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Post by gratefulheart on Dec 2, 2009 13:39:18 GMT -8
As things have slowly and brightly come to my attention about my love addiction, i have thought deeply and hard about the reasons why I have been going through the anguish of withdrawals from my POA's and panic when I can't pass the torch.
i realize I had buried my identity and every longing, fear, hunger for love and only antidote for avoiding abandonment in these men. As crazy as it sounds, my POA's have been my identity. i have denied a relationship with myself and starved my inner child from receiving love that only God and i can give her... give myself. I have immersed myself in other people so much so that my true heart and identity has been drowning all this time, barely coming up for breaths of air, throughout the years.
But i am taking in the air, for the first time. i have been scared of my existence apart from my POA's but my breath and this pain reminds me i'm alive. I am facing the anguish of separating my true self from these men. It is like being that little child again, freeing herself from her mother, cutting the cord and being left, trembling and alone.
I have to remind myself that i'm not in infant time anymore. I am an adult. and I'm not dying without my POA's even if it feels like it. I must hurt first in order to heal.
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Post by Bluejay on Dec 2, 2009 16:56:02 GMT -8
I get that and so many of us will identify too. I practically had no wants or needs independent of my POA. My every action, every breath was with her in mind - either satisfying my need to spend as much time as possible with her or thinking about her OR trying to anticipate her every want or need so I could fulfill it. She was my life. My reason for living. And it seemed like I would die without her.
But we go on living and eventually we learn to carve out a new existence. I'm still recovering. My POA is still in my thoughts daily, but she is NOT in my action. I think about her, but I don't act out with my addiction, I don't talk to her, I don't stalk or e-stalk. I don't allow her in my life, but she is still in my head.
I've got 8 months of NC and things are better. I have other friends. I keep busy with other people. I'm refocusing on my life and my family. This is the good, healthy path. But it's a long and winding road at times!
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seeme
New Member
Posts: 3
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Post by seeme on Dec 19, 2009 21:03:54 GMT -8
I can relate with the loss of identity, as I think the torchbearing is a strategy of focusing on others in order NOT to focus on self..I am 100% sure that in my case and others, we simply suffer from a very disfunctional relationship at a SELF level..and the only way out of it is to eliminate the contaminants (POA's) in order to see the truth, diagnose, find the tools and grow...I wonder how "addicted " one can be after years of theraphy....limerance and fantasies over POA's might seem absurde....Just my two cents,
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Post by ok2bme on Dec 19, 2009 22:57:35 GMT -8
Part of my problem with my current PoA is the loss of identity caused by my addiction to my husband my entire adult life. I lived to be in his world, which I was rarely considered & never cultivated in.
With my new PoA one of the challenges of breaking free is the fact that I have nothing good to fill it with. That's because through my last addiction I kept myself consumed with my husband to the point of having only a few friends, no career, no hobbies, it's amazing how many things that seem simple to most that I have not experienced. I literally have nothing good to return to or cling to through my accepting I can not latch on to his seemingly appealing life.
Maybe I want his life, not mine & that is why I want to be so attached to him. I hope someday to love my life so much that I don't need to be addicted to a person to feel high or happy. I would like my own identity...a good one.
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Post by geedee on Dec 19, 2009 23:27:02 GMT -8
ok2bme,
I wanted mt POA's life too. I felt like mine was worthless...and it was starting to be. I gradually emptied my life of all meaning because I lived only for his online contact. I spent all my time thinking bout him, sounding off to him about my H, future tripping about one day scenarios while he got on with his 'life and a half' as I've often read about here.
i was left with 'half a life' - probably even less and he just got on with his. even if i was travelling and supposedly having a great time nothing mattered to me.
how can you justify standing in front of the eiffel tower with your husband and still be thinking 'If I were here with my POA , this would be so romantic' or be on a cruise ship and going off on my own so that i could dream about being with my POA rather than enjoying myself with my H?
my life was never empty. I made it seem empty. as I've said my relationship with my H isn't perfect but I allowed myself to be brainwashed into thinking I deserved MORE. that's what my POA said to me for months. But he wasn't offering me more. he was offering me crumbs (as has been said of our POAs many times before) I wanted him to love me but he wouldnt say if he did or didnt. he just kept me hanging on and in the meantime I continued dying on the inside.
well time for you to wake up too ok2bme. you have God and you have you! Love yourself. fill the void with love for you. NOBODY can take that away from you and never again will you feel as if something is missing from your life.
greta
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Post by lotus on Dec 20, 2009 11:57:19 GMT -8
Greta, I did the same thing. I remember watching the New Years fireworks last year with my husband wishing I was there with POA because it would have been so romantic...we are all so similar, aren't we?
