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I am new here. I called AA last week and they recommended I seek help from Al-Anon. Through my searching I found this board as well as other websites that seem helpful. It's amazing reading some of your posts how similar my story is to some of yours. I would love to hear any input on my situation as I am only 2 weeks into my "awakening". I know it will be long, so please try to bare with me...
I met my husband 6 years ago and we fell in love. We were together about 6 months when I found out I was pregnant. We were both really young, in our early 20's. We both still wanted to go out and have fun, so we would go out almost every weekend and his mom watched our son. It was fun for a while...great to get a little time to ourselves and relax some. We both drank when we went out and occasionally indulged in marijuana. I never felt completely right doing it so over the years I quit and said I didn't care if he did, but only if it was every once in a while. Well every once in a while turned into once a month, then once a week. So I finally said I didn't want him doing it at all. He did his best to adhere to my wishes but occasionally he would smoke even though I begged him not to. I regretted ever smoking with him in the first place b/c I realized I sent him mixed messages telling him it was ok and then saying "no you can't smoke".
We lived pretty happily for about 3 years. We had our own house, close to my parents and close to his. We had fun spending time with family and friends yet I found myself frequently embarassed by the amount he drank and his actions when he had too much. He was so care free, friendly, relaxed and sociable that I figured we were just completely different and he "let loose" in different ways that I did. He was always a loving father and husband although he is probably the most unsympathetic, unromantic, insenstive man who walks the face of the earth. He never bought me gifts...I was usually the only one without a gift under the Christmas tree. He had a hard time showing his love for me. He thought going to work every day showed me that he loved me and wanted to support me. I started growing cold to him when I felt like he wasn't fullfilling my needs. Then the drinking either got worse, or seemed much worse after I started growing cold. We would rehash arguments over and over and I just couldn't let some of the things go that he had done.
Then one day I decided to read "Relationship Rescue" by Dr. Phil. I read the first few chapters and I seemed to come out of the funk I had been in. I learned how to let things go and how to focus on myself and then he would see that difference in me and he would want to change. It seemed to work wonders! We went on with our lives and we both had different outlooks on our relationship. I started thinking that there really wasn't anything we couldn't work out and it was the most amazing feeling.
Our 4th year together is when we were notified that we either had to transfer or my husband would lose his job. We both went back and forth about it. We knew that being close to our family was one of the most important things to both of us, yet it was even more important that our immediate family succeed and thrive. So we took the plunge and decided to go for it. We started preparing and my husband had to move away for 2 months before my son and I could move. We stayed back to sell the house and so I could finish my temp. summer job. We talked almost nightly and he would come home every other weekend or so. We finally got to the point where we couldn't live apart any longer so my son and I moved out there with him.
I immediately noticed changes in him. I found out that he had been smoking marijuana with his old roomate and that they went out quite a bit. He had never gone out without me until we moved and then he never went out with me. We never had a babysitter so I was the one who ended up staying at home. We fought a lot over this b/c he worked late and would be out until 5 or 6 in the morning. He would want to go out once a week or every other week but I felt like a mom of a teenage child, worrying whether he would actually make it home in one piece. We were also expecting our 2nd child so I was a little more needy than usual.
The next couple of months just seem like a blur. We were living in a one bedroom apt in a new area, broke b/c we still hadn't sold our house back home. I was slipping into depression and I had no idea. My husband continued to drink heavily on the weekends and his best buddy from work would come over every weekend with his wife. I had no problems with this b/c we would all be together and I wouldn't have to worry with him being out all night. They would go through an insane amount of beer yet we all had a blast laughing and playing games all night. The wife didn't drink and I didn't either since I was pregnant so we all just kinda meshed together in some wierd way.
We started hanging out with another couple and it would be all three guys drinking a crazy amount of beer doing the dumbest things. The gals all finally realized that it was becoming a problem and we all really didn't care for how our guys acted when they drank so much. We all would kind of feed off of each other and start fights with our husbands. We all started hanging out less together and started hanging out more with the 2nd couple. They had girls that were the same age as our son and we seemed to have a lot in common. The guys would still drink a lot but the wife was a little more easy going and would let things go that I just couldn't deal with. I started blaming the couple for problems and I became less and less interested in hanging out with them.
Now I was 9 months pregnant ready to give birth any day, didn't know a lot of people in the area and my husband was insistent on going out during the week. I just couldn't fathom why he would want to go out when he had a 4 year old and a wife who desperately needed him at home. I finally had our 2nd son and while I was in the delivery room having contractions and rithing in pain, I noticed my husband sitting as close to the TV as possible watching a baseball game without a stich of concern for me. He did manage to make his way over for the birth of our 2nd son and we both fell in love with him.
