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 Loneliness - Clovis
I never thought I could get this way. for three years
of my life, I spent all my time caring for an
alcoholic/addict with severe issues of self-worth. I
always felt better taking care of him than myself--I
guess you could say that my life was taking care of his
life and putting things in order, covering for him to his
parents, helping him out with money and food--I didn't
really have much for myself. And now he refuses to talk
to me at all. I can't understand what I did wrong and he
won't explain anything to me. It wouldn't be so bad
except that this is almost a year later and I'm still
obsessing about him and wanting to know what I did wrong.
Can anybody offer advice?
 From: Bernd
Run, don't walk, to your nearest Al-Anon meeting.
Trying to understand an alcoholic/addict, and our own
reactions to them, is too difficult for us to sort out on
our own. The alcoholic is addicted to booze, and we are
addicted to the alcoholic. They are both diseases - we
didn't cause them, or want them, but we have them - and
the 12 step program is essential "medicine" to
help us learn to cope with the disease. Like having
diabetes - if we don't get appropriate treatment, it
makes our lives misrable, and eventually it kills us.
Search for any help you can find on the web too, under
codependency and living with alcoholism. You deserve more
happiness than you're getting.
From: Damaged Shields
Basically, it looks as though you've answered your own
question: You distracted yourself from your own life, and
spent all your time taking care of someone else, which
took away from your own life and your own healing and
issues. As far as this person not wanting anything to do
with you anymore, maybe it's because they aren't ready to
'heal', or they don't want any help yet in their life.
And being with you would only make them have to look at
themselves, which is something they're not ready for. A
person can't begin to heal until they are ready, and
willing. If you read your post again, you'll see that you
have answered your own question. I'm not a total expert,
but I have had enough things that are similar to your
situation, in my life, to where I feel I have a comment
to offer. After I realized that I too was trying to fix
everyone else, I finally realized that my time alone
could be used for healing myself, and learning all the
wonderful things there were to know about myself. Time
alone now, to me, is very precious. And it's really not
such a scary thing to look inside of yourself and see who
is really there. Once I stopped running away from myself,
I realized that I was missing out on the best friend I
could ever have and be, and that was my relationship with
myself. Now when I'm ready to share a life with someone,
it's just that, to SHARE, and walk hand in hand. It's
hard to walk through life with someone when one of them
is sitting on your shoulders all the time. Go back a few
posts and read my "When I'm on my own...." post
if you'd like.
From: Clovis
I need closure. I don't know how to get it. Aaron's
(my chemically dependent ex) refusal to talk with me does
not give me closure. it makes me think that he wants to
talk to me, he needs to talk to me, but he is afraid. and
when he is afraid he makes stupid choices. so instead of
focusing on my impending graduation and all the work that
goes along with it, I spend my free time worrying about
what he is going through. I still can't get away from
this mother image I project to troubled men. my new
boyfriend is also very emotionally needy, but has no
alcohol/drug dependencies. why do I attract these people?
for the most part, I am a confident individual. I work
hard, I study hard, and I like to make people laugh, but
for some reason confident men are not attracted to me. I
feel like I'm doing something wrong. it seems the worse
off a man is emotionally, financially, etc., the more I
need to be with him because he needs me to take care of
him and provide for him. also, I feel bad when I want to
break things off or move on. why am I like this?
From: Oregon
Hi Clovis:
We all want to feel needed and important, and it seems
to me the more troubled a person is, the more we feel
needed. But if you read my message, you'll see the long
term resentment and eventual collapse that seems to
breed. People are naturally selfish and independent at
the very very core, anything beyond that is what makes us
human, but I believe that's where our instincts lie. My
ex, in a sense, gave her whole day-to-day life to me and
then wanted it back in a dramatic way. (I did most of the
day-to-day tasks, and the kinds of normally adult
individual responsibilities and planning that couples
should share, I did FOR her)..... Although I resent her
deeply for not meeting me half way and simply asking for
the space she suddenly needed, I understand that she felt
part of her was gone, and in my control completely. I've
learned one thing from my experience--there's a point
where you're not getting your (hopefully well-considered)
needs and expectations met, and if it isn't worked out
that that point, it goes deep into the relationship and
festers. Highly Needy people just need, and they need
from those who happen to be nearby...simplified of
course, but it means that you may be somewhat generic to
them.
