What are you supposed to do when your wife has never seperated from her mother emotionally or mentally and all her opinions are her mothers ???? This includes the "truth" about people places and things and sometimes they are important things that affect our marriage. I've tried pointing out that 1) your mother is an alcoholic and some of her opinions aren't real rational and 2) that she has blown 2 marriages and is into working on her third so she probably isn't a great mentor for how to behave and interpret things in a relationship ?? Of course every time I even hint that her mother is wrong I'm just a delusional ass****. This is frustrating sheet.
It's cunning baffling and powerfully destructive at times please help.
Hey Jamie! yes ,no doubt as writings will tell us"relationships can be "terribly" painful areas.But we also have to remember,especially in our frustrations,that we are powerless over other people,even if its our wife or kids,maybe even more so?We always have to keep our recoveries first and our priorities in order.!Sometimes those thoughts of lonliness,despair,helplessness and self pity can creep up on us and we get complacent(keeping it on me!!) want to "kick the dog" and throw our hands up!(aint got a dog)Good you shared your feelings,I know I have said to my wife "well my family are all addicts and drunks but your family are all nuts!!!Spiritually not condusive ,but then we talk about it and then we laugh.. It is said,The truth will set you free,but it may first make you angry!!!Progress not perfection we'll keep moving toward....I hear you and can definitely identify!!These are the times when we have to go "even farther inside"but we can come out walking in the light of our Higher Power!(man that tunnel sometimes seems very long though huh?? peace.
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Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.
I dont think anything you could say would change your wifes opinion on her mother. Now someone as in third party might. Is your wife an alcoholic? If not does she go to al-anon?? You are to close to her for her to listen to you without being offended. Maybe counceling. Let someone else be the bad guy if there are things your wife needs to see. We all need our own program and nothing you can say will CHANGE your wife, unless she is willing. Just my honest opinion being a woman and all. Not sure if this helps at all. but hang in there and have a good day Jamie.
I feel very fortunate in that in my first marriage my alcoholic mother-in-law didn't play much of a role on the relationship. In fact, I only met her in person one time - at the wedding, and she was 3 sheets to the wind by 10 am. She did have an influence on my wife, but not in the way you might think. When she died of a blown liver - when I was about 6 months sober - my wife took all of her unfinished business with her mom and pointed at the nearest alcoholic. Me. Didn't matter if I was sober or not, I said I was an alcoholic.
this is going to sound trite and redundant, and for that i apologize, but we find all our answers for ourselves in working the steps with a competent sponsor, the steps themselves are a grid of socratic questions that make ir clear why we make and made the decisions we do and did, addressing specifics is like trying to find the best way to clean up puppy poop, when the real answer lies in housebreaking and training the puppy. the solution doesn't lie in changing others or even trying to figure them out, the solution lies in figuring out why we picked them in the first place and then figuring out our part in it. in my experience concentrating on the "outside" stuff ie other people is concentrating on the problem, and figuring out how to change myself is the solution, and whichever one i focus on grows
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
@ LinBaba in particular man thanks so much for the clarity. And Mike F , Barisax Susie and Dean thankyou all so much. I'm working my A** off hardcore for my emotional serenity at the moment and learning on a deeper level than I ever dreamed possible that I can only focus on myself. If I am honest for the last five years I have never really really really accepted this, I have been parroting I'm powerless over people places and things but "secretly" (secrets are always my downfall) I thought certain people places and things with the right amount of skill manipulation and cunning can be controlled to varying degrees.
Getting rid of this old idea is hurting like nothing before has ever hurt. This is hand being lowered onto a drop saw level of emotional pain.
@ Linbaba especially................at the moment nobody could sound trite or redundant, I find when I get crushed up this much during a learning curve the pain seems to shut of the ego and I can actually just focus on the positives in someones esh not get all bitter at anything someone says to me especially the stuff that is right on the money.
Thanks so much to the men and women of this fellowship , it's a miracle a God send and an honour to have been humble by God's grace been granted a place in.
Jamie
-- Edited by Jamie D on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 12:31:21 AM
If I am honest for the last five years I have never really really really accepted this, I have been parroting I'm powerless over people places and things but "secretly" (secrets are always my downfall) I thought certain people places and things with the right amount of skill manipulation and cunning can be controlled to varying degrees.
