Youngster's WAW Chooses OM, Now She's in Love!

[25yearsmlc]

good insights west

The ACOA (adult child of alcoholics) book is called just that and there are others.

2 concepts that hit me and still do, are:

1) we did not know what "normal" looks like, which matters. One of my brothers told me he didn't think he and his wife should fight much "at all" b/c "normal people don't have conflicts like this"...which I knew was incorrect.

As ACOA's, we imagine that there are NO problems in the "normal" families

and that everything is smooth sailing...OR TERRIBLE, with not much in between...
Our conflict resolution skills tend to be "attack & retreat"...and somehow hope a problem is fixed with that...and then doing it over & over for years, blaming the other one for it.

2) though we had role models of what "NOT TO DO", we will revert to those very behaviors

IF we do not replace those negatives, with positive "HOW TO DO RIGHT" methods.

For instance---

H's bf is a wonderful husband and father. A true role model for h and others, including bf's kids.

But HIS father was a lousy dad. HIS father (BF's) was married 3 times, cheated on the first two wives, got OW pregnant,

and when his 3rd wife left him

(b/c he forgot to learn anything from his disastrous failures in marriage, like how to be a good partner even when HE was "in love")


he took his own life on Thanksgiving a decade ago.

after draining those around him for a year, with all his loneliness and rage...never seemed to look inside. I guess he was too afraid to look within b/c of his shame and fear.


Though BF loved his dad, he always knew what NOT to do and who NOT to be like.

But he did not know who TO BE LIKE...

Fortunately,

bf had a great FIL as a role model for HOW TO do it right. So when crisis came (as his father's suicide surely was)

BF had the tools his fil had shown him.

I say all this b/c

WE can break the cycle. BF did and he had a terrible role model.

I broke the cycle. With work.

At a personal growth workshop I attended long ago, I talked about my family of origin and then

the family h and I were creating. Someone asked me

"Are you able to celebrate what YOU have created,

that is so different from what you grew up with?"

I LOVE THAT QUESTION...and the answer is,

YES, I am.

You can too. Figure out who the positive role models are, or will be, AND keep your eyes peeled for them down the road.

You can certainly have more than one and for different things, like a work role model and a father, husband, etc.

Then celebrate how your new life is better than what you grew up with.

I find this a better focus than looking at the past and mourning the deficits.

But yes,

noting the deficits is needed to some extent,

to recall or note where we weren't exposed to enough healthy working marriages

and we need that. And healthy marriages ARE, imo, by definition,

works in progress.

We can never say "we are THERE now, no more work to be done"...

but the "work" isn't exactly digging ditches work.

There are times it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, as YOU KNOW...but

when it works, it is so worth it.

Marriage, like dating,

is something you only have to get right with ONE PERSON

to make it all worth it.