Why Don't I Feel For My Partner Any Longer?

What happened to the feelings we used to have for one another in our relationship? Where did they go? Can we get back to a place where we can feel that way again?

We must try to understand that our feelings didn't just vanish overnight. They faded away a little at a time over the years as we and our partner built walls not bridges, with the communications we shared. Those walls are made of bricks crafted of disappointment, bitterness, resentments, hurts, loss, pain, rejection and uncertainty.

Since it took years to create those walls we cannot expect them to come down quickly. The mortar that holds those bricks together is formed from defense mechanisms that each of us have learned during our time together to protect ourselves from further pain and loss.

The reason we don't "feel anything" for our partner right now, is because we have experienced so much pain, loss and disappointment... that our defense mechanisms have sprung up to protect us... in this way we don't feel anything at all... we're numb.

It's easier to be numb than to feel pain. But remember, numb means we don't feel joy (or love) either. In order to begin to "feel" for our partner again, we are going to have to experience the backlog of frozen feelings that we have been avoiding through being numb. Once we have cleared through all that frozen pain, loss, disappointment and whatever else is in there... quite a lot of work... we will begin to experience our emotions once again.

This is not a task for the faint hearted. Facing all the "stuff" that we have denied and allowed our defenses to freeze will be a courageous experience like none other we have undertaken in our adult life.

BUT... it is a journey worth every ounce of effort. It will bring us to a place of peace unlike anything we have ever experienced. Good luck to each of us as we embark on our journey... and all our hopes that we find ourselves through this process of recovery.

HANDBOOK FOR 2010

HANDBOOK 2010

Health:
1. Drink plenty of clean fresh water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy.
5. Make time to pray.
6. Play more games
7. Read more books than you did in 2009 .
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day
9. Sleep for at least 7 hours.
10.Take a 10-30 minutes walk daily. And while you walk... smile.

Personality:
11. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey entails.
12. Don't invest in negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Live in the present moment.
13. Don't over do. Keep within your limits.
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you truly need.
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner of mistakes.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate.
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Smile and laugh more.
23. You don't have to win every argument. Learn to agree to disagree.

Society:
24. Call your family often.
25. Be charitable... each day give something to others.
26. Forgive easily and anger slowly.
27. Spend time with people over 70 & under 6 whenever you can.
28. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
29. What other people think of you is less important than what you think of yourself.
30. Your job won't care for you when you are sick or lonely. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:
31. Do the right thing!
32. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, meaningful or joyful.
33. Our higher power heals everything.
34. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
35. No matter how you feel, get up, shower, get dressed and show up.
36. The best is yet to come.
37. When you awake alive in the morning, be grateful.
38. Your inner being strives to be happy. So, be happy.
39. Share your vision with others.
40. And finally... Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Challenges are part of the curriculum but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.

What is the Purpose of Our Relationships?

Every relationship arrives in our lives to give us the opportunity for healing. What we do with that opportunity is our choice. If we waste it trying the same old behaviors that didn't work for us in the past, we can repeat the same old mistakes and get the same lousey results.

If we decide to do our recovery work and begin the journey within, we may find that we have been presented with the same lesson again and again. Our Higher Power has the patience and all the time in the world to teach us the lessons we need to improve our lives. If we don't learn our lessons, they are repeated over and over again until we finally get it. Once we learn the lesson, the next one is presented.

Each time we have a choice... it's okay to lose, just as long as we don't lose the lesson.

Here are some of my lessons...

I learned patience, tolerance, forgiveness, wisdom, kindness, generosity, and letting go from my relationship with my son's Dad after we no longer lived together.

I have learned tenderness, love, gentleness, loyalty, respect, acceptance and that change can be safe in my relationship with my partner.

I have learned to let go and allow my son to become his own person, a capable adult.

These were all difficult lessons. Some hurt a great deal, some left me with scars that remind me of the difficulty of the lesson every day. But all of them are lessons I needed to learn to be the person I have become. I regret none of them.

The most important lesson of all I saved for last... trust... I learned that from my Higher Power

Lying, Insecurity and Alcoholism

When faced with a situation where our partner feels insecure or unsure they lie. We have discovered that their parent(s) were alcoholics. What happens to us when we are raised in an environment where one or both of our caretakers are alcoholics? Is this an underlying reason for their habit of lying?

There is a group called ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) that is a 12 Step Program based on the principles of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) that has a great deal of information about behavior patterns in adult children. This is the place to begin our journey for answers.

Lying is often related to self esteem issues. That doesn't mean that there can't be more serious problems, but generally when alcoholism is involved, so is self esteem. Very often adult children grow up in constant chaos as their alcoholic parent(s) drinks themselves into oblivion in front of them. Our partner may never have felt safe or secure in their early lives. They may have lived in a home that was always in a shambles either physically, emotionally or both.