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Post by geedee on Dec 20, 2009 12:22:43 GMT -8
besatt i remember last New Year pining for my POA too ( When did I ever not pine for him???) He had told me he'd be thinking about me at midnight... yeah for about a minute I bet! LOL
By sharing our experiences we bring all these obsessive thoughts out into the open. I suppose we exorcise them in a way. And we see how similar our distorted thought processes are and that we all do the same mad things.
we also have the same crazy illusions in our head. i think I saw myself as the heroine in a romantic steamy novel.
I'm glad that I've realised that i was running away from reality more than pursuing a dream.
what I think is that our brains have to some extent short circuited and that it's time to sort the wiring out.
what is certain is that our addiction steals our life from us. we're not going to get back a single second of the time we have wasted on our poas so let's do some damage limitation for what is left of our lives.
greta
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Post by ok2bme on Dec 20, 2009 13:58:59 GMT -8
True about the lost time. I lost several years fantasising & standing in silence on stand by for my husband then went on to an escalated mental addiction to this PoA. I can not believe that my life is intended to be like this. I feel like I have so much more to offer my life & the people in it than lying in bed waiting, stewing, obsessing over what I can NOT have...ignoring what I can.
I can not stress the appreciation I have to find this site & be able to talk about this addiction & not be judged, punished or shunned has been a life saver. To read that people actually do recover although they must stay aware, is very valuable.
Thank You.
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Post by geedee on Dec 20, 2009 14:10:45 GMT -8
ok2bme,
of course you have so much more to offer others. but if you don't stop obsessing over this man who has nothing to offer you, you will have nothing left to offer anybody else.
you'll soon be nothing more than an empty shell. that's what i became. Thank God I found this board.
Get out while you still can and start recovering in earnest.
greta
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Post by ok2bme on Dec 20, 2009 19:14:23 GMT -8
Today I ended up feeling optimistic about building a new me. In talking with a fellow LA friend, I realized how it was so hard to move on because my reactions say go back to what I had before...& what I had before was 2.5 decades of obsessing over someone else. I need to build on good things & move forward!
When I'm in rare social atmospheres I really see how uncultured and uninformed I am in the simplest areas of life. It's embarrassing. I went to Red Lobster with a friend 2 weekends ago & she asked when was the last time I was there...I thought....it had been 18 years!! It's not that I didn't like seafood, it's not that I didn't have the money or a friend or family to join me...it was because my H didn't want to go & I only did what he wanted or nothing at all. He did not demand this of me, my addiction to him did.
I don't know where our marriage will go, but I'm actually thinking about things I'd like to experiment for ONCE!! I'm signing up this week if possible to learn a second language, just to warm up the old rusty learning tank. Maybe reading a newspaper article online daily...something, more than depending on one person to be all things at all times to me.
I'm seeing how I too wanted to be attached to his life...because it was ready made (full of friends, big loving family, an interesting business) instead of making my own life a desirable place to be.
I'm getting out!! Thanks.