This is the whole world of co-dependency I'm just
learning about...but ask yourself what themes of your
childhood appear in these relationships....maybe feeling
like you matter, or are indispensable. Perhaps your
parents made you feel somewhat insignificant...somewhere
in you is an instinct to get away from this (hence you do
sometimes break these things off) that's good--I didn't
get away from what wasn't working and from excessive
caretaking and now I'm paying a pretty high price...but I
wonder why you want to "close" so much with
this ex? A feeling I have too (though 8 years is a bit
different) but also maybe the supreme caretaking act. You
don't have to be thoughtless, but if this person doesn't
want to talk to you, are you comforting your own sense of
guilt by insisting they do? just some incomplete thoughts
but maybe from a place you might find yourself in years
to come if not careful!!
From: Bernd
Hi Clovis,
It IS really tough. Big soft hugs. You asked “why
do I attract these people?”. Maybe a more helpful
question would be “why am I attracted to these
people?”. In relationships, my guess is that we tend
to give out what we want back in return. If we want
someone to help us with our inner pain and turmoil,
especially if we feel that few people will do that for
us, we tend to look for someone who is looking for much
of the same thing. If we give it to them, then we can get
it BACK from them.
We’re good at tricking ourselves into believing
that we don’t “expect” anything back. But
I think that deep down, we desperately crave that empathy
and soothing for our inner pain. At the beginning stages
of a relationship, the trade usually works fairly well,
and we feel very much in love. But time begins to unravel
the “equality” of the hidden trading; our
partner doesn’t give us what we need or expect at
times, and we feel resentful - and pull back on what we
give THEM (unconsciously) - and THEY get resentful.
Often, the resentments begin as small ones, but each one
is collected, and pretty soon the bag of resentments each
one carries gets bigger and heavier. Things tend to go
downhill pretty rapidly from there.
You are “like this” because it’s likely
that you learned well from the examples around you as a
child, and also it’s likely that you got hurt
emotionally a lot as a child, and found that it
wasn’t safe to ask for empathy, consolation, hugs,
and love when you were hurting. Often, to survive
emotionally, we trick ourselves as children into
believing that we’re tough enough to make it on our
own WITHOUT anyone else’s help. We develop a shell
of confidence, that helps us cope with life without
feeling suicidal - until we get into an intimate
relationship with someone who puts a horrific crack in
that shell. We feel the painful, lonely emptiness inside
that shell, and it terrifies the hell out of us. We will
do almost anything, ANYTHING, to plaster that crack shut
again, to hide that emptiness and loneliness - and often
in our panic, we jump into an even WORSE relationship.
Clovis, that emptiness - that space inside your inner
shell - NEEDS healing. That shell helped you survive as a
child, but like a caterpillar in a cocoon, you can only
fly free by letting it go. There is no other way. Every
resource I’ve used to help me let go of my shell -
and I’m still very much in the process of letting it
go - can help you find the same freedom, and the same
healing. The empty space exists for a reason - it is
waiting to be filled with love, happiness, inner joy and
peace, and all the other good things you’ve been
wanting inside you all your life. Some days I can only
add a tiny drop of those inside my emptiness, but other
days it just seems to come rushing in. It doesn’t
matter how fast it happens. ll I know now is I want to
keep filling it, whatever time it takes.
Use whatever you can find. Search wherever you can.
The biblical saying “seek and you shall find”
has a lot of truth to it. You deserve love - and you
especially deserve to get it from yourself.
Start with one step, any step. The rest will follow.
You may or may not get closure from your ex.
That’s beyond your control. The more you can focus
on healing you, and the pain from your past, the less
you’ll need relief from your anguish from your ex.
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