He was wicked smart and highly manipulative and he had no problem being a total control freak. As the strong independent woman I thought I was, I had a problem with all this dominant control. A part of me wanted it, because it was typical of the relationship that had evolved between my parents. But there was this other part of me that had grown up watching Oprah and realizing that there was something dreadfully wrong with this picture.
I soon began arguing back with my second husband and before we even celebrated the first year of marriage, he was gone never to be heard from again — luckily for me. There I was. I had tried to free myself from one type of abuse and ended up getting caught up in another kind. But, I was determined not to let this ruin anything. I decided to reinvent myself and turn myself into a self-published author of motivational books. I figured that even though I had not had a huge amount of success as a published technical author, there was no reason I could not be successful writing another kind of book.
A book that I was certainly more passionate about. In many ways, it was and still is. Looking back, I can see that I have made astounding progress in terms of my emotional maturity. I truly have come a long way from where I was in my early twenties. But tragically, my tryst with alcohol was far from over. For all the progress I had made, my struggle was actually just beginning. About a year after my second husband left, a new man emerged.
New and Old. He was someone from my past. Someone I had dated just briefly as a young and impressionable teenager. How perfect, right? No, not perfect. The man that would eventually become my third husband turned out to be a bigger alcoholic than my first. Worse than that, I myself had begun to develop a drinking problem which I now see is a late-stage symptom of my co-dependency.
Within a year of our marriage about 9 months ago , I had enough. I could not live with the hypocrisy any more and I ceremoniously threw him out you can read all about that pre-Christmas day in this post.
Of course, being the seriously inflicted co-dependent with a drinking problem that I am, my resolve was short-lived. My new husband is an expert manipulator probably one of the best and he has studied me thoroughly. He knows just what buttons to push to get a certain response.
Living with my failed ability to rehabilitate him notice how it is somehow my failure and not his? The only problem was that I brought 3 ounce beers with me.
I did not want to go home drunk the kids definitely did not deserve that and as bad as my problems got, I never drank around them. So, I stayed in the woods, but then, it got really, really dark, really, really quick and I was stuck. Screwed really. Self-preservation kicked in and I found a tree that had fallen over a creek and crawled up into it for safety. I figured I could stay there until I sobered up and then I would crawl my way out.
Good idea, except for the fact that I had left a note telling my kids I went to the sports park to go jogging. If we can do that, we can be as violent as we please nobody else is going to see it anyway. We may not be able to control how we feel but we can control what we do about it.
Bottling up anger destroys our peace of mind and often takes physical form in headaches, backaches, and other discomforts. Anger should be recognized and released as quickly as possible, and without guilt.
We can pave the way for calm, reasonable communication with him only if we first find healthy outlets for our own negative feelings. So much has been said about communicating in words that we may lose sight of another important element in communication, our attitudes, apart from the words we speak.
A simple example might be an irritated spouse with a comment to deliver may hurl it at her husband as she would throw a stone at a dog. We learn in time that it is not subjects which are controversial, but the manner in which we communicate about them and the elements of personal blame we add to them in anger.
But last night I had a slip. I felt so sorry for him; my first impulse was to comfort him by trying to make light of the whole thing. What should I have done, and what do I do now? Or do you think we can do it ourselves? This brought a storm of protest; three hands went up. Will you please have it fixed? He felt bad about what he had done, and was only too happy to have a chance to make up for it. A member once remarked that she had worked out a little set of rules for herself about communicating with her husband, long actively alcoholic, finally solidly sober.
She was invited to speak about herself instructing rules, and this was what she said. When my husband was still drinking, this rule saved lots of fights which could only make things worse. But when he was sober, and real personality problems came into focus, I certainly needed this rule.
Anything I might say that seems critical of him as a person would make him react emotionally and defensively. If I have a grievance, I just tell him how I feel about it. I just state the case without telling him how I think it should be resolved.
By leaving the choice up to him, the door is open for a mutual coming to terms with the problem. I rarely missed a meeting. Then why did it take so long, I wonder, for me to see the light? I have finally realized that I never even accepted Step One! I never released my tight grasp on the idea that my sole purpose was to win the battle with my husband and get him sober. You have to get over your own flaws of character and learn to let go.
I tried to tell him how many AA meetings to go to; I directed him in a thousand little ways in our daily lives. I resented his resistance, which grew stronger as he devoted himself to the AA program. And the more he resisted, the harder I fought. I monitored his telephone calls, went through his pockets, followed him.
Finally, I became more frantic and emotionally disturbed than I was when he was drinking. Our rows became pitched battles, and after every one, I felt greater despair over the situation.
I hit mine. I realized that getting him sober in AA was only the beginning; that something had to be done about me, and I had to do it. Something opened my mind to insights I had never accepted before:. It is when our strong emotions are involved that we swing to the limits of the pendulum extremes of demonstrating affection or disapproval. We are so deeply involved that we treat those closest to us as though they were part of us; when they do things that do not please us, we fight them instead of fighting our own shortcomings.
He is a man, a person, an individual; he is a man who does a job, earns a living. Quo verear neglegentur et. Novum utroque atomorum te eos. Epicuri ullamcorper necessitatibus ut cum, postea percipitur temporibus an sea.
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