Hi family. Im failing. Big time. My anger is at an all time high & I cannot contain it. Our fights have become awful. I have said everything I have felt over the past few years. Im failing at the dont say it mean. I am so hurt. Noticing moves him at all. Im losing my sanity. I dont feel like I matter or that Im worth it to him to save this marriage. As much as I know its not about the A in our life, the things he says and does do affect my self esteem & worth. I want this to work so bad; but I cant want it enough for both of us. My ex husband left me for someone else, so yes, some abandonment issues happening over here. One day Im ok, then BAM. Im in such despair. Trust. So huge. Completely gone. I swear Im trying. I know Im making it worse. Im exhausted

My meditation teacher says there is no failing in life Look at the unfathomable stress we are all under with this Corona Virus 19. Is there a playbook.for that Relationships I thought were failures took on a very different view when I look back on them I have certainly had my s/o.leave ne for soneone else. The qualifier made every else far more important than.me That was exceot when he needed somethimg from me This place is a good place to come and lay it all out there. None of us are perfect. I.certainly did jy share of confrontation. I.want to confront people all day every day. I no longer do it. I just do not act on.the imoulse. Do I want to do it: a solutely. I.just choose.not to Do I beat myself to.smithereens for having done it. Not anymore At a certain point it is time to put down the stick. No one made themselves better by hating themselves. No one is cured thst way There is no pass/fail test here. There is acceptance. There is our own exoerience strength and hope. There is love and empathy. There is kindness and identification. This is a good place to come to I am so glad you cane uo and shared. My life is unbelievably stressful right now I am glad to hear from soneone who is honest about where they are. One of the things I have to do is surrender. Surrendering is hard. But already today someone came up to me and apoligized. That was really heloful to me. I did not solicit either. I appreciste surrendering might seen like failure but for me it saying I need help and being willing to get it. I know I hsve to be real willing to surrender. For me that comes from intense pain that is absolutely unmanageable. Pain brought me here to al anon. Pain still brings me here. There is no ,pass/fail on surrendering. It just is. I have to surrender on this Covid 19 issue. There is no pass/ fail on that issue either. Do we have a blueprint on how to respind to a pandemic. Not yet!!!

Hugs,

None of this is easy and NONE of it is overnight. I have had to really look at how long it took me to get to the place I was at and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. You will find anyone on the boards or in meetings or wherever at some point can be as sick as they were the day they walked into program .. it doesn't matter how long you have in the program it's how quickly you see that and bounce back. That said I wanted the healing NOW .. there was no work through it .. there was no work the steps .. instant relief is what I wanted and sometimes still do. This is a sometimes quickly sometimes slowly situation. The slowly is like come on already .. I want to move on. LOL .. again .. not my time .. it's going to be my HP's time.

I'm going to tell you .. your anger and frustration is TOTALLY VALID .. this is a TOTALLY unreasonable situation and I can't stress that enough. As Dr Phil would say .. how's all that anger working for you? Do you feel better or worse? For me I felt worse, so it was about finding a more positive way to handle the anger and believe me it still flames up I just now know what it's called so it's become less exhausting because I can say ohh see you feel you and yup .. this is an appropriate response to an unreasonable situation. Anger is EXHAUSTING. I don't think it's productive to tell anyone well just get over it, you shouldn't feel angry, he's sick, blah blah blah .. yes some of it is the reality of the situation .. when you feel that kind of anger .. it doesn't help .. it's like telling a depressed person .. pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get over it. Somethings are NOT helpful when dealing with stuff and being in the throws of it. It's better for me to reach out to someone who just says, yup .. I can hear you are angry about an unreasonable situation are you ready to talk about some ways to deal with it or do you just need to blow steam. Nothing pisses me off more than someone sitting on their high horse saying .. oh just forgive and move on .. hey jackwagon I can't forgive myself and you want me to forgive someone else? That's where I was at when I came into the program.

So no .. you aren't failing .. you have a willingness to learn something new. For me it felt awkward at first and sometimes still does to do something different. Some of it worked .. some of it took a while to figure it out and try it on .. take it off and try it on again before things started to feel like I was able to say yes .. this is starting to make sense.

If you haven't listened to any podcasts of Mary Pearl (ohhh she was extra when she got mad at her husband .. LOL .. I could fully relate however I probably would be in jail .. lol), Kathy H, Larcene (SP?, can't think of her last initial) search for them on YouTube Recovery they are awesome and Mary Pearl for me I could identify with her anger. Plus Father Tom is another one who addresses anger. For me I no longer apologize for feeling angry about something that's a completely reasonable response when something isn't reasonable .. what I do with that anger is different. Now it's easier to say ok .. this is how I see the situation .. how can I make this less stressful for myself.

