I have heard people in the rooms talk about how they struggle when their partners are away. They are tempted to act out on their addictive behaviour because they have the freedom to or because they need a fix to make up for the absence of emotional fixes. Intense longing, obsession, restlessness and pain can take over, accompanied by shame for having these feelings and not being more self-sufficient.
My boyfriend is away and out of touch for a few days, and I am thinking about him a lot. Before I went into recovery, I would have been paralysed, incapacitated during this time, desperately trying to get hold of him for some word of reassurance. Now, I am not even tempted to contact him. I don't want to upset myself by getting into a waiting-for-reply pattern, and more importantly, I dont want to infringe on his space. This is certainly a result of recovery: I would not previously been able to be truly considerate towards someone. My needs were too overwhelming, too pressing.
But my trust in him is plummeting as the hours go by, for no other reason than him being out of sight, out of contact. I manage to put the brakes on my imagination, but the paranoid images and fantasies are bubbling away below the surface somewhere. Rather than indulge them, I want to know what is really troubling me so much. I have no reason not to trust him but I am afraid to do so. I can feel something in my body holding me back, I tense up. To let go and embrace the flow and warmth would mean opening myself up to danger. I think it is the right thing to do and I want to try, but it feels like such a risk. What if he hurts me, betrays me? I am afraid.
If you strip everything away, including my boyfriend, then it comes down to this: I am face to face with my own vulnerability. It is not about me trusting him as much as trusting the universe, trusting a higher power. I want to control something I cannot control, and this brings me pain. My boyfriend can always let me down and vice versa, but the light and the flow that I feel when I think about the higher power will always be there. The "I" that has a boyfriend, a son, a job and so on, is just one part of me. The other part is my soul, my inner life. I think this must be my core and from there I witness everything on the outside, the events in my life, my thoughts and actions.
While he is away and the negative feelings arise, I will say to myself: "Of course you find it hard to trust after everything that has happened, and that's ok. Try to let go, to open yourself up. Yes, it is a risk, but you can handle it if things go wrong. You are strong, and you always have the light and flow at your core to back you up."
My boyfriend is away and out of touch for a few days, and I am thinking about him a lot. Before I went into recovery, I would have been paralysed, incapacitated during this time, desperately trying to get hold of him for some word of reassurance. Now, I am not even tempted to contact him. I don't want to upset myself by getting into a waiting-for-reply pattern, and more importantly, I dont want to infringe on his space. This is certainly a result of recovery: I would not previously been able to be truly considerate towards someone. My needs were too overwhelming, too pressing.
But my trust in him is plummeting as the hours go by, for no other reason than him being out of sight, out of contact. I manage to put the brakes on my imagination, but the paranoid images and fantasies are bubbling away below the surface somewhere. Rather than indulge them, I want to know what is really troubling me so much. I have no reason not to trust him but I am afraid to do so. I can feel something in my body holding me back, I tense up. To let go and embrace the flow and warmth would mean opening myself up to danger. I think it is the right thing to do and I want to try, but it feels like such a risk. What if he hurts me, betrays me? I am afraid.
If you strip everything away, including my boyfriend, then it comes down to this: I am face to face with my own vulnerability. It is not about me trusting him as much as trusting the universe, trusting a higher power. I want to control something I cannot control, and this brings me pain. My boyfriend can always let me down and vice versa, but the light and the flow that I feel when I think about the higher power will always be there. The "I" that has a boyfriend, a son, a job and so on, is just one part of me. The other part is my soul, my inner life. I think this must be my core and from there I witness everything on the outside, the events in my life, my thoughts and actions.
While he is away and the negative feelings arise, I will say to myself: "Of course you find it hard to trust after everything that has happened, and that's ok. Try to let go, to open yourself up. Yes, it is a risk, but you can handle it if things go wrong. You are strong, and you always have the light and flow at your core to back you up."
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