Now I had 2 children to care for and I was feeling more alone then ever. My husband works seasonal over-time and those are some of the longest days ever. I felt trapped in this apartment and was completely overwhelmed with anxiety. I was falling into the deepest depression of my life and had absolutely no clue. I would sleep until 10 or 11am and sometimes even as late as noon. I never cooked, our apartment was a complete disaster and it was all I could do to get the boys fed, dressed and to bed. I started eating out every meal and became a fast food junky. I wasn't losing any of my post partum weight. My husband begged me to do something around the house, cook, clean, lose weight and I just had no idea how, and didn't care if I did. He would try being intimate at night and I was so tired and turned off by him that I would turn him away, even if his only intentions were to hug and cuddle. I tried repeatedly to lose weight...started diet after diet, went to the gym in spurts but nothing seemed to work. I hated my body and myself in general. My husband showed no interest in me other than to be physical, which sometimes had sexual intentions but sometimes he was just reaching out to me. I wanted him to care about me and ask me about my day, my dreams my goals, my life and we were both so concerned with our own needs that we completely ignored the needs of one another.
I grew cold and bitter with each "incident" with alcohol. One time I went out of town and later found out that some girl had given him a ride to his car from our friends house. I found this out from the girl, rather than my husband and I completely lost it. Ofcourse they had all had too much to drink and the girl was the only one sober enough to drive. I caught him smoking weed a few times and lost it then too. Every time he drank it was inevitable that something would happen that would upset me. I don't think we went a weekend for about 3 or 4 months that I wasn't upset over something. He started seeing me as an authoritative figure rather than a wife. He thought I was taking him away from his "happiness." I didn't want to ever see beer again if he was gonna act like that! I blamed everyone in the world but him. Every single friend was a "bad influence on him". I realized over time that HE was the bad influence. HE didn't know when to stop and HE was the one making the decisions.
After one night of drinking he had his friend call at 5am and say that he was gonna spend the night there rather than come home. Just a few hours earlier he had said he would be home in an hour or so. If there was one thing I had learned, it was that he definitely was NOT going to be home when he said he would. There never was a time that he came home when he was supposed to. So after he got home, the next day I decided that it was MY turn. I told him that I was going to the casino and I packed my bag and headed down there. I ended up staying 12 hours playing poker. Somehow I ended up winning $600 and I was hooked. So was my husband! It was a relief to him that I brought home so much money in one night...that was bill money he didn't have to work for. So he encouraged me to go weekly. I ended up going at least once or twice a week and I probably broke even over the long haul. I had a few great nights of $600+ and other nights where I lost $100 or so. One thing was certain...I was not a proffesional poker player! I did NOT want to spend my time in a dingy, smokey, dark casino.
By this point my husband was growing really resentful toward me. Not only was he taking care of the kids while I was out, but he wasn't able to drink as much as he was used to. We grew even further apart and he finally admitted that he didn't love me anymore. I was completely floored, shocked and bewildered. I knew we had grown apart and that there wasn't a whole lot to our relationship, but I never thought that he didn't love me at all. I was heartbroken and confused. We decided that we would give it one last effort so that we could all be together as a family. We pulled out the old "Relationship Rescue" book and began to read and answer questions.
About this time I had some sort of revelation, awakening. It was as if someone had literally shaken me and woke me up, and pulled me out of the depths of despair. I still don't know what exactly happened. I think him telling me he didn't love me anymore really had a lot to do with it. I started reading "Self Matters" by Dr. Phil(I know, Dr. Phil junky!) and there was no turning back. I was heading for the light and wasn't stopping for anything. I can't tell you how much my life changed in just a matter of a month. No anti-depressants, therapy anything. Just some type of wierd revelation!
It was such perfect timing b/c we had decided to give our relationship one last chance. If I was in great mental health that would mean our relationship would have that much more of a chance to survive.
Then I found the cigar in his truck :( I knew it wasn't just any cigar. I asked my husband if there was something he needed to tell me and he admitted that he had been smoking weed again over the past few weeks. I was completely devestated that he had been hiding this from me when we were supposed to be giving it our all to make it work. He said he never thought it would work so he never tried. He said that we had "personality differences" and that he was never gonna stop smoking and that I would never change my views so it just wouldn't work. He admitted to me that he had been smoking weed behind my back ever since we had been together. It was then that I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. He was on 50 mg of Zoloft, drinking absurd amounts of alcohol whenever he got the chance, and was smoking marijuana almost daily. There was something seriously wrong there!
