tonight that special someone called and asked me to help. Asked me to take her to a meeting. So I took her and she had her drinking hat on. Somethimg wrong with this picture and I so desperately wanted to fix her.. But a flash of reality. I'm as powerless over alcohol re:her as I am with me. Nothing I could do or say would stop her drinking if that was what she wanted. So I waitted it out. Took her home afterwards and told her to call her sponsor as soon as she could. I went out the yard and sat with the dogs. Half an hour later and she's there with a mug of tea for me and a question. The answeer to which was I'm not your sponsor so I don't know how to handle this. It's now about half one in the morning and I'm back home in my own bed and I realise all I could do was what I did. Give her space and time to be herself. Think maybe I'm learniing to accept people as they are.
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
Is this THE special someone, going on vacation with her to the tropics might get involved special someone?
She's a newcomer now, think about that year thing, I am not saying act on it or don't act on it, but I am saying getting involved with someone who is in that situation only made me batsh!t crazy, a girl I was dating got sober after we had been together for a few years so there I was dating a newcomer...
was everything they said times 10
Oh man, red lights flashing, sirens wooping, London Airblitz warning alarms...you poor bastage, I am so sorry, this is not going to be navigated easily without being a heartless bastard or a codependent one, I am so sorry
Good judgment comes from experience, which mostly comes from bad judgment, I do NOT envy you your lessons in THIS life experience, I learned mine and they were bitterly painful, and this seems to be one of those lessons we insist on learning for ourselves, my heart goes out to you my brother, there's a lesson to be learned here, you didn't pick her for nothing, and she didn't just decide to drink "accidently" the moment you severed emotional bonds with your wife, this is like GOD CALLING in great big neon letters
-- Edited by LinBaba on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 08:00:44 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
tonight that special someone called and asked me to help. Asked me to take her to a meeting. So I took her and she had her drinking hat on. Somethimg wrong with this picture and I so desperately wanted to fix her.. But a flash of reality. I'm as powerless over alcohol re:her as I am with me. Nothing I could do or say would stop her drinking if that was what she wanted. So I waitted it out. Took her home afterwards and told her to call her sponsor as soon as she could. I went out the yard and sat with the dogs. Half an hour later and she's there with a mug of tea for me and a question. The answeer to which was I'm not your sponsor so I don't know how to handle this. It's now about half one in the morning and I'm back home in my own bed and I realise all I could do was what I did. Give her space and time to be herself. Think maybe I'm learniing to accept people as they are.
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You're right...accepting people for who they are is a learned trait and you have adapted rather quickly. You handled the matter very delicately and did so while maintaining your composure. Great job...
I relate!! after the fact. Glad your story is soooo much more different than mine was given the same situation. Her drinking along side my drinking almost killed us both and this was not the first time for me. Best relationship I have ever got into was with God and then myself. When I learned to respond as you did to her...and then leave (leave her to HP, leave the influence, leave the inticement, leave the whisper of danger with a promise that I would escape yet again, leave the compulsion to sacrifice my mind, body, spirit, emotions and sobriety just one more time, just leave it to higher powers than I...then I could say, "I am not your sponsor. I suggest you call them." I learned to leave without saying, "see you later." Thank you to this 12 step program of recovery and the God it introduced me to.
Admitted I was powerless over the alcoholic and my life had become unmanagable.
ah. Didn't make it clear. She didn't drink. Having the drinking hat on means this is a physical sign. But I'm glad I posted because I can rely on people here to see a different reality to the one I see and they got more experience. And no I put a stop to the holiday in the tropics. That was too much way too soon. Now I only said maybe I'm learning. One thing I've learned from the responses is to refine the response to call your sponsor and then I leave. That's what I shoulda done on reflection not hang around the yard with the dogs to see how it goes.
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
Is this THE special someone, going on vacation with her to the tropics might get involved special someone?
BB says: yep but no holiday in tropics. Too much too soon. No holiday no where.
She's a newcomer now,
BB says: No she didnt drink. ...and she didn't just decide to drink "accidently"
BB says: Got to make it clear. She didn't drink.
Rr reading my post it's clear I want my buddies to tell me how well I did or to feel sorry for me.
LB thanks for the alternate, unsought, realism and experience based shareback. I'll pm you.
