PROMISE EIGHT

August 15, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader

“We will choose to love people who can love and be responsible for themselves.” BRB p. 591

“Prior to coming to ACA, we had been unconscious about a great many things. Perhaps the most painful was our unconscious choice of the people we thought we loved. As children, we wanted to love our parents. So we overlooked their dysfunction as a way to make them lovable. After all, the alternative was to see them as they really were and leave – a choice that is rarely possible for a child.

As adults, we continued to make unconscious choices to love other dysfunctional people until one day we got it. Something was terribly familiar about the people we had chosen to love. It was deja vu, all over again.

As we come to consciousness about our childhood experiences and do the work in ACA, we begin to love and accept our True Self. Only then are we capable of having healthy relationships with others. We begin to choose people who are capable of truly loving us, and who take responsibility for themselves. We are now willing to share our True Self, the person we were meant to be, the one who is able to love responsibly in return.

On this day I will examine my relationships, both past and present, to help me understand the choices I have made. I will begin to share my True Self with others in my life so that I may find the love I deserve.”

My Experience:

“We overlooked their dysfunction as a way to make them lovable.”  Mind blown!!  No wonder it is easy for us to overlook dysfunction in potential partners, we have been doing it for a lifetime and are accustomed to it.  Conversely, it was probably easy for people to overlook my dysfunction as they too had grown accustomed to it.

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