Love

Since I am not going to be actually going back to meeting for a month, I need to keep SOME program in my life, somehow. School starts again tomorrow- and this month, my husband is supposed to be moving out. So I'm going to do my best to blog as often as I can. Journal here about what is going on, what I'm feeling, and what I'm thinking about the upcoming changes. I can feel the stress weighing me down. I've had a consistent headache for a week now. So I need to outlet it.

I originally started this blog as an outlet for my Al-Anon program, so I would like to get back to that.

This is from "Living with Sobriety":

For me, love means giving and getting comfort, care and compassion; for others there can be no love without dignity and shared responsibility. For some, feelings die when they are not returned in kind, nurtured and protected by an attentive partner. Others can love unconditionally, but from a distance. The capacity for loving may exceed a partner's capacity or it may not. Whatever our feelings may be, they are neither bad nor good; they simply are, and we have to work with them. I am free to love whomever I choose, and love, freely given is the most rewarding.
=========

I have learned a lot about love being in this marriage. For all it's faults, it's only because I, at one time, loved him with all my heart that I ever put myself through this. Sometimes it's been insane, and sometimes I lost sight of what love is supposed to be like. But who's to say? It's only been in the last year that I have realized that the love that my husband and I once shared is no longer growing. The roots have been picked apart- and we simply can't replant them. For some people, they have been able to love unconditionally from a distance. And I applaud those people who were able to have boundaries and detach and allow thier alcoholic loved ones to suffer thier own consequences and move on. I can't do that. Maybe I'm not strong enough.

I am unable to detach from his problems and remain in this relationship. I have control issues that after all these years, I still can't let go of. I have expectations- and as I read in a book on divorce that I just bought, "Reality Railroads Expectations."

No kidding.

So with that, I have to move on. Because my inablity to detach, will only bring me down. It will only further perpetuate this ugly cycle and probably kill him faster that he is killing himself.

Thoughts on love???