My bad, I misunderstood, I thought she drank
PM returned
Thank GAWD she didn't drink, jesus "put your drinking hat on" is a euphesism for getting shitfaced here
Listen, the most amazing spectacular wonderful women I have ever met have been in the program, but also the most crazy, (sometimes but not always in the same person) what you are doing is exactly right, keeping your eyes open and your boundaries up and your programs seperated, what has historically gotten me in trouble has been trying to be the man they have always looked for, the supportive father, the good boyfriend, the "fixer" and once the boundaries got blurred between the programs it got messy, on the other hand I dated a girl with 15 years and we got our programs enmeshed, went to the same meetings, went to couples counseling and therapy together and even ended up sponsoring many other couples, and THAT was amazing, we both got to heal tons of our stuff and the other person was the vehicle, hard to explain but in my experience many relationship issues and family of origin behaviors, abandonment bullshit etc can ONLY be healed in a relationship with another person who is willing to walk that path with you, if you both sit still enough, and communicate enough, it's strange, but you remove all the stories and all that is left is the issue itself, which is a fear based one, and it heals, you heal, she heals, and there is nothing like it, and in my experience that stuff can ONLY be healed in a relationship
She is in your life for a reason regardless of the time you both have, the reason you "connect" so strongly is you are at the same level of emotional evolution, and it's my experience you have lessons to teach each other, in my experience what attracts us to each other is we have matching mental weaknesses, she has daddy abandonment, you have "let me fix you" nurturing codie stuff like, and which direction it goes depends on both of you, we either make this stuff worse or we heal it together
When I thought she drank I wasn't worried about her, she is not my friend, I was worried about you, and where that put your level of emotional evolution, if you had picked a relapser I was like "oh shit, Bill is screwed" because who we pick to be with is one of the best indications of our emotional development that we have, it is never wrong
I don't suscribe to the "I have a broken picker" theory, mainly because we always pick our mirror, our match, I hear these men whinge "I can walk in a room with 100 women and I ALWAYS pick the sick one, the broken one, I have a broken picker" when in fact the "picker" is balls on, it's not the picker that is defective, but the emotional operating system behind it, the picker is never wrong, so in my experience, as I got healthier, so did the people I picked, and truly, no relationship have EVER come close to the ones I had in AA with women who were also on the path of emotional growth, they took my breath away, and healed me in ways and in places I didn't even know I was broken
Find out what this woman is offering you, what lesson, what growth, and if it's towards health be prepared to have your breath taken away and go places right off your map, to the grey area that hasn't been explored where it says "Here there by Lyons", there is nothing better, and if it seems to be going the other direction, be ready to cut and walk away , sometimes the only lesson is "walk away", but there is a lesson there, I just thought if she had drank it was going to be an ugly, painful, morass, fields of flanders, bog of mud lesson, since she didn't drink, the prognosis is much more positive
Emotional growth just takes time, but the good news is it's NOT always painful, horrible, teeth pulling, train wreck stuff, sometimes it happens in bed with quarts of ben and jerry's with the indescribable feel of warm silky skin next to yours, and those have been as important as any other emotional lessons I have had in AA no matter what anyone says, when I was new(er) I used to joke I learned more program in bed then in meetings, and the truth is I wasn't that far off, my last two relationships have caused me to grow more as a human being then almost anything, some of it has been excruciatingly painful, but some of it has been some of the best times in my life, I truly am a proponent of periods of celibacy in which to grow and focus on ourselves, but what is the point of that? why do we do that?
So we can bring all of ourselves to the relationship we finally do get in, and if done with loving kindness the rewards I have experienced have been breathtaking and have involved more growth then any other area of our life, Bill writes about that in the 12 and 12, where relationships with other people is IT, why we drank, the root of all our defects, the root of all our pain etc etc, so there are worse ways of walking through that stuff then nekkid in bed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's (ice cream)
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Bill, it sounds like you're doing great! Being kind and loving withouth caretaking. Listening and encouraging her without giving advice. Being there without being her everything. I think it is super that you recognized you two weren't ready to do the trip to the tropics, BELIEVE ME I understand the temptation. Getting lost in a new romance is appealing, but one we cannot afford. We cannot dive in to that level of intimacy without risking our sobriety, for new romance is like a drug... the euphoria, the intense good feelings, the fantasy shutting out reality, ahhhhh... and before we know it we have lost sight of our #1 priority: sobriety.
Bottom line if you want this relationship to have legs you can't fly before you can crawl. Crawling develops the leg strength that will eventually help you and this woman stand together side by side, unified in love but not the same person. Independent and detached, but caring and loving of the partnership. Who knows if once you stand you will want to walk in the same direction or not, only time can tell...but for two people in recovery, and especially if this lady is newly sober, I encourage the two of you to take things s l o w l y... Easy does it! One day at a time. And leave the drinking hats AND boots off! :) Heather
Bill only one of the understandings I received on this journey of recovery which I nod to constantly is "Sober isn't only just not drinking". I acknowledge along with the entire fellowship that our disease is in one part a disease of the mind. When I poisoned mine it did not work right or at all. I may have looked sober at face value however when we investigated my thinking and behaviors a general consenses would be "AHA!" and then back to work on attaining sobriety.
I recently remembed a caveat from an early sponsor who told me, "remember who attends program with you and from where they also came." A bunch of sick people trying to get well.
