I see many many relationships survive the alcoholic achieving sobriety, not very many of them in a healthy way, if you want to be in the minority that's the way to go IMO, it CAN be done, I just couldn't do it, and by God it wasn't for lack of trying, I LOVED this woman, like I said, I got sober, went back to college, got a career, quit smoking, quit drinking, but none of it was enought to fill her bottomless pit of dissatisfaction any more then alcohol could fill mine, the thing is I didn't discover what I could do about it for another 12? 15? years, as in I didn't end up in Coda/Al-anon with THAT as my focus until many years later. Since in early sobriety I cut ALL unhealthy relationships, friends, family, it didn't matter, if they were harmful I cut them from my life, so I wasn't with Passive/aggressive/controlling/codie partners for all those years of sobriety that aspect of wasn't addressed, or it didn't show, since I was around nothing but healthy people, I appeared to be healthy as well, because none of my childhood/codie shit was being triggered, it's amazing the effect of simply having healthy people in your life makes, years later when I re-engaged in a sick dynamic with my mother (being manipulated by her to take over her business, supporting her and the rest of the family, basically working for free with the promise of a non-existant pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow that was removed when the job was done, costing me my business, my home, my life savings), as I got ill from this, I picked a new girlfriend (my GF who I had been with in sobriety for many years left me a few years after I moved away, rightfully so) who matched my mental state exactly, which was sick as a dog, so all these family of origin and codependency issues I had neatly sidestepped for all those years just by walking away from my sick family and having sick girlfriends all came to the forefront so I had to address them, "more will be revealed" happened to me, it's not a path I recomend actually (once again it comes down to "dependence" I gave up my "independence" to help my family and allowed myself to be placed in a "dependent" position with a very ill human being, the first thing she did was start asserting control, slowly taking away my independence piece by piece, I allowed this, and by the time my life savings was gone and I was living on her land, working for her in her restaurant for practically free, her control of me was complete, and it started to get REALLY bad, an example, once I was dependent, after my money was gone because I had built a house on the property, and spent the rest just on supporting myself while I worked for her, she doubled my hours and cut my pay in half, a few years of that sort of behavior and I was just as ill as she was)

Anyway, that's what I mean by Codies wreaking so much havoc in my life, my family, 2 of the GF's I had, I remember my GF telling me Coda was called "The Program for people who love too much" and that confused me because she hated my guts the entire ten years we were together and between those 2 girlfriends and my mother I have never seen people throw people under the bus more mercilessly then a codie, like a drunk/alcoholic addict might steal the money in your wallet but in my experience a codie will just hold you down for years and passively aggressively torture you just because they are unhappy with themselves, deny ever doing it, and the moment they see a new victim or get what they want throw you under the bus.

Hence my fear and loathing of Codies, alcoholism has wrought great damage in my life both for me and in my family, but nothing compared to the damage that codependency has caused, the alcoholic will drive drunk with you in the car when you are a child, but the codependent will put you in the car, that is my experience, I guess I blame codies more because they are "supposed" to know better, the alcoholic is impaired, i have difficulty seeing the codie as impaired as the alcoholic because they appear so much more normal, they aren't drunk when they throw you under the bus.


I think Coda and Alanon are 2 paths to the same goal personally, Alanon is like Judo where you learn to roll with the punches but use the other persons energy against them, and Coda is more like Karate where you take a more direct approach but at the end of the day you end up in the same place (strictly my opinion) because like in AA after you work the steps and get healthy you find yourself uninterested in an unhealthy partner, I think the same thing happens in GOOD ass kicking do the steps take no prisoners Alanon, which took me a long time to find, and the group was actually comprised mostly of parents, so they DIDN'T have the luxury of blaming their partner and not working the steps like I saw in so many other Al-anon meetings, so I should amend my statement, SOME alanon, as in ass kicking alanon is like or can be like Coda.

Here are some articles I found that blew my mind when I was growing through my GF/relationship deal, I'm not saying they apply to you, I'm saying I read them and threw up in my mouth a little bit...then I left her once I realized that nothing I could do would EVER work to satisfy this person and make them happy, that as long as I stayed I would live a miserable and horribly confused unhappy existence

A year later I went back to her since she had gotten sober and got her required year of sobriety since we had broken up, I thought it would be "different" but that's a story for another day

It was worse because she had just enough "recovery" under her belt to make that her new ammunition, but it was also better because I had done a TON of work on myself and truthfully so had she, she was now a "sober horse thief" and since I didn't escalate, she didn't either, and it just kind of fizzled out, one day after a few days of her up to her old tricks I said to myself "No More, I will never contact this person again" and 2 days later she sent me a "Dear John", which I have to admit sticks in my throat to this day, like you can't fire me, I quit you ****** but I never contacted her to tell her to this day, which would have been childish and just engaging more, the following are articles I found that made me understand why I had been so confused, so angry, I just sat there and read these articles with my mouth hanging open, talk about being in well charted waters, every word in every paragraph described her to a "T"

Truthfully I cried, both tears of pain, but of relief as well, it's like having your head in a jar of peanut butter trying to hit a moving target hanging upside down with your hands behind your back blindfolded, and you get punished every time you **** up, and the rules get changed every day, so I was always ****ing up.

It was horrible and indescibably bad, and not something I talk about too much in "outside" settings, like here, which is about sobriety, but this is relationships in sobriety, so it's appropriate

Anyhow, these 2 articles described what I was living with verbatim, word for word, action by action, every. single. word. rang true, it was as big as reading the Big Book for the first time and seeing myself on every page in print there, except now it was "The Jaywalker gets a girlfriend that is worse then a Mack Truck" LOLOLOL:

http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/manipulator/emotional_abuse.shtml

http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/abusiverelationships/a/Pass_Agg.htm


-- Edited by LinBaba on Sunday 3rd of October 2010 11:06:20 PM