I started thinking about things that had happened over the 2 years since we moved. He had become totally dependant on substances and no matter what the cause, he has a serious problem. So now he says that we have such huge problems in our relationship that he doesn't think we should even attempt to work it out. He doesn't see how the substances have altered his thinking and how he has a completely warped sense of who I am as a person. I have come to love myself again and I've compeltely done a 360. I am coming out of my shell, losing weight and feeling great about myself and now it's almost like it's too late. We've both been in such a depression that neither of us realized how bad the other one was and now I have no idea what to do.
Now that he has been "found out" he is pushing things to the extreme. Going out every night, not calling and telling me when he'll be home, asking me to smoke weed before he has to take care of the kids,etc...he seems to completely be out of touch with reality. He has told me he has no love for me anymore..he's watched me bawl my eyes out for 2 weeks now and he just doesn't care. He never shows one ounce of emotion and seems to be completely unnaffected by what is happening. I have realized that he is severly depressed and he is self-medicating, yet I can't convince him of that. Even his Pcp said that he is self-medicating and upped his dosage of Zoloft to 100mg.
My husband says that he doesn't want to live his life conforming to everyone else's beliefs and he's gonna do what he wants to do regardless of what anyone else says. He will smoke weed and drink every day and he wants to do that for the rest of his life.(His words) He says he knows he has a problem but he doesn't want to change. I have talked with him for hours and hours trying to give him every little piece of evidence making it beyond clear to him that he needs help and we all know what good that did.
I told him that if he didn't get help that I was going back to my parents with the boys and that we would be there indefinitely. He says the boys are his only source of hapiness(besides substances) and that he doesn't want me to take them away from him. He thinks I am a horrible mother for thinking of taking them away from their daddy. I asked him what he thought I should do and he can't come up with an answer. I think he knows in his heart that this is best for the boys and I, although he admitted that he thought I would never go and probably still doesn't actually believe we are leaving.
So my parents are here to take the boys tomorrow. I have to take care of some things I committed to and then I will be on my way next Sunday. I feel so lost and confused. I have to constantly remind myself that he has a problem and that no matter what I have done in the past, it can't be fixed until he gets help. I keep telling myself that I'm not a horrible person, that my husband is sick and that I shouldn't take the things he does or says personally. I just don't know how to go about feeling better about myself and not going back into depression. It's so hard when he wanders back into our lives and seems so normal and loving then in a flash he is so cold and out the door to party again. It's just heartbreaking watching my boys hurt over this. They are now 5 and 1 and as crazy as it sounds, the youngest is even affected by his daddy's actions. He screamed today b/c he saw his Daddy had put his baseball hat on and that meant Daddy was leaving again. My oldest is filled with sadness too and cries and cries over any little thing and I know he's just missing his Daddy. I just want to shake my husband so hard and say look what these boys are going through! We can't put them through this anther minute!
I don't know where my life is headed or what to do. I am living day by day right now, thinking I've cried my last tear, just to be struck with another memory or emotion and lose it again. I keep asking myself if my husband is right and the problems led him to drink or if his drinking intensified all of our problems. I just want someone to come and tell me exactly what steps to take to make this as pain free for my family and I as possible!
If anyone has any advice I would be so appreciative. I have found a few meetings in this area and I am going to try and go to one this week since I won't have the boys to care for. I am also looking into meetings back home to go to. If you have read all of this you deserve some type of reward! All I have to offer is a (((HUG))) so thank you all from the bottom of my heart!
wow a reward, ok go to petfinders, put in Basset HOund and this zip 97321
There is a Basset/llaso apso spell i want to break out of jail...
OH wow, You guys have been thru so much.
The disease gets worse and worse. The A may go to rehab, get on a program of recovery for awhile, then relapse. Then get even worse, rehab and drink as soon as they get h9ome.
It is the nature of the disease. A very sad fact. These are all symptoms of an addicet. We did not have anything to do with it, the A drinks becuz they are A, very sick.
I am so glad you are taking care of you and your wonderful boys. They are small for such a short time. I left my A also when my kids were little. I refused to allow them to ilve like that.
Takes a lot of courage to do what you are doing.
One day at a time. Try not to take everything apart. It is just what you see. The A is insane We are not able to rationalyze this illness.
rats I am falling asleep. keep coming back. love,debilyn
I can't tell you what to do, but I can make suggestions, and tell you what happened in my life.
