The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Through many of the responses to my previous posts, I have been told that a rule of thumb for alanon is to wait 6 months before making a life changing decision. The decision that I am pondering is a divorce. I told my AH about alanon 6 months and he said to f*** it and let's make it 3 months. If things didn't shape up in 3 months then we would go our separate ways. Yet I wake up at 4 am to loud noises and go into the kitchen. AH is making coffee and there's a vial on the stove top. The same size as his other steroid ones. I go back to bed but can't sleep so I just lay there thinking to not react and know it is his disease. He comes back into the bedroom about 30 minutes later and is moving the bed mattress around as I am laying on it. He pulls out 2 pill bottles and pops a few. He thought I was asleep through all that.
My question is why wait 6 months? 3 months? For 3 years, he has repeated his pattern of using, lieing, and manipulating. For the past 2 months, I took what I was able to learn in one alanon f2f meeting and have made some changes. (AH crashed my car and I haven't been able to go back to a f2f yet, but I will!!) I talked to some people about being detached and have been conciously been practicing it for the past few days. I see no changes on his behalf-just the promise to return to rehab this week (hasn't gone yet) and to make our lives better by not popping pills (yet he continues to do so). He blames his need to lie on my nosiness. It's all my fault, blah blah blah. I know he's just trying to manipulate me and frankly, I'm tired of it.
So what makes the time frame of 6 months the key to understanding?
I don't know Lost. I guess 6 months is just an adverage time frame we use. I know I go thru all sorts of emotions and ideas within 6 months especially when there is a crisis. 6 months of Alanon lets crisis pass and gives me tools to use, lets my head clear so that whatever decisions I do make are made rationally, not out of anger or spite. If I make a decision out of anger or spite I tend to go back on it. I left my ex so many times in anger and I never was able to stay gone.
The very first f2f I went to, I walked in, set my 6 month old on the table, and announced that I wanted to leave my AH. The wonderful women there didn't laugh at me or tell me what to do, they simply sat me down and told me to listen. I learned that this program supports me no matter what I decide. At that time(not that meeting, but within a few months) I made a decision to stay with my AH. I did love him, we had 2 kids, a home, I wanted to be married to him, I just hated his drugging. I went to meetings, I got a bit better, he decided to get sober in AA. From the state I was in that first meeting I could have never forseen his sobriety. It was great for about 2 years. Then he relapsed. But I do not regret staying.
You have to do what you need to for you. You don't have to wait 6 months. It's your life, live it the way you want. We will be here to support you no matter what you decide to do. Let go and let God. Check your motives and do what you need to do for YOU!
I left before I even came to this board. I came here looking for support AFTER I moved out!
Here's RULE #1
It's your life and if you're in an intolerable situation then get out of it. You can separate and not file for divorce and wait six months if you want. I always heard 1 year honestly and if I had stayed with my A for another year one of us would be dead by now! Looking back I'm glad I didn't wait one more minute to leave him!
I don't know about waiting. It didn't take me 6 months of being in the program to move out. I decided that for myself and the children it was not healthy. I was sicker than him. Wich for me is the truth. My savior was actually his sponser and his wife. AH wasn't doing what he was supposed to. Been to rehab sobriety lasted 25 days after he came home. Things went exactly back to the way they were. I didn;'t want him home that quickly but they said he was ready. I didn't believe he was and he wasn't. I lefy him 2 months after he came home from rehab. I couldn't take it anymore. When you have recovering alcoholics telling you take your kids and go and dont look back. That really started to tell me something. FOr once I stopped listened and paid attention. Nothing would of changed if I would of stayed. If anything things are for the better now. The kids have a mother who wants to spend time with them because I am not worried about AH. I don';t live with him so if he comes home drunk I am NOT affected anymore.
They will always blame you even after you move out. Mine does. If you would of stayed it would be better. No it got worse and was getting worse the longer I stayed. Rememner it is not your addiction it is theirs. They will blame whoever they can no matter the consequences.
wow, great advice on this post! I left then found al-anon but we are not divorced (yet). We are working separately on ourselves individually far away from each other.
I can understand the 6 month thing but I believe it is a GUIDELINE, not a rule. The program is all about guidelines as each one of us are in very very different kinds of situations.
If you feel ready to leave, want to leave and you have the ability to leave, I say leave. The choice is yours. I knew I had to get out or else he/I would be dead. Put yourself first, they will cry, blame, throw tantrums and stomp around till the cows come home regardless of what you do/don't do so PLEASE YOURSELF. J.
Your guy isn't ready. He is still playing his games. I hope you realize, or soon realize, that you don't have to be a player in 'his' games.
I don't know about any timeline - actually, I have heard several timelines. I don't worry too much about them.
All I know is that I went through a lot of hell for far more years than I care to add up. I took a long time to admit to myself that he had a problem and so did I. With the help of a psychologist and reading several books, one in particular stands out in my mind - Getting Them Sober - oh, another one is Under the Influence, I woke up. I didn't leave our home and file for divorce with anger. I worked through the anger with the psych. I did leave, however, with a heavy heart - I felt a deep penetrating sadness for him, our adult children and others who love us.
It's been the 'magical' six months. My husband went into rehab Aug. 1st this past summer. We still live apart. He now thanks me for leaving and filing, for it woke him up. At first, he didn't thank me. He was verbally nasty to me. As time goes on, he seems to 'get it' more and more. Before I left, he was well on his way of losing his great job, a job he is close to retiring from. He came so close to losing it all - now he has gain the most valuable thing an individual can have: self-respect.
