As promised, in this post I will continue to tell the story of how SLAA helped me deal with an addictive relationship. All in all, I grappled with my attachment to this man for almost two years. One year in, I began attending SLAA meetings. After an initial first six months of seeing each other sporadically in the capital we both lived in, we moved to separate countries and I haven't seen him in person since. But my obsessive thinking of him continued, and contact with him was volatile, intense. Sometimes it was exhilarating, sometimes infuriating and sometimes - as I described in the last post - I was so exasperated at my inability to just cut him of that it made me suicidal. I was afraid of being labelled mad, or that he would suddenly turn on me...he never did. In fact his occasional acts of kindness, or when he showed me interest and understanding, made it even more complicated.
I could not simply write him off - as I had done at the beginning - as a crazy narcissist/sociopath who had callously used me for his own entertainment. My experience certainly felt like I had been targeted by a predator and made a victim - all the hallmarks were there when I read up about NPL and the like. But when I began my recovery in SLAA, I started to see that this was my perception of what had happened and that I was denying my own part. I was so unaware of how I put myself in a position where I would automatically be a victim, that the only possible explanation for the pain I was in was that it was his fault.
As this transformation in me began and I understood more and more my responsibility, the pressure on me eased. I was more compassionate with myself. I worked on my past, and with the help of the 30 questions (which you do as part of your Step 1-3) I looked at past relationships and experiences in a whole new way. I saw I had been after something very specific each time, and that I had put myself repeatedly at risk and compromised my happiness and self-realisation in trying to obtain it. I thought: yes, you were emotionally neglected as a child (a huge discovery in itself, made in therapy) and so it is only natural you would cling to someone like this. I deserve kindness and understanding, hugs - not chastisement and ridicule. The self-loathing around this issue had to stop.
Getting to know myself better has also really helped and given me strength. I think the idea is to graduate from a position where the will is still working to make sure you stick to your bottom lines, to a point where you are sober because you want to be, you feel it inside you, as a whole person. One example of this for me came about three months after I started SLAA when the man in question offered to visit me. This was exactly what I had yearned for, even though I knew seeing him would likely mean getting even deeper into what seemed an inextricable web of addiction, attachment, pain and need already. But I felt - in my bones almost - that I didn't want to see him, and so I declined.
I saved myself, whereas before I would have thrown myself under the bus just to get that feeling of love and affection.
Today I am not in touch with him at all. I miss him sometimes but I have no real desire to be in contact with him again. The last time we spoke he was angry with me over something - I am not sure what. Perhaps because I was in a relationship. But he was always adamant he didn't love me - and why would he? He knew my insanity - a crazy little girl howling in the dark - but little else about me.
I have so much that I want to write about and everything is interlinked, so I will be jumping between topics. I am on my way to a meeting now. I am dealing with a whole set of different relationship issues these days but I marvel at how much stronger I have become. Before, under such pressures - where the end of a relationship felt like a real possibility - I would have floundered, fallen apart. But know I feel pretty centred. I know I can not only survive on my own, but that I can thrive.
I could not simply write him off - as I had done at the beginning - as a crazy narcissist/sociopath who had callously used me for his own entertainment. My experience certainly felt like I had been targeted by a predator and made a victim - all the hallmarks were there when I read up about NPL and the like. But when I began my recovery in SLAA, I started to see that this was my perception of what had happened and that I was denying my own part. I was so unaware of how I put myself in a position where I would automatically be a victim, that the only possible explanation for the pain I was in was that it was his fault.
As this transformation in me began and I understood more and more my responsibility, the pressure on me eased. I was more compassionate with myself. I worked on my past, and with the help of the 30 questions (which you do as part of your Step 1-3) I looked at past relationships and experiences in a whole new way. I saw I had been after something very specific each time, and that I had put myself repeatedly at risk and compromised my happiness and self-realisation in trying to obtain it. I thought: yes, you were emotionally neglected as a child (a huge discovery in itself, made in therapy) and so it is only natural you would cling to someone like this. I deserve kindness and understanding, hugs - not chastisement and ridicule. The self-loathing around this issue had to stop.
Getting to know myself better has also really helped and given me strength. I think the idea is to graduate from a position where the will is still working to make sure you stick to your bottom lines, to a point where you are sober because you want to be, you feel it inside you, as a whole person. One example of this for me came about three months after I started SLAA when the man in question offered to visit me. This was exactly what I had yearned for, even though I knew seeing him would likely mean getting even deeper into what seemed an inextricable web of addiction, attachment, pain and need already. But I felt - in my bones almost - that I didn't want to see him, and so I declined.
I saved myself, whereas before I would have thrown myself under the bus just to get that feeling of love and affection.
Today I am not in touch with him at all. I miss him sometimes but I have no real desire to be in contact with him again. The last time we spoke he was angry with me over something - I am not sure what. Perhaps because I was in a relationship. But he was always adamant he didn't love me - and why would he? He knew my insanity - a crazy little girl howling in the dark - but little else about me.
I have so much that I want to write about and everything is interlinked, so I will be jumping between topics. I am on my way to a meeting now. I am dealing with a whole set of different relationship issues these days but I marvel at how much stronger I have become. Before, under such pressures - where the end of a relationship felt like a real possibility - I would have floundered, fallen apart. But know I feel pretty centred. I know I can not only survive on my own, but that I can thrive.
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