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To me it means God. Until I filled the hole in my being with God I was restless and dissatisfied. I believe we are made for relationship with God and until we fill our lives with a pursuit for the elusive thing that will satisfy our beings.
In parallel – a center could also be sense of purpose. If you’ve been told and brought up to believe your life is an accident and there is no greater purpose for you – you’re going to spend forever as an accident and searching for something to make you feel valued and valuable.
These realisations have come about this year as I’ve gone through the mill with my husband’s addiction. That relationship with God has saved my life this year… best therapy I’ve ever had!
he has no main core identity from which he operates his values from. His core values are scattered and they jump from situation to situation. The strength does not lie in the middle.
All good response.
My sense is that there is nothing that holds him together in the way cindy1111 described.
Or as I may have posted before “deep down, he’s really very shallow”
Or, “hey, ho—nobody home”.From what my therapist said about my h. Cindy is right. So is March, no moral center. I think all the responses go together well and are all related to it.
Very interesting descriptions. I was thinking morally and spiritually bankrupt which is really just a variation on all of the above.
I once asked my husband if he thought having sex with any woman who would give it up (from his teen years on into adulthood) was morally wrong. His response: “I was never taught that it was wrong.” I say, “whatever happened to that innate sense of right and wrong?”
I may be wrong, but I don’t think that we can be taught morality. I think that morality can be reinforced, but it comes from within, and some are unfortunately not born with it. I think the absence of having that moral compass is exactly what not having a center is all about.
LindyGreat comment Lindy (and Lexie too–love it).
I started to write a reply, but then my brain got all fucked up turning this question over and over. So, help me with this one.
What is the difference between morality and values?
To me, morality is knowing right from wrong. For example, we don’t steal because we know it’s wrong. We dont hit people we don’t agree with, we don’t have sex with other people when we are married.
Values are what we hold true to. Value our families, our children, our respect for others. These are just some examples.
Yes, and add to the things I’ll bet all of us value: honesty, integrity, the desire to make a positive contribution to the world…things our SA’s seem to lack.
Well JoAnn, you really got me thinking on that question. I had to Google it because when I tried to sort it out, it became all muddled.
Here is what I found: Morals are values which we attribute to a system of beliefs, typically a religious system, or societal. Values are our fundamental beliefs. They are the principles we use to define that which is right, good and just. They are our standards.
So now I question my H’s response that he wasn’t taught. So he is/was probably morally bankrupt from childhood, and really has no values of his own until someone teaches him, and is just now learning? What the hell happened along the way? Is it the misfiring in the brain (the chemical imbalances that we attribute to the PDs), so really they can’t help themselves?
My favorite quote is “Character is doing the right thing when no one is watching”. Is character something we are born with and can’t be taught? Isn’t there anything in us that just plain starts out inherently good without someone else telling us it is so? Arrrgghh! I give up trying to figure it out, it just makes me sad.
Good question, JoAnn!
LindyVery interesting debate. The “I didn’t know it was wrong” comment is the heart of why I’m convinced that whatever “recovery” is done is just the tip of the iceberg. How can you “recover” someone into appropriate behavior if they have no values?
My whole battle is that I don’t care if H stops the actions, one by one, as people tell him they’re wrong and show him how they’re deterimental to his achieving his life purposes. I’m not sure I want to be with someone who actually thought those behaviors were acceptable, ever, for any reason. That degree of denial and rationalization is toxic. Those behaviors are now only ceased because he said he “no longer has the desire”. So? What else might he desire, and do, and claim he “did not know was wrong?”
Well Lynn, he also said that he “had no desire,” before you were married, so what exactly, has changed? (rhetorical question as we all know that nothing has changed except that he made an idiot of himself on national TV!)
My husband has no “life purposes.”
He has no goals.
He has no dreams.
He has no ambition.
He’s a victim of the “economy.”
He’s just a victim, plain and simple.
He’s not like the “other” people who are successful.
He told me a few months ago, that in order for a person to be successful, someone else has to suffer.
hmmmm…
uhhhh… no… I think its the other way around. Making a life with a loser, has caused me the greatest amount of pain and suffering.
I think that addicts make up all sorts of stuff to rationalize why their lives are not working and what it is that they “need.”
Yes, Laurel, it looks like in order to be a loser, someone else has to suffer too. I hope you told him that.
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