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Post by not2bforgot10x on Dec 30, 2009 16:05:19 GMT -8
As things have slowly and brightly come to my attention about my love addiction, i have thought deeply and hard about the reasons why I have been going through the anguish of withdrawals from my POA's and panic when I can't pass the torch. i realize I had buried my identity and every longing, fear, hunger for love and only antidote for avoiding abandonment in these men. As crazy as it sounds, my POA's have been my identity. i have denied a relationship with myself and starved my inner child from receiving love that only God and i can give her... give myself. I have immersed myself in other people so much so that my true heart and identity has been drowning all this time, barely coming up for breaths of air, throughout the years. But i am taking in the air, for the first time. i have been scared of my existence apart from my POA's but my breath and this pain reminds me i'm alive. I am facing the anguish of separating my true self from these men. It is like being that little child again, freeing herself from her mother, cutting the cord and being left, trembling and alone. I have to remind myself that i'm not in infant time anymore. I am an adult. and I'm not dying without my POA's even if it feels like it. I must hurt first in order to heal. This is so honest, and so true (for me). I realized sometime over the past couple of years that I, too, buried my identity in lovers. I put my own needs aside for people and adapted to meet their needs, to the point where I lost myself. Thank you for your honesty and bravery. I am still working on becoming emotionally sober. I just joined this forum yesterday.  |
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Post by primrose on Jan 18, 2010 6:04:55 GMT -8
I was so envious of my POA and wanted to be like him, all that success. He manifested all the things I couldn't. But merging with him made me less able to function. I wanted his identity because really I wanted those things for myself, but didn't know how to get them. I still want success, but I know it doesn't come from trying to vampirise someone else. Well, mutual vampirism, he did more that his fair share of it too.
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seekingserenitynow
Full Member
3rd time with No Contact is feeling better every day. The obsessing is cooling WAY down. :)
Posts: 194
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Post by seekingserenitynow on Feb 16, 2010 13:40:49 GMT -8
wow ... thank you all for these honest and raw words. thank you for expressing them. they help me and i'm sure many others who read them. i can so relate to having tried to latch onto the poa's abundant, exciting life to avoid creating an abundant, exciting life for myself. it feels so wierd now that i did that. like a deeply cruel form of self-neglect. i worry so much in life about feeling abandoned, neglected, unnurtured, ignored, unappreciated. yet that is EXACTLY how i was treating myself. no wonder i felt so bad. i was living with myself and myself was treating ... myself ... (haha, confusing!) ... very badly. no more! still learning ... it's a proccess. but i must say, it's very cool to be re-meeting myself and treating myself every day with love and attention. feels really, really good. other people have been taking the cue and treating me with way more respect, love and attention too. |
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Post by miztex on Feb 16, 2010 20:10:38 GMT -8
My POA was the vampire. He wasn't living a great life; I WAS! I had traveled the world. I had a Masters degree. I had performed with Leonard Bernstein. I had two beautiful adopted children that I chose to love. I had a brilliant H who worked for NASA and was funny, creative,and a real people person. I had a lot going for me.
In contrast my POA was a slug. A blue collar worker at low wages in a dead end job. Never went to college, traveled much, or cracked a book. He was married, hated his wife, kid, and life. He said he couldn't bond with people. He was a bore, bigot and pervert.
I didn't latch onto him for an exciting life. I didn't even respect his life! But I let my life disappear while I waited for emails, texts, and phone calls that tapered off until I was left calling him! Why did I do it? Still trying to figure it out. But I think it was mostly a sex fantasy. He teased me into a frustrated frenzy. No touch, just sex talk and an occasional "I love you". What a waste of my time! I wasted a year!
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Post by miztex on Feb 16, 2010 20:12:11 GMT -8
Seeking SerenityNow,
I love your quote about Life was a temporary horror movie. Exactly how I feel.
Gotta go. H having surgery in a.m.
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Post by primrose on Feb 17, 2010 2:20:26 GMT -8
Miztex, am wishing your husband the best with his surgery. And you too. I hope it all goes well and he recovers quickly.
Maybe you have what my POA had about his life? His life is blindingly brilliant but he destroys it with his sex addiction and his gambling. He self-sabotages what he has. Everything on the outside looks wonderful but on the inside he is dying of self-loathing. If you are very successful and your life is wonderful, maybe part of you just doesnt believe you're good enough to have all of that good stuff?
I remember when my husband bought me an engagement ring. For him (he wasnt making much money at all at the time) he spent a fortune. I put his very sweet ring on my finger and burst into tears, I really didn't think I deserved it. It was so painful to be loved by someone so much when I didnt actually love myself very much at all. So painful to be looked at with love and admiration and trust, when I felt inside the core badness from my childhood.
Good things, wonderful things, in life can bring up a lot of anxiety if inside there is a child who still feels she needs to be punished. Perhaps your POA has shown you how little you really feel worthy of your wonderful life? You DO deserve a very happy life Miztex, but it can take time to really let that sink in if we dont feel good at base. best. Primrose.
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