Expert: Rhapsody Love - 9/19/2001

Question
I'm 52. Married unhappily for 34 years, to an alcholic. Time has come to move on, and I've know this for years. A year ago I started to email an old high school friend, who lives in the same town, and who is also married unhappily. He has asked me to lunch, took me out on my birthday, calls me on the the phone ect. His wife has filed for divorce, not because of me, she knows nothing about this. Any way, I moved on this very cauciously, I've been hurt before, and he knows all about that. He and I have not had sex, but have kissed long and passionatly, and at 52 I have butterflys, and not moths! I finally e-mailed him 2 weeks ago, and told him I was ready to have more that just kisses. And he replied that he wasn't ready, heart wasn't there, to be patient with him. I'm afraid now that I've blown it! We have had lunch since, and we still talk about everthing, but he hasen't mentioned sex, and now doesn't make any advances like he did before. What is next? What do I do now, or do you  think that this is a dead end? Says he has to heal first.He says that he'll let me know when he is ready. I'm so confused, I was so organized and my life was very structured till a few months ago.  HELP!!! What can I do?

Answer
Sandy,

You are in a co-dependent relationship.  "Co" means cooperative - it takes two.  Your husband is not the only one with issues; he's not the only one that needs help and to change his lifestyle.  I know this is not what you wanted to hear.  This may be why your friend has cooled off, though.  He may realize that is true.  He may not want you to become dependent on him and for the relationship to become unhealthy.  He may not be just thinking about himself; he may be thinking of you, but not know how to communicate it.

If you want to leave your present relationship, this is understandable and the first step to ending co-dependency.  You need to become independent, though, and deal with your own issues.  When you have become healthy, then and only then, can you start a new healthy relationship.

Here are some web sites with information that might help (this site doesn't make links clickable, so you can have this emailed to you where the links may become clickable or you can copy and paste them into your browser - use a new browser, though, so you won't lose this page).:

Online Recovery/Codependency
http://www.onlinerecovery.org/co/

Understanding Codependency
http://home.swbell.net/careeap/codependency.htm

Al-Anon (help for families of alcoholics)
http://www.Al-Anon-Alateen.org/

Selfgrowth.com has lots of articles and links, see these and more:

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Wayman8.html

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Finley7.html

Yahoo's Codependency Page:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions/Codependency/Support_Groups/

Suite 101.com's Codependency Room
http://www.i5ive.com/links.cfm/codependency_recovery

Good luck!