Funny story actually .. have a new puppy (pre covid19) and my sig other oh goodness .. working a TON of OT at the moment. So no one is home with the puppy. He works nights and I work days .. and pup is being kenneled way more than he needs to be and who is he taking it out on? The person who is tired when they come home and I am trying to keep house, cook dinner, take care of pets and you can kind of catch where I'm going my days are 18+ hours and I'm not sleeping 6 of those hours. By the end of the week I'm done. So yes, I blew .. and it was not pretty. I would like to have a moment to sit down without being mauled by an 11lb terrier. He wasn't being bad he was completely pent up and I can't unwind that boy in an 1 hour. I was yelling all night long to get off the cat, stop jumping, stop biting and again .. he's being a puppy. We are also in an apartment. So just letting him run isn't an option. Guess who is in doggy daycare. We can afford it, it's very reasonable. He did his first day this week and OMG .. completely different boy. He was so happy the next morning and way more relaxed so that really made my whole night. We played, he still jumped and did a little nipping .. it wasn't as agitated. So he will start going 3x a week starting Monday. He will also get 1 30 min session of training while he is there as well. You know who wasn't ok with it? The guy who isn't home .. sorry .. you aren't home so this is about me and my evenings throughout the week. I still have 18 hour weeks and I'm going to try to fix that too. LOL. I work and this isn't taking away from our budget or our goals we have, wait until I get the house cleaner in to do the deep clean .. cause I'm not spending my staycation doing housework the whole time. I want to paint. It's not MY responsibility to carry everything that needs to be done and I can ask for help when I need it. If I ask and I don't receive it .. I'm not asking the right person. So I can relook at my options.

This is really the gift that Alanon gave to me is realizing I have choices. I didn't realize I had those choices. So now my mind opened to new possibilities that when I was living in the anger which for me created tunnel vision and a vocabulary of "nothing is ever going to change. I am stuck and this is as good as it gets." That's what I call survival mode and living in that mode isn't really living .. it's existing. Trust me being homeless is being stuck in survival mode, with children is like survival mode on steroids'. which with the XAH I had already been living in for many prior years and that was my own self torture. He didn't do that to me .. I DID that to me. Everyone deserves the right not to live to exist. My brain was obsessed over how do I get through the next 24 hours, this was not the one day at a time, it was how do I pay the gas and electric bill before it's shut off, how do I rob peter to pay paul, how do I feed my kids, will we have a roof next week. Now that doesn't mean everything is great and there's never a crisis .. the crisis's are more speedbumps than the brick wall. From time to time a crater hits .. even then there are ways to handle those without going to survival mode. It's really a great relief not to be there 99.9% of the time. I have moments where I backslide currently in one now .. it will pass. I know based upon my experience of falling down and getting up it won't stick around.

Just keep coming back and take the suggestions that are given, no you aren't a failure for getting angry .. Mother Teresa would be frustrated in this situation and she got angry over other things .. so Alanon is not a pious program of you are never allowed to get angry over a situation. Is the anger productive or is the anger deconstructive. That's where I have started from now, vs feeling guilty because I feel angry about something .. you know anger motivates change .. and that's a good thing.

Hugs S :)

I'm so sorry you are experiencing this now. I get it. I was there. I ended up at a friend's house with no money, no close, no idea what I was going to do, simply because I couldn't be in the same house as my wife. She was absolutely, positively driving me crazy!!!

So, my approach is different than others. I come from a place that when you get to a certain point -- no tools, no catch-phrases, no explanations, none of that, right there in that moment is going to work. So, what worked for me. One solution, two parts. Part One...Leave. Just leave. Take your phone, take your charger, take some money and leave for a few hours. Take the car, walk, uber, whatever. Just leave. I feel the only thing that works -- when you get to this point, when you are at the juncture of an explosion -- is to get some immediate space and distance from the person, and the circumstances, and the situation. You, the situation, the anger, rage, everything is just too far gone. You need a reset, a re-do. You need to re-center and re-focus you, your mindset, your head-space, your everything. Space and distance. The ability to clear your head, thoughts, and the ability to just breathe!

Part Two...GO TO A MEETING!!! There are meetings all day, all night, all over the United States, via zoom!!! I just checked my lists -- there are dozens of meetings, starting in the next hour, on the East Coast, more starting in two hours moving west, and even more starting in the three to four hours starting on the west coast. These are official, conference approved alanon meetings, and personally, I feel not enough people here on this site promote them, recommend them, and look to them as a solution for newcomers, beginners, or anyone for that matter. Perhaps because this is not a conference approved, official alanon site, perhaps people are "territorial" or insular, vis a vis this sight only -- but it says alanon family group on the banner, and this site, content, context, material, etc., speaks to and about the principles, the tools, the readings, and so much more. However, in my opinion, many people here don't look to conference approved alanon meetings as one of the real basic, fundamentals, foundation pieces of the program. That said, GO TO A MEETING. ASAP. Talk to the people there. Real people. Ask for help. If you don't have a sponsor, get one! If you do, call him/her!!! ASAP. Go to a meeting...use the people there as a resource, ask for help, seek input, perspective. Share, talk to them. They will help you.

All the best!!!

I understand all too well the debilitating and disturbing effects of living with an alcoholic. I must reinforce though, the suggestions made by Bomeetings and a sponsor are instrumental in learning to live with the damage from alcoholics. Besides for zoom meetings, I have heard there are even alanon phone meetings. It is no easy task to learn to focus on ourself. Its a work in progress that begins and needs constant attention and practice. Beating up myself was never helpful. Healing is possible but it takes work and practice. Lyne