forgivness

For a while now my partner has been blaming me for our relationship issues and more and more often reasons that it is all related to my unresolved past of an alcoholic child. She asked me to read a book about it. Most of it doesn't really resonate with me but there was one chapter that made me think.

"Yes, it's true that your mother/father did/said those terrible things. But you must understand that he/she was drunk."

The implications of this double-bind message are especially destructive to you when you are in an intimate relationship. Your unconscious tells you that if you can find an explanation for inexcusable behavior, you must believe that the behavior is excusable.

In the family system affected by alcoholism, the alcoholic is rarely held accountable for his or her behavior. More likely, the child hears from the other parent, "What did you expect from a drunk?" Or, in early family recovery,

"You have to understand that your father/mother has a disease." The child hears the message that the parent can do whatever he or she wishes by simply using the excuse of drunkenness or alcoholism.

Now that you are an adult, you have become the most understanding person in the world when it comes to your loving relationships. Right? In almost every situation, you will find a way to make everything okay-certainly if someone must be at fault, you will take that fault upon yourself. You have learned how to understand, and you have learned how to take full responsibility upon yourself. Therefore, when you are treated in a lousy way, you analyze the situation and don't allow yourself to experience any angry feelings. Understanding a behavior does not make it automatically acceptable. But you learned to do that very well when you were a child, and denied yourself the pain for maltreatment because you believed that "My father/mother wouldn't have done that to me if he/she were sober."

This reflects my daily adult life very well. I do my best to keep everyone happy, take the blame for things I didn't do etc but it is all not working at all. I'm being called names, shouted at and generally hated and somehow I cling to this life hoping that one day it will get better.

Years ago I told my partner that living with her reminded me of living with an alcoholic - there are good days when you hope that this is it, from now on everything is going to be ok and then there are those unexpected random bad days. I guess this chapter in the book summarizes it very nicely but I already figured it out. Knowing about it though and doing something about it are two different things. Should I ditch my partner instead trying to help her just because the book says that I'm forgiving because of my past? This doesn't seem right. I'm who I'm and I do not care why I'm like that.