Detachment from an addicted relationship
From Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody
Practice "the three gets" from Al-Anon:
- Get off your partner's back means to stop looking intently at the other party, to stop paying attention to what your partner is doing or not doing, and regard it as none of your business. It is helpful merely to notice what your partner is doing or not doing; this can help break through the fantasy you have created about who the person is in order to see who he or she really is. To get off your partner's back means to cease responding to what your partner is doing or not doing by expressing an opinion or feeling to him or her, offering a "suggestion" or solution, asking you partner to change, and so on.
- Get out of your partner's way means to try not to interfere with or eve observe and evaluate what's going on in your partner's life. Getting out of the way of the other person means to try and give helpful advice or negative comments, not to help the other person avoid catastrophe, but also not to create a catastrophe. Make all of your partner's observed behavior none of your business
- Get on with your life means to get into recovery from any addictions you have and from codependency. Most of all, for Love Addicts getting on with your life means to learn how to take care of your needs and wants yourself, to take adult responsibility for your own care, and to stop trying to get somebody else to do it for you. Also learn to focus on how to value yourself, how to set your boundaries, and how to own your own reality.
Do not "bomb" you partner with anger or seduction
When you have effectively accomplished this detachment, the intensity subsides and the environment may get extremely quiet, especially in comparison to the way it was. When either one feels the discomfort of detachment, they are tempted to do something called "bombing" to create the old, familiar intensity with the partner, which feels intimate even if it doesn't feel good. Bombing attempts to create so much intensity, either with angry fights or with forms of seduction, that the partner will break the detachment, respond, and reconnect, even if the connection is toxic.