The other side of fear--threadjack from mental disorders

[SAR]

I hope no one minds if I move some of this discussion to a new thread.

This was my post from "mental disorders"

Dave

quote:My wife had exactly the same fears.
But now she says that the fear was actually greater before I disclosed because she didn't know why I was the way I was.

It is so hard, there are two fears happening at once, the first is "What if he never gets any better" and the second is "What the HELL will happen if he gets better?" Both I think are pretty universal.

So much of our role as partner to a fucked-up person revolves around the fucked-up-ness of each other and the relationship, what happens to the relationship when that goes away? The idea that my boyfriend was really going to begin a healing journey, at the end of which he'd be a "different person" from the one who first fell in love with me, was terrifying. It made me look hard at myself and at the foundations of our relationship. Were we just two kids acting out our pasts with no real healthy love to build on? Even if we could be healthy people, had the years of poor communication and hurt damaged our ability to be healthy people with each other?

It would have been nearly as easy for me to hold him back from recovering as it would have been to push him too hard to recover.

and this is from a later post by Niagra:

Perhaps as PARTNERS of SURVIVORS...we should re-focus our energy towards today.
Easier said than done, I agree. Between the Survivors fear about the past, our understandable fear about the future,neither is living for today,which is the only area we can attempt to have any control or influence over.
I offer this as advise, that I too could benefit,& should be following.

The SA we have no control over changing, it happened,we have become part of the aftermath,because of the Man we Love. If all our energy is scared & terrified (I am NOT saying I am not shaky at times, I am) about what if we are his strength, than he walks out,what more is there I don't know ?, how much more is he going to regress ?, how much more, can I listen to before I snap ! ! !,we are letting fear dictate our day.
Control appears to be a major need for the Survivor, well I want it to. I want to control the outcome not of next year, but the next day. I want to replace the fear the Survivors lived with everyday, that I am now "saddled" with, thoughts & actions towards empowerment. He deserves me to be strong for him, I deserve to be strong for myself. Prior to a month ago,this was not my life, well it isn't going to eat the life out of me. People who were supposed to be his support growing up, scarred him for life. With him brave enough to share his pain, I am more equipped,or perhaps more tolerable to handle his behaviour/hot&cold etc.
Get through every day at a time...

Cheers Niagara [Smile]

 

[SAR]

Niagra

Perhaps as PARTNERS of SURVIVORS...we should re-focus our energy towards today.
Easier said than done, I agree. Between the Survivors fear about the past, our understandable fear about the future,neither is living for today,which is the only area we can attempt to have any control or influence over.

I very much agree. But I do think that this has to come in its own time, because the fears about past and future are messages we are sending ourselves, and they serve a purpose.

As paralyzing as those fears were to me, they brought about a real change in my life. I had to ask "why?" What scared me so much about my boyfriend getting better? What scared me so much about him NOT getting better?

The "NOT" one was easier to figure out but harder to accept. I was very afraid that he (and our relationship) would not improve, because our relationship at the time was TERRIBLE. It snapped me out of denial and made me realize that if I was so scared of things staying the same, then they couldn't be that good.

Why was I scared of him recovering? Well, I talked about why a little in my other post, but really it was a fear about my own inadequacy and my own contributions (or lack of) to the relationship. He wasn't the only one bringing his dysfunction home.

We got together as two very unhealthy, hurting people-- young, both from troubled homes, promiscuous, angry, unwilling to give up any of our "selves"-- maybe there was some real love, certainly there was a strong friendship-- but the foundations of our PARTNERSHIP were really anger, neediness, and sexual acting-out, and escape from our families of origin.

We are remarkably similar in some ways.

If he was going to grow out of being that angry kid, I had to do it too-- I have to say by this time in my own life, I had pretty much grown out of it in terms of kids, job, friendships-- in all aspects of my life except my relationship with him, then it all came back to me.
I had done such a good job of growing up when it came to this other stuff that he was still an angry kid in many respects.

My desire to keep up with our evolving relationship really came out of this fear, that in his recovery, he would see our life together for what it was, and outgrow it--and me.
But the change it has brought about is genuine, and no longer motivated by fear, just by a desire to reclaim the life we should have been living all along.