The material presented
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to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Part of the difficulty of trying to move forward in all of this is trying to make heads or tails out of it. My AH will go through periods of coming home drunk from work almost every day (he doesn't drink at home). To staying sober for 7 sometimes 10 days at a stretch. I ask myself is he an A or a problem drinker? And, does that matter. The longest he stayed sober is for 30 days after he recked the new car he had just bought while drunk. We go to parties and I no longer say or get mad if he drinks, I decided it's not my problem. Yet he either doesn't drink at the party or just has a couple of beers. He has always been on the shy side and cynical but in the last few years when all of this started to come to a head, he began to become more isolated. I have to beg him to go anywhere we are invited, he would rather sit home. Our social life has definite taken a nose dive. He is very unaffectionate towards me, we go through months without even a kiss. We are just coexisting. When he is getting consistently drunk during the work day and gets verbally abusive and I have to pick up all the slack with our kids, I think why bother, I just want to get out. Yet I know getting out with three kids won't be easy. Our home has turned into a disfunctional hot bed of anger and resentment, and for the life of me I can't see a way out. When he is sober for a stretch even short lived I begin to hope that there is a chance for us to work things out, then again I know without help that is not going to happen magically. I don't think that having a healthy loving relationship is in the cards for me and never will. I just hope that my kids don't follow suit when they start relationships themselves. Thanks for listening!
This is just one of the reasons that alanon keeps saying "Keep the focus on you". If you spend mental and emotional energy trying to figure out what the A is doing, you just make yourself crazy.
I remember making silly correlations like "Hmm, when I wear this blue shirt, he doesn't seem to get as drunk" and wearing that shirt on days when I really didn't want him to drink. Pure nonsense, of course, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you tie your happiness to the behaviour of a person who is being pushed by a sick and insane agenda.
You can build happiness, serenity and joy into your day, and you can be a sane parent to your children. While he is in the bar, or out in the garage, or in the basement, crawling into a bottle, you have the choice of pacing the floor raving, or reading your kids a bedtime story. You can be sitting by the window crying, or you can be doing your yoga exercises. That choice is yours, and that is behaviour you CAN make some sense of.
Living in a confused state....that's what focusing your life on the alcoholic does to one. I myself have been living in a confused state and my A is a dry drunk, he doesn't drink, quit drinking himself a couple of years ago, I just realized after reading your post that I've been trying to please him and at the same time worried what effect this will have on my daughter, she is 11, I don't want her to imulate her mother's behavior at this time. I basically kowtow to whatever he wants and have slunk back into dysfunctional behavior. I need to do what's best for me and my daughter and my mother who lives with us, and not worry about his reactions and complaints, but he is such a persasive person, and controlling one. I think a call to a sponsor on both our parts would be good. Do you have a sponsor yet? They are great people to bounce ideas off and work your program with. Get into a face to face meeting hall and find a good sponsor, thats what i plan to do.
I can relate very much. Been there done that go the T shirt in fact I have several years worth! . You can move to a different space but it doesn't happen overnight for some of us. Stop beating yourself up. You can take care of you one day at a time. Get the book mentioned above, Getting them Sober offered by Canadian guy. That will help. You'll stop feeling so confused. De-taching is an art. It really is. We have to practice it day in day out. You can get there. Be kind to yourself after all no one else is in your household. You are holding the whole load.
Keep coming here and posting, post every day if you need to.