The effect of having a parent who is an alcoholic cannot be underestimated. Very often children in alcoholic homes never learn to self soothe. They don't have parents who set appropriate limits and boundaries so they never learn what acceptable behavior looks like. They may be aware that they don't have appropriate social skills but have no clue where to find out how to behave.

There is great hope in counseling for ACOA. Many have been able to recover from the trauma of their childhoods due to alcoholic family members. It may take time and a great deal of patience by both our counselor and our partner. This type of recovery program may involve us learning to set boundaries and limits with our partner as well as our partner learning to face their fears and allow themselves to be seen for who they are without the masks. Our partner has lived without consequences for lying for most of their adult life. That will have to change.

The fact that our partner doesn't react with emotion may mean that they have learned how to stop feeling. As a result of the pain of trauma during childhood, our partner has chosen to freeze all feelings rather than face them. This is common in trauma survivors. As children they needed this defense mechanism to survive. Now as adults, it no longer serves a purpose and is actually the cause of difficulties occurring in our relationship. As they defrost and begin to feel again they can become very depressed and/or angry for a while as they process all the pain and loss they have been supressing.

That can be a very difficult time for both our partner and ourselves. Recall that our partner has some very positive qualities that we value... loyalty, humbleness, deference, good heartedness, excellent business person, handsome looking. Our partner is also intelligent and capable. These are some very positive statements. We must recall that we love our partner very much. There is a question we ask partners in couples counseling...

Are we happy with our relationship at least 50% of the time?

Remember, this isn't just about the flaws our partner has... we all have some real whoppers... our partner needs to learn judgement and appropriate behavior in a safe environment.

There is much benefit for us to be found in doing some reading on ACOA. There are some excellent materials available in bookstores, online through Amazon and at ACOA meetings. Here is the link to ACOA http://www.adultchildren.org/ . Click on "the problem" in the first paragraph to learn about the disease and what it feels like for the adult child. Here is a link for some recovery books. http://www.cyberus.ca/~rocksoft/teddysrule/readings/re_bibli.html

Shame... Obsession... and Recovery

Thomas J. Scheff, Sociologist has made some observations about shame, humiliation and obsession. These views are an excellent reminder of the reason we take recovery to heart, making time each day to practice self care and keep our tools sharp. We are grateful for the role recovery plays in our lives keeping us from being absorbed by humiliation and shame. We know who we are, we are honest with ourselves about our capabilities and our flaws. We see ourselves in truth. Each of us has our unique gifts and we celebrate them in our daily lives.
Here are Thomas Schreff's words.

Many of us have painful obsessions, lasting for hours, days, weeks or months. Someone has been rude or rejecting, so we think about what we should have said, or how we could have avoided the incident entirely. These thoughts go on night and day. We try to think about other matters or do other things, but we eat obsession with breakfast, lunch and dinner. These small obsessions eventually leave. We can still remember the moment, but the pain and compulsion have disappeared. What happened?

Perhaps emotions are the secret, particularly humiliation or shame. Instead of acknowledging the pain in the moment, we internalize it. The danger is that we can become ashamed of being ashamed, and so on, a spiral. People who blush, for example, can be ashamed of the blush, and so blush even more, round and round. So humiliation can spiral to the point that it haunts us. Emotions, at their core, are bodily states of arousal. It is bodily arousal over which we have no direct control that makes the obsession painful and compulsive.

At times, instead of merely swallowing the insult, we responds in kind, either in the moment, or more likely, in thinking about it afterwards. Instead of suffering humiliation in silence, we activate our defense... anger. We are still obsessed, but are now driven by anger about being humiliated, and shame about being angry, a loop. Both shame and shame/anger spirals can lead to endless obsession.

As we remember who we are and were we began our journey into recovery we can appreciate how easy it might be to allow ourselves to spiral out of control into the dark recesses of obsession and shame. We practice self care giving ourselves all we need to create a safe place where we can blossom. Our tools are our lifeline keeping us grounded in our gifts and our abilitiy to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and those we love.

Am I Growing?

How do we know when we are growing? How can we tell if we have changed? We see ourselves everyday, what can we use as a yardstick?

When we enter into the process of recovery we place ourselves on a path of growth that is often three steps forward and two steps back. As we grow and change it may not be apparent to us that we have made strides in our efforts to become healthier. This may cause us concern or allow us to feel as though we are not accomplishing our goals.

We can take steps to avert this type of second guessing. We can use our tools to create a snapshot of ourselves at various points along our journey.

One of our most successful tools is journaling. We take bit of time on a regular basis and write out our thoughts and feelings. We may want to include small bits of current events to remind ourselves of the drama and chaos that surrounded us when we entered into the path of recovery. As time progresses we will be able to read our prior posts and realize how far we have come along our chosen path.

Another tool we can use to help us see our own growth is a gratitude journal. We write down five reasons we are grateful each night before we drift off to sleep. They can be anything, from our kids to our pet. We can be grateful for the simplest things, like food on our table, or the most complex, such as being able to understand physics. Initially the exercise may feel awkward and we may be unable to think of five new things to write down each day. But over time we will see how our world has enlarged as we grow and change.

