Should I Leave?

As many of you my husband passed away in mid-August after an 11 month battle with brain cancer. I AM coming back to this blog (I have lots of material) and will announce new posts on http://GettingPastYourPast.wordpress.com and I invite you to share over there until this blog is in full swing.

I haven’t updated this blog because, thanks to the readers here, I’m reading “Should You Leave” by Peter Kramer and “Too Bad to Stay, Too Good to Stay Leave” by Mira Kirshenbaum.

I’m going to start posting weekly topics over there as soon as I’ve finished with the books (should be in the next few days.)

In the meantime, feel free to post here and ask questions. Or send me email for questions/topics. I WILL start posting here on a regular basis in the next week.

This is a post for any thoughts, feelings or opinions you have about 1. staying stuck in a bad relationship 2. questions you need answered to leave (or if you left, what was important for you to know or 3. anything that will help you to leave (or helped you if you left.

Put anything that doesn’t fit in another post here. This is also for people who have already left to share with what helped them figure it out and actually GO.

In the past, I stayed with more than one guy who was unfaithful and at least one (probably two) who were unfaithful more than once or who denied being unfaithful when I knew they were (okay, let’s all pile on the denial train because to not swallow his BS is to have to do something aobut it).

It was definitely about wanting to win…but I found that he was a booby prize…what had I won? Why did I want to win?

When I gave up the fight for my ex-husband and decided to never fight again for anyone who might be swayed in another direction, my life changed.

Are you in a relationship where infidelity is/has been an issue? Are you staying? Why or why not?

I posted this on the GPYP blog about 2 years ago. The question is: what are you pretending not to know?

There’s denial and then there is denial…but for the most part a lot of people spend a lot of time ignoring the cold hard truths about their partner, their partner’s family, their partner’s friends or their basic compatibility with the person they’ve chosen.
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If nothing changes, nothing changes. ~ Earnie Larsen

Today I was a guest on The Doctor Show on Sirius/XM radio and one person called in and said she and her husband were both recovering but locked into the same patterns and issues and she sounded emotionally exhausted. She wanted to know when you know it’s time to leave.

I invoked Earnie Larsen’s wisdom that in order for things to change, you have to change things. But the issue in alcoholic/addict relationships is that both addicts and their codependents tend to go round and round, stuck in patterns and interactions and unable to break out of it. It’s all action and reaction. Although it might sound different, its most likely the same arguments over and over again. And if nothing changes, nothing changes.
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From the beginning of my relationship with my first husband, I was an emotional cripple–fearful that he was leaving me and wanting him to leave me. I tried to break up so many times and have it be for good but he would come back and wear me down. The fights over our future were frequent and dramatic and I couldn’t take it. Finally I agreed to move in together, hoping the fights would end.
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Many many many situations involve one person enabling another. I have found that many people in bad relationships are enabling their partner and taking more responsibility than they should.
I’m going to do several posts on enabling, but here is the first, basic one.

What is enabling?

The shortest description is that it’s doing something for someone that they should be doing for themselves or not holding them responsible for what they should be responsbile for. Not allowing natural consequences to happen or not enforcing logical consequences. It’s covering up, covering over, excusing, and denying. And it takes a lot of work.
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