Getting rid of this old idea is hurting like nothing before has ever hurt. This is hand being lowered onto a drop saw level of emotional pain.
You have nailed my "secret" as well, one that has also caused more pain in my sobriety then anything else, A) I am secretly superior to -you- and B) No, the rules -don't- apply to me, and C) I know what's best for you and will do everything in my power to make you see it
It's horrific, it operates on such a deep level I don't even see it, I actually address it in humor now, and have for about 15 years (Maybe you don't know who I am) to kind of keep it in check, I say those secret thoughts out loud so I can laugh at myself, I mean anyone who has actually -worked- the steps giving advice???? I learn in step 1 my life is unmanageable (by me) because the results are in that I am a dismal failure as a manager so I start giving YOU advice??? I start thinking I know what's best for YOU???
what's that definition of insanity in step 2 again, because I think I need to relaearn that lesson another 3 or 4 thousand times
Here is something I wrote on our coda forum addressing the same thing
Dealing with a situation at work yesterday made me start thinking, I truly do work for a crazy man, and it's so hard to keep my center when he starts throwing little temper tantrums, stomping his little feet, being insulting and demeaning, even his compliments are demeaning, he lives in one of the most distorted realities I have ever come across, and I have come across a few pretty distorted realities, including my own, I started thinking about his "know it all" behavior and his little temper tantrums and was looking through some old posts I wrote on another forum, so the following is some old stuff I wrote, some stuff someone I really admires wrote (Anvilhead), and all kind of gelled in a stream of consciousness as I listened to music and drank coffee
He views himself as perfect even though he is a train wreck of accidents, last week he tore a tire off the truck turning a corner too fast, he breaks something every day all the while screaming, yelling, blaming everyone else for his accidents, he literally looks around for someone to blame, and if he thinks no one is listening he WILL actually say, "yeah, Andrew broke that, accidents happen" then sigh deeply, then go back to micromanaging everyone around him because they don't "do it right", no one else breaks anything, I train new people to stay away from him while he is working and be aware of him at all times because I make them keenly aware he will literally kill them by not paying attention, they have to pay attention to protect themselves from him
Anyway: I've decided I know what's best for HIM, LOLOL so I found this next bit I wrote
Sometimes I get stuck in a boggy morass because I am asking the wrong questions, first of all I am incredibly intelligent and my problem solving capabilities are well above norm just ask me, I"ll be happy to tell you, so I "know" what's best for me and frequently others, and I'll tell them too, "well your problem is ___- and to solve it you need to ______ "
Objective viewing of this behavior shows less then stellar results fairly consistently, especially when it comes to seeing myself objectively.
Some years back I was having a pretty difficult situation in a relationship, I THOUGHT my big problem was "how can I communicate effectively or effectively set boundaries". I was WRACKING my brains for a solution, and the more attempts I made to communicate and 'set" boundaries, the worse the situation got.
The harder I tried the more upset I got, she got, and quite frankly I was beginning to upset and bore the people around me a bit. Dogs would bark at me when I walked by, babies would cry, and I got mistaken for Dick Cheney at a particularly bad moment at one point.
So about a year ago I'm talking to a friend of mine, the guys a frickin emotional neanderthal but I'm at the end of my rope here, I need help.
He listens to my whole litany of woe, at the end of it he says, "Andrew...(long pause)...what do you DO?"
"Huh???? Well I .... (long relationship explanation)"
He interrupts me, "NO, what do you DO????"
"Long explanation about how crazy she makes me etc blah blah"
He interrupts me again, clearly getting frustrated with trying to get through to my incredibly obtuse and thick skull, "NO Andrew, what do you do all the time, all day, every day, for YOU, what occupies your attention? what inspires you?"
He said, "You know if you just got inspired by something and started doing something for YOU, you wouldn't have TIME for all this CRAP!!!! you'd be busy focusing on that and yourself and not on HER!!!!! What happened to surfing? I see your motorcycle is dusty. So is your bicycle, your skateboard, you're not sculpting, you know if you put 1/2 the energy on yourself as you do on this inane nonsense it wouldn't happen!!!!"