Sometimes we complete our exercises and use our tools grudgingly, just going through the motions. But over time as we see the growth in ourselves and the changes we engender in those we love we will become more enthusiastic in our efforts and understand that we can only change the world one person at a time... that person starts with us.

An Inside Job

When we begin our journey into recovery our lives may have become very small as a result of the dysfunction within which we live. In order to please others we may have given up much of our interests, hobbies, friends or acquaintances. Some of us may have given up careers to raise a family or to be a homemaker. With all we have relinquished we may come to the table empty, feeling as though we are a vessel from which all has been poured.

Sooner or later each of us comes to a point in our lives when we finally discover that happiness is an inside job. We realize that no one can make us happy except ourselves. If we have spent many years attending to the needs and happiness of others, we may suddenly discover we feel vacuous. Developing ourself is our responsibility. Finding hobbies we enjoy and friends to fill our life are good beginnings. We would err to expect our partner or family to be our all. We need friends and personal growth to complete us as individuals. Our partner can certainly be our best friend, but not our only friend.

We think of ourselves like a gear with teeth sticking out in all directions. Each tooth represents one aspect of our life. One tooth may be our partner, one our children, one our extended family, one our friendships, one our career, one tooth for each of our hobbies, one for our love of the theatre, and so on. In this way the gear is representative of a fulfilling life. It is our mission in life to fill each tooth with something of meaning to us, thereby adding value to our lives. If we are diligent we will have a life filled with joy and meaning as accomplished by our own hand. What more could we ask for?

Karma and Acceptance

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Acceptance and difficult decisions... that's the toughest part of relationships. We often begin our relationship with love in our hearts and rose colored glasses on our face. We bathe in the glow of eros, or sexual, love as our relationship begins. We feel alive and joyful. Our partner appears perfect through the haze of erotic love.

Over time as we grow in our relationship we notice that our love has changed. It has gone from being only eros to include agape love. Agape, or selfless, love is a matured love. It is a love that allows us to put our partner first, to compassionately fill their lives with warmth and empathy. As we give ourselves fully to the relationship, we free our partner to do the same.

The Buddhists call Karma the law of moral causation. We get what we give in life. If we give our partner empathy, warmth, respect, acceptance, security and loyalty we will likely get the same in return. If we give our partner condemnation, criticism and complaints we will probably get that in return as well.

As we focus on the positive in our lives and try to be the person we want our partner to be, we allow the ebb and flow of the universe to pass through us. We give up the press of forcing our will and permit events to unfold naturally. We use our tools to de-stress recognizing that enjoying the journey is the ultimate goal.

Recovery In Five Short Chapters

[Recovery in Five Short Chapters is adapted from the original by Anonymous]

Chapter One -
I walk down the street. Suddenly, without warning, I fall into a hole. It is huge, dark, and frightening. I am scared. I fumble around in the dark trying to find my way out. I feel nothing out there. I can see nothing. I am lost. Terror overcomes me in the darkness. I want to curl up in a ball and hide. Somehow I begin to try to find my way out. It seems to take forever, but eventually I begin to feel the edge of the hole and I can follow the walls in the dark. After what seems like an eternity I can see the light in the distance. I follow it and climb out. I am exhausted, shaken to my core. I continue on my journey.

Chapter Two -
It is the next day. I walk down the same street. I know the hole is out there... somewhere. I am frightened. I fall in again. It is huge, dark and scary. I feel lost. I know there is a way out, but I cannot find it. I begin to feel terror in the darkness. Somewhere in my mind I remember there is a way out. It takes a long time, but eventually I reach the edge of the hole and feel my way along the walls in the darkness. After a very long time I begin to see the light and I climb out. Again I am exhausted. I continue on my journey.

Chapter Three -
It is the next day. I walk down the same street. I see the hole. It is up ahead. I know it is there and that I will fall into it. I feel uneasy. It is familiar in a scary way. I really don't want to fall in, but I can't help myself. It is still dark and very big. I recall that there is a way out and begin to reach for the walls at the edge of the hole. I find them more quickly than before. Soon I see the light and am able to climb out. I feel spent, but understand what has happened. I continue on my journey.

Chapter Four -
It is the next day. I walk down the same street. I see the hole. It is up ahead and it is huge. It stretches across almost the whole street. I see a path around the edge that has been walked by many others before me. It is narrow and there are places where I might fall into the hole but I decide to try. I walk around the hole!! I am exhilarated!! I continue on my journey.

Chapter Five -
It is the next day. I walk down a different street!!

The journey of recovery begins with the recognition that we are falling into the same hole over and over again. We can choose to walk down a different street. Make the choice. The path is clearly marked. Let your Higher Power guide you along placing one foot in front of another in faith.