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.
Had a phone call to AH regarding finances. It's a nightmare and humiliating to go through it but I will cause I have to. I'm not going back to him. Not for a long time.... I am confused though because in all this I have not told him that he has to stop drinking to reconcile with me. But today he said, "Why have you put me through this?" So I had to say why, and how I the drinking habits made ME feel. It sounds like an ultimatum which I"ve heard doesn't work anyway. But I said something like"the only way I will live with you again is if you're sober, dry and working a program. "(Didn't say, you also need to be a changed man......) Is that all I want, to change him. ??Do I want someone different? No, the inner person I think I can still love, but I don't want the attitude, the games , the control and the presence of booze!! I will not live with it... He will probably think that's easy, "I'll just go on the dry for a few weeks, that'll fool her." How is it that some people do just the bare minimum to stay in the game? They do what they have to not what they choose to. That's what he's like.
It took me 13 years to understand that my AH was exactly what he was. The games, the lies, manipulations were him. The good parts were him also but the bad parts, or parts I didn't like or couldn't live with were him also. I talked, begged, conjoled, threatened, explained, loved, screamed, whined and cried. But it did no good. He sobered up for long periods of time but he is what he is...an A and I finally realized that living with him meant always living with the knowledge that he might relapse. This program gave me the ability to make my own choices. I didn't cause it, can't cure it and can't control it. But I could care. I loved him despite the disease. I just had to choose for myself to take a different path because living with an A was too much for me and our kids. No shame in that.
You will figure out what is best for you. Keep comming back. Do you go to face to face meetings?
They sometimes hold on for a while until the compulsion hits again and then they cave into this cunning, powerful and baffling disease. Alcohol is much much more powerful than you are and gives him a greater reaction mind, body, spirit and emotional than you ever can. If he is truely alcoholic he has a compulsion of the mind and an alergy of the body including an alergy of almost everything else in his life. He has three choices we learn in the definition of alcoholism...sobriety, insanity or death. He cannot be cured he can only arrest the disease with total abstinance. This disease is fatal.
I like your boundaries and consequences...Hope you have killed your expectations in favor of compassion, love and hope.
this sounds more like a boundary, not an ultimatum. I know sometimes, if the A is ready, the boundary you mentioned can be done.It is so individual.
I got where I let go of it all. Nothing bugged me anymore. The detachment was so freeing.
All I felt was love for him.Glad to have him there with me. Sadly his disease was so bad, he felt so guilty, moreso when he saw how much I did love him and the disease did not touch me anymore.
It was ok if I felt bad or threw things at him, then I was a loser too. NOT saying he was he thinks he is.
anyway separating finances, vehicles, homes are all a very important part of living with an A. hugs,debilyn
