I screwed up my life pretty bad... Nothing was working. The harder I worked, the worse things got. After awhile I just threw my hands up in the air.....looked up at the sky and said, ..."I'm done! I just...can't...do it anymore!...It's YOUR turn to take control....I give up!"

In that moment, I never really truly believed anything good would happen...but in that surrender, something happened!...It was like a Higher Power was manipulating the pieces of the puzzle of my life and placing them exactly where they needed to go...and at the right time!

From that moment on, as long as I didn't doing anything to "fix" what I thought was broken....my life continued to change for the better! Looking back, I never thought I would be as happy and as peaceful, as I am right now.

This is my story, in a nutshell from 14 years ago...but it's a common story I hear at 12 step meetings everywhere. The form might be different but the central idea is always the same. If I get my ego out of the way, things tend to get fixed for me. I just needed to take responsibility for my life the way it is and stop blaming others. That was all it took.

God Bless

Oh what good information, oh yes oh yes. I forget this stuff when I am struggling with my need to control or fix or change someone else. We go to control, or the illusion of control, because we learned in childhood that life in our house/family was chaotic and the only way to manage ourselves or help ourselves was to control what we could. Our parents may have fed into this also by their parenting through guilt and shame (common parenting in the USA at one time, maybe even now).

Hmmm....I like this thread.

Thanks Bob, UG, SN.....It's been a very low low day. In reading your responses I think when I feel 'weak' this is when my control issues come out when 'chaos' is happening....

Day two of no contact....I'm always the first one to 'make nice', I tried doing that last night by making soup...it was left on the counter. So I'm just going to go about my business tomorrow...dr apt at 11am.

one thing that is good, by being in my room I'm becoming tired and lights are going out earlier...I did take sleep med for two nights though.

I need to get things clear in my own head....until then silence is the best route I think to not create any more issues.

It helps me to see things in my relationship as a "dance". Feels nicer or softer to me to see this as a dance instead of the other person being bad or hurtful or myself being always wrong. What I mean is you and John have a conflict, or an argument, and then silence. So you try to do something nice, like the soup, and he rejects that. Try to see it as a dance and know it can be a control mechanism on the part of the person doing the silent treatment. The dance steps don't work for this relationship to be healthy. If you are getting the silent treatment, you can step out of the dance by changing reactions and thinking.

What if you could accept that John lives a chaotic, dysfunctional life and decide to detach with love? This is hard on a good mother to do. Perhaps he does this by choice or perhaps he can't do any better. He can live his chaotic life without impinging on your life so much. Sit down and think about what the conflicts are and if you are trying to force John to be different. In what areas can you step out of the dance and have different thinking and behaviors yourself. In what areas are a definite thing you have to insist upon (like old food in his room that attracts bugs being a no).

I learned to control the chaos in my family of origin and with my first husband by living a structured, almost regimented life. I always eat lunch at a certain time and dinner at a certain time, for example. Unless we have social plans or something. My 2nd husband learned to control his feelings by having a "no one tells me what to do" attitude and living a totally non-structured life. And to him, it triggered his insecurity if I led a different "lifestyle" and had structure so he tried to force me to change. I tried to force him to change. What that means for me is to stop making dinner or lunch for him unless he asks. Now I say to him I am going to make X for dinner, do you want it. He fought me on this for a few years, I should do as he wants to do and dinner must be two or three hours later than I wanted almost to my bedtime as we both were working back then and he got up super early for his job which meant I was woken early than I wanted. I pushed back that dinner was always on my time as I was the cook. He fought me about my bedtime, I should do it as he does it. It was so weird. I was very uncomfortable getting out of my schedule as it affects my health in reality but I also have realized I should not make my beloved be on MY schedule. But this has opened my eyes to my own controlling crap and how it makes others feel. I am working on me every day, as you know! Now we do not live the same schedule and it feels weird at times. We still have conflict at times but not daily like at first, for example - if I make an doctor's appointment for 9 am and he wants to accompany me to learn about my health condition. He wants me to make one after lunch when I am most tired. Today, I am up, in clean clothes, face washed, and he has not taken a shower yet but he ate breakfast and it is almost noon. I could say this is a sloth or slug behavior. But now I shut up and just accept. I've finally "trained" him to let me go to sleep hours before he does and allow me to sleep longer than he does. I ask him to be quiet late at night when he is talking on the phone, etc. Our house is tiny.

In light of your goal to keep him from being homeless, you will have to do some bending when living with him in your house. He is his own worst enemy in many ways. Trying to stay in the same dance with him is not working for you. Probably it only makes him decide "nobody tells me what to do". If his mindset is "nobody tells me what to do", it won't work to tell him what to do. You are a good mother. And in writing this to you, I am reminded to myself to stay out of the dysfunctional dance with my beloved.

Thanks UG...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree~~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHsmZyZL5KU

Somehow I became codependent. I had failed jobs and boyfriends/marriages. I moved home and lived for free. I spent money on credit cards, college, and business plans. Of course, my parents had their own money and retired. Its so bitter to the end. I'm 45 years old. All my dreams failed. What now, jesus?