You and I have so much in common it's unbelievable. All the way from the alcoholic parents who didnt show us the proper attention, the teenage promiscuity, and escape into a M with passive, controlling men. Ouch. But, I understand you saying you've made peace with your childhood. I say EXACTLY the same about my parents. They werent the best, but they did the best they could do. I look to it and say it made me the person I am today.. strong, resourceful, open-minded, compassionate. I think the overwhelming feeling in adulthood is that I made it and I'm FREE of all that tension, unhappiness, parental anger, etc. Life seems so much better now and I feel that what I need to do is make our life/future better than what I had.
Having said that and understanding SO much of what you went through (particulary a VERY angry father who was verbally intimidating and had the LOOK that scared the hell out of me).. I'd just like to suggest that you look inside just a little. I too dont feel the need to stay on a therapists couch and rehash the past, but I'm realizing that there are issues I have to deal with. Not wanting to project, but my childhood DID.. way deep inside leave me feeling unloved and unprotected. I approach life from the core belief that I must earn love by being a good person every day and that basically, the people I love probably won't protect me or be there when I need them most. That's made me a strong and capable person, but it's also colored my Rs with control and distrust. It's also the reason I held on to a bad M for so long.. it was much better than what my parents had, my kids life is much more healthy, so I didnt see how toxic my M was because I compared it to the disfunction of my childhood family and my M always looked OK from that viewpoint.
Another uncanny resemblence is your ability to look at something from both points of view, and that you take your part of the blame/guilt willingly.. sometimes when it's not called for even. And at other times, you seem to hold stubbornly to a point of view that's NOT compassionate. H's drinking for instance. I can see where you hate that because of your background, yet, you still don't give him the credit for quitting. Maybe it's because you expect him to be like you and proactively change until a prob is completely fixed.. not just do it halfway? Maybe not.. I could be wrong here.. but I know that I tended to expect my XH to have my stamina for personal change and he just doesnt. He didnt grow up in an environment that needed so much fixing. I did.. I spent every day thinking of ways to make life better, and I still do it today. Anything short of that.. well, is short of that.. ya know?
Anyway, just taking this journey and revisiting some of that "baggage" is helping me tremendously to see where I come from and how it affects my Rs. Specifically the way I allow my independence to keep others at arms length because I'm the only one I've ever been able to trust with that little girl inside of me.
Didnt mean to hi-jack.. just wanted to share and say I think you're doing great, and I hope you keep up the progress. I know the R is faltering, but you aren't and that's pretty amazing given all you've been through.