I hope that you don't take as long as I did to stand up and set boundaries. I only hope that my experiences can help others wake up sooner than I did. It gets better and easier when you take steps towards setting and reinforcing your boundaries. And the beauty of it all is that you can set your own boundaries without anyone elses approval.
You don't go to ananon to make changes in him, but in you.
You may find, after a good solid number of months working the program, that enough has changed that you feel able to stay, after all. You may find, instead, that your determination to leave is solid and true.
We suggest that you wait a bit (unless there is a pressing need to leave, such as abuse) because the insanity of living with this disease without any help skews our judgement as much as that of the A. As your life becomes more sane, you can make plans based on clear thinking rather than panic and emotion.
Of course, you don't "fail" alanon, if you just pack up and go. Everyone makes their own choices, based on their own experiences. Ultimately, you are the best judge of what is right for you. Myself, I found that once there was a change in my attitude, I was able to live with him. As I calmed down, a lot of his worse behaviour went away. He kept drinking and using for another three years, but, although they were very bad years for him, for me and the kids they were OK.
Aloha Lost...Al-Anon is about suggestions. Suggestions from a trusted sponsor was best for me because everyone else in the program was all over the board with feelings and experiences. The suggestion for me was 2 years before a major decision. I heard it, acknowledged that I heard it and then did my own thing that didn't work because I was here because my decisions within the disease never worked. You don't get sane from an atmosphere of insanity and that is the atmosphere I had lived a great part of my life with.
So then I started working that 2 year suggestion which was really about time I needed to focus on and get to know me so that I could see how I get into messes hoping to actually get a blue bird of happiness. I had to know my part in my mess and how I kept arriving there with different expectations. I had to get to know the one person I had lived my entire life with and knew nothing about...Me! My alcoholic/addict, the one before that, the addict before her and a great deal of the crowd I hung with were about my decisions for me. I had to get to know my thinking mind and behavior system or I was doomed to make the same mistake again and again. Two years was about learning how to see my picture differently so that I don't go off repeating the mistake. I doubted that that would happen to me which is what I always did in or out of the program and still it did.
If you don't like numbers take as much time as suggested or that you can before makeing a major decision and then going back to your same consequences with someone else but the same you. You have to be open to it and willing to put in the work or it won't work no matter how much time is suggested.
Thank you for all of the advice. I don't feel overly emotional right now. I've reacted to what AH has said and done in the past in such a different way then recently. I used to cry, ask what I did, blame myself, etc. Now, the past few days have I have been asking myself how I am now. why i am not happy. what can i do. etc. I really want to rebuild my life. I am a teacher and I love my job. I am working on my masters and have looked into a second masters in educational psychology. I started to write poetry and short stories again. I spent a whole day with my cousin and her family. I played with my Goddaughter and nephew. I'm the one that picked her up after her nap and she was excited to see me. I cooked lunch for everybody. My cousin and I left the kids with her husband and went to the mall and hit up the Victoria's Secret sale.
When my AH dropped me off at my cousin's house, he got confontational again about his pills and the car insurance (I asked if the insurance company had called and left a message on his cell phone about my totaled car and he said I was nagging him). While he was yelling at me, I just said in my head, "I can't control his anger. I can only control how I react and how it affects me. I'm not yelling at him and I'm not being mean to him."
It's little things like this that are making me feel like I have some control over myself again and it's a nice feeling. Instead of stressing about what he is doing or where he is, I am taking a little time for myself. I'm not making excuses for him but thinking a lot about me and my future. That's not to say that I don't want him to get better but right now, I really feel like I need to get better.
Thanks for the ever-listening ear and kind advice, Lost
It sounds as though you understand something so very important: how you respond to what happens is far more important that what happens. Once I began to realize this and apply this truth, my life turned around.
Right before I decided that I had to leave our home, I learned not take his nasty comments personally. I knew that he was so messed up on alcohol - even when he had not been drinking.
He now thanks me for doing what I did. He went to detox, rehab, and attends several meetings per week. He also exercises, prays (something he never did before) and reads some book that he got from AA. So far, he seems to be on the right track. I realize that relapse is a possiblity. But I focus on today and I'm so thankful for both of our continuing recovery. I am getting better at letting tomorrow take care of itself and focus on today and its belssing.
I, too, am a teacher. My former principal lost his mother to a drunk driver at the tender age of 17. I often wondered how he would have responded had my husband been involved (caused) a drunk driving accident/death. I used to worry about that all the time - one of the many things that 'ate' on me.
But I took a stand: I filed for divorce because I truly, truly did not believe my husband would ever consider quitting, nor embrace any kind of program such as AA, and moved out. Plus, I had to protect myself, my career, my means of financial support if he lost his job. Our divorce is currently on 'hold.' I'm still living in an apartment. We conitinue to see each other. We seem closer than ever and seem to actually appreciate each other more. Again, I'm so thankful for all we have now. But for now, I still cointinue to live apart from him. It's been only 6 months. (We've been married 34 years.) I'm not ready to make any final decision regarding our relationship. And I'm so thankful that he isn't pressuring to make that final decision as he did at first. He is coming from a much stronger place.
I'm continuing my education, too. It used to be difficult to focus on my needs. I felt so selfish. But I have learned that when I take care of myself first, everyone else benefits. I'm a much better, more confident person. Therefore, I spread more cheer and have a lot more energy to give to others.
I should add that I have several years of private counseling. I 'finally' began to 'get it.' Bless my psychologist! He has such patience.
Always keep in mind that we have control over how we respond. Make mindful responses and watch your world change. It might not get your husband to stop his substance abuse. But your world will still change for the better. Promise.
