I Need An Overhauling

“Many of us needed an overhauling there.  But above all, we tried to  be sensible on this question.  It’s so easy to get way off the track.”  Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 69

And some of us more than others, apparently.  After taking a good, long time off  from any semblance of serious dating, dating with the intention of finding a Lifetime Companion, I find that regardless of the work I have done, my “picker” is still broken.  I still find myself attracted to the sickest of the sick.  If it is true that water seeks it’s own level that isn’t saying much about my progress, is it?  Luckily I’ve been buoyant enough to bounce happily right out of the last debacle.

In the part of the Big Book that discusses our Sex Inventory we find the word “ideal” or “ideals” mentioned five times; five times in four paragraphs.

1. In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life.
   
2. We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them.
3. Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow  toward it.
4. Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble?
   
5. We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing.

That’s a pretty big list.  And of course the way we get there is the same way we get to any other insight about our character defects or shortcomings.  God knows I have my own.  My ideals it turns out are so high that I am unable to live up to them myself.  I place the other in a position of superiority – and then when I am condescended to I resent them.  I’m not very  humble about what I have to offer in a relationship and I am rather demanding in what I am willing to accept.  And the thing that stings most about that is that, for me, this is progress.

Prior to the Man Who Never Was, in the earliest days of my recovery, I agonized and obsessed over the Imaginary Future Ex-Husband; someone I clearly didn’t see myself ending up with, but who, in the end of my using, I needed so that I could avoid the loneliness just the tiniest bit, if only for a little while.  The price I was willing to pay for the IFX was very high indeed.  Even making amends to him for my part of the terrible situation was excruciating.  He’d sit in meetings, ignoring me, being distinctly cold and it was all I could do to not weep for the hour.  He couldn’t drive me out of a meeting.  I wouldn’t allow that, but I suffered and I probably allowed most of that to go on myself.

The Man Who Never Was is a name I took from a book by Paul Monette.  “It’s strange, I don’t have such a bottomless well of self-pity about my illness, but about the man who never was, the hole in my heart goes all the way to China.”

This one really seemed like The Man Who Never Was – the one who would be able to fill in that ache and make it go away.  I wanted him to be that ideal, whether he was able to or not.  I placed him in the position of carrying that.  My real defect is still fear; in this case fear of being alone and never being loved.  My shortcoming is a lack of courage and of real love for myself: the kind of courage and love that would stop me from reaching for something just beyond my grasp.

As angry as I am, and in spite of all the wrongs I blame him for (be they real or imagined), I once again placed myself in this position.  I once again ignored my gut feeling and was blinded by the shiny.  It appears that after all the growing I have done in so many other areas, I am still not willing or not able to reach for that ideal.  As it was with resentments and fears, I need God’s help to mold my sex ideal.

I’m a heel for having gone off on him like I did the other day, particularly in a forum where I was obviously seeking validation of my own pain.  With regard to relationships my sponsor usually says, “Ride it out to the very end, and you’ll know when the end is.”  I don’t know if we’ve reached the end yet.  If we have, I am the one at fault.