.......
It helps to know what "the problem" is.
Usually it's me
trying to solve it.
with the same mind that created the problem in the first place.
My problem wasn't trying to set boundaries or communicate, it was something entirely different, but as long as I concentrated on trying to "solve" the problem, the problem increased, partially because my "communication" was trying to get her to see things from MY point of view, and my "boundaries" were efforts at behavior modification.
Drove me F'ing nuts.
Sometimes trying to solve the problem IS the problem
In The Te of Piglet, Hoff cites the story of the Old Master and the cantankerous horse as an example of this.
A horse was tied up before a shop in a narrow street, and everyone who tried to pass behind it was driven back by its wild kicks. A crowd of villagers gathered around the shop and debated about the best way to slide past the horse, and, as luck would have it, the Old Master was seen coming towards them. Everyone agreed that he would know exactly what to do to pass the obstreperous animal. The crowd watched eagerly as the Old Master came around the corner, saw the horse, turned, and walked down another street.
It's like dating someone for their potential, which is a HUGE gesture in futility, because what we are really saying is: ok so (s)he's really a piece of garbage right now, but DANG gimme a couple of weeks and i bet (s)he cleans up real good and then (s)he'll be somewhat suitable, I can even remake them over in my own image, I mean who are WE to determine anyone's else POTENTIAL? what is THAT anyways? do we really have some special all knowing powers that we see another's future, their destiny?
every body on the planet has POTENTIAL....we are not static beings, if nothing else we will at the very least grow older. it's rather conceited for us to nominate ourselves as their MUSE, their inspiration, that is us taking owner ship of another person's growth. we let ourselves believe they will change BECAUSE of us....and then we get to feel like heroes, demi-gods recreating people in our own likeness.
what a horrible demeaning thing to say to someone, it's like handing them a note that reads:
i really can't stand you much as your are, except on those few rare nice days. but you usually manage to end up ruining those too. however, because i am such a saint, i am willing to WAIT for you completely change everything about you that i find distasteful, and by the way here's the list of positive qualities that i've determined you MUST have inside you somewhere, for i swear i saw them once. now if you would please get busy, i'm only willing to wait half my life on you and i don't want to get so old i don't have enough speed to track down another subject, and if you DON'T get busy, I will shove them down your throat and use every method in my not incosiderable arsenal of passive aggressive control tactics to "help" you along. -Love, Dr. Frankenstein.
I've actually been focusing a bit on the solution lately, and strangely enough, the solution is increasing, and there has been no difficulty with communication because the communication is not really dressed up efforts at behavioral modification.
I remember when the success of my relationship relied on my girlfriend changing instead of me
I ended up barking F'ing mad, i mean completely around the bend batsh1t crazy.
I have never seen a more clear cut set of directions designed to completely drive me insane then that, a relationship that relied on me changing the other person
No one EVER "dragged" me into anything in my life, or "made" me do anything I didn't want to do, not really, I ALWAYS made a decision based on self that placed me in a position to be hurt, they may have stole the car but it's always been because I left the keys in the ignition in the first place, then after the first few car crashes, when quasi intelligent people leave, and take the bus or get a different car or at least drive themselves, I say "Let's go again" then say it's 'their" fault when we crash again, I end up p1ssed at "them" because they and their driving are so obviously the problem a child could see it and I ride around in the car with them, letting them drive, going where they want to go, doing what they want to do as I frantically shout instructions from the passenger seat getting angrier and angrier because I am obviously a better driver and know much better then they do and telling anybody who will listen about our car crashes to get sympathy.
What a drain of a perfectly good life.
I'm onna go back to driving my own car. I really do, this job makes me sad
I am CONSTANTLY , nearly daily, in the most stupid and inane but painful way possible having to relearn the lesson it's not about getting other people to behave or change, but changing me and my focus, and deciding whether or not to pick up all the garbage they dump and carry it around and then dump it on others, or just simply walk down a different street.
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
ps couples counseling has worked wonders in my life, even if "she" doesn't change or see her unhealthy behaviors, the therapist will be able to give you some great tools to help you navigate this stuff
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
