believe in.
with exhusband, it was trusting the fate in the world, and my hp. the lesson that helped me most then was..... i knew i could not interefere with the will of another. that we were two seperate beings with wills and fates of our own and all i could truly know or have was my own. i had to let him go. loving that he was on his path - trusting the universe provides us with what we need - i do not know what is best for another.
good luck - i know it is possible. keep a smile in your heart and trust that the love of the hp will see us all through.
you are so strong and brave for trying to do this! i know you will succeed if you have the vision to do it! don't give up.
When I first detached from A/son, there wasn't a whole lot of love in it. But as I stay detached, the love has come back slowly. When I was able to finally turn him over to my HP fully, I was able to love fully again. Sometimes time is the great healer. I know it was for me.
i have detatched with nothingness, with hate and with a hatchet. for me, with my inlaws i detatched with anger and so everytime they were brought up in conversation or in my head i was angry and hateful and i felt like crap carring all that hate and anger inside me. i did hear that those feelings were mine and they were only hurting me. that took some time to accept. but i did. so then, i focused on not feeling anything when they came up. and that worked for a while but i was still hurting. so then came the love. when i thought of them i thought of the good times we had and of their good qualities and now i can think of them with love. then again, they are not in my life everyday so i think that makes it easier for me. i think it took time for me and bringing it up at meetings alot. i had to get closeur and peace without re-involving them in my life. i feel like i did. but my ex sil called and left a message last night so apparently she is serious about seeing my kids. now my challange is to stay detatched with love......
Simply put, CG, detaching means to me that I must allow other, not only my A, to lead their own lives the way they see fit, short of harming themselves or others, without interference from me. That philosophy keeps me from going crazy when there is absolutely nothing my begging, pleading, threatening, hoping, or cajoling can do. Sometimes, CG, detaching and running IS the answer. Some want to learn how to live WITH the A in their lives; that's where detachment comes in. Others want to get out of the situation altogether. It is a personal decision.
I am one of those wishy-washy types who kicks the A out when he decides to take a "gentleman's vacation" and who takes him back when he is sober. But I will not live with an active A because I cannot detach with love.
I like the gerbil story Tiger.
Diva
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"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
For me, I love the man I married. i hate the disease. I detach from him totally when he is using. don't see him nothing. But I still love him inside me.
If he had a brain tumor that made him act like this, I would still love him and hate the cancer. YOu know what i mean?
For me, I cannot be around him as he is physically abusive now. If he were not, I would have him here some.
I found that I had to learn that "detaching with love" had nothing at all to do with "stay vs. leave", or any number of other decisions... it was really an avenue for me to learn to stop being so angry at the person, and perhaps stay angry at the disease.... it didn't imply that I had to put up with unacceptable behavior, just because they had a disease, etc.... I found - I could only detach with love, from afar....
T
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"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"
"What you think of me is none of my business"
"If you knew the answer to what you are worrying about, would it REALLY change anything?"
I agree canadianguy, I think my problem is that I have been dealing with unacceptable behavior for so long that I can't tell what is acceptable and what's not anymore!
That's very common with us folks who have lived with alcholism, a disease that by its very nature requires that we accept unacceptable things. Honestly, do you think someone would accept to be paid for being abused? That's what many of us have lived through. After awhile, not enough money in the world exists for the price of self respect.
This is where an inventory is called for. Starting with the most ludicrous, most obvouious, list on one side of a legal pad "Unacceptable behavior;" example, getting run over by a car, only for the driver to say "oops! sorry!" (I told you, start with the most ludicrous) Continue to write the most out from left field things getting more and, more specific each time, and keep it on one side of the legal pad (there's a method to my maddness, I promise).
when you're done with that, Go back to the first page. Starting again with ludricous, write at the top "acceptable behavior;" 12 months, every day, of fresh roses. 2 dozen. Even Claritin D would call it quits. It's EXCESSIVE. Continue along here, NO CENSORSHIP, getting more and more specific
What pattern are you seeing?
I garentee inside the ludicrous is some truths.
That remark he made when "he didn't mean that..." Where did you put that on your paper?
I'll betcha you put it under the ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR column. Seriously. We al anons are willing to sacrifice our immortal soul to be able to feed into our care giving. As long as we are not alone, as long as we have someone to fix, we can be at peace. So, you rationalized that comment; you dismissed it; minimized it; negetized it. But you returned the favor in his own coin. I PROMISE YOU DID. Maybe you made a snyde remark one night; maybe one day, for no reason at all, you were a heinous bitch, and enjoyed EVERY MINUTE OF IT. Oh yeah, that remark is under acceptable behavior, but ONLY because you got revenge.
Look again at the paper. What under some of the more painful, poingant truths are you really saying?
When you beat yourself up for "not being good enough," what column is that under?
Is it under UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR? It should be. It needs to be. You couldn't allow a stranger to beat a child up; that would be neglect. And you certainly wouldn't allow someone to beat your children up, and call yourself a good mother? Right?
Why are you doing it to yourself?
If this is done right, ALOT of behaviors are gonna look awful fishy to you. And they should. Alcholism is a disease based in denial, thriving in secrets, dead in reality.
But it's up to you to start the healing from the inside out.
To me, a lot of it has to do with our idea of what 'love' is. There is a lot of crap talked about love, and it gets in the way of us accepting our own reality.
We will hear people here say "To me, love means complete trust...." when they have been living the past ten years with a lying cheating A, and loving him. Or they will say "Love means being able to depend on a person totally" when the person they love goes out for smokes and comes back three days later flat broke.
The problem here is not with the love, it is with the definition. Love is not what a sappy song or a romantic movie tells you it is, it is what you feel, yourself, in your own heart.
I call what I feel for my husband 'love'. It consists of a lot of things - an enormous almost boundless affection, a deep wish for his well-being, an occasional true sense of connection, a long history..... I don't trust him much, I don't put all my happiness in him. He does not anymore have a hold on my soul. He is incapable of disappointing me - I really do believe that he is capable of almost any cheap trick if he is in the grips of his disease. I have a pretty good idea of how low he can sink, and believe me it's low. If he were to relapse, cheat on me, hit me, kill someone, kill himself - I would be grieved, I would be horribly upset, but I would not be destroyed. He no longer has the power to destroy me, because I have detached. With love.
If you want to say "Oh, that's not love, love is what the hero of the romance I read last night felt for the heroine", well, fine. This is what love means to me now. I am not interested in fairytales, I know what I have.
To me...detaching with love was (and still is) a very difficult concept to define. I have a hard time putting detachment and love in the same sentence. It goes against everything I believe in. Of course, living with alcoholism changed everything I believed in over time. The rules are completely different. Survival skills, acceptance and focusing on facts become high priority items.
In my opinion, it can work - it is possible. But you need to be willing to surrender the outcome and focus more on "I" than "we" within an alcoholic relationship.
Many have abandonment issues. Love and the need to be needed can be confused as one. Sometimes it's not love at all but more of an ism. Therefore trying to detach whilst desperately hanging on and wanting to be wanted can be even more difficult.
just an observation..... Christy
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If we think that miracles are normal, we will expect them. And expecting a miracle is the surest way to get one.