First, I think that you leaving might just be the shocker that he needs. Please remember this. In the alanon program there are the 3 c's
1.) You didn't cause it
2.) You can't control it
3.) you can't cure it!!
I suggest that you don't try to cure it. It only makes the situation worse. I would go ahead with your plan to leave, if that is what you need to do, and try to keep in touch with him, if you feel like its something you would like to see work out. Sometimes starting over with a relationship is a good thing. Beginning anew is sometimes necessary. Take care of YOU and your kiddo's.
This program is about YOU and your serinity, not about him or his drinking. As I said before, you can't cure him or his drinking. I think you should let HIM take care of HIM, and accept the consequences for his actions. Sounds like he (and you) have laid alot of blame on your shoulders.
I am glad that you are going to a meeting. Being face to face with someone that has experienced, at least some of the things you are going through, will help. Once you get settled in your new place, I think that you should get to a meeting, find someone in the program that you feel like has some experience, and start working the 12 steps of the program. It may seem like something you don't need, or it may just seem silly, to have to work these steps, but take my word for it, It DOES help.
I read your post and am sorry you all are dealing with this. It really hurts, I know.
I gained more energy in realizing I couldn't do anything to stop anyone else from drinking. And in turn had more time to focus on myself and what I could change.
It is difficult to detach the person from the disease. I am still learning to do this with my father.
I think you would find great support and help in getting to a meeting. And take it one day at a time.
I just want someone to come and tell me exactly what steps to take to make this as pain free for my family and I as possible!
I can tell you what steps, there are 12 of them :) 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditaion to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awkening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
You are making the wisest choice possible in seeking meetings. There, you will find that living with an alcoholic has made you sick too. Alanon allows YOU to get better and if you commit yourself to working the steps, you'll come out the other side a new person. Hopefully, your children will learn from you by osmsis and be able to find happiness too.
Please check out our chatroom too. There is always someone there to greet you.
Welcome home, we love ya Christy
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If we think that miracles are normal, we will expect them. And expecting a miracle is the surest way to get one.
It's said on this board over and over---we cannot control the A. Nothing you do or don't do will change what he will or will not do. I hope you will continue to take care of yourself and those oprecious boys. Maybe you hubby will follow along...maybe not---either way know that you will be ok. Hugs and prayers.
your descent into the depths of addiction was much quicker than mine. i was with mine 20 years (14 married) before i finally had enough.
the feelings are the same. the despair, the depression, the begging, the reasoning, the rationalizing, the anger.
the surrender.
did it all. felt it all. left too.
could not take one more second when i did. did not know about alanon then. wish i had.
however, saw my A many times after that. watched him leave with a few suitcases and some tattered furniture. watched my son cry every time he left. watched my daughter cry whenever i had to bring her to his apartment.
hardest thing i have ever done. it would have been so easy to go back. but my sponsor and his advised we work on ourselves first. this disease had made us both very very sick. best we focus on being a better 'one' before we consider being 'two' again.
hope you learn something from my story. don't give up on yourself or your kids. get to LOTS of meetings, they work. the steps are 12. do them, work them and you will get better. promise.
pray for your A. Get to some open AA meetings to learn more about what he's going through. and how to separate him from the disease.
it gets better if you keep coming back.
ps. we got back together after 2 and 1/2 years apart and have been back together for 2 and 1/2 years. sometimes, miracles happen.
What you describe is not so unusual. Many wives have discovered that a move away from family and friends seems to be the beginning of the end of the marriage. For some reason the presence of family and friends can be a detterent to bad behavior for SOME husbands. They know if they treat the wife badly there are people around who care about her who will probably confront him, and besides, he may be ostracized from the family and community of friends.
Many wives have dicovered that once they move with their husband away from their family and friends it is a different story. Normally the husband moves first, since they are moving for a job, and has a chance to establish a new circle of friends. In this way, when the wife finally does arrive, she is moving into "his" world and she is the outsider. For some men the temptation to take advantage of this situation is too much, and they let go of former restraints on bad behavior and engage in conduct which is detrimental to the wife and marriage since they feel there are no restraints from others.
Your situation sounds similar to this. You say that before the move the grandparents watched the children and you and your husband went out together. Then, after the move, HE went out alone and left you alone with the kids. This is not a little change, it meant that he no longer saw you as someone to have fun with, but sought fun away from you. It is not just the babysitting either, you and the wives could have taken turns babysitting, while the wives went out with their husbands and had some fun. Instead, the wives were left to take care of the kids while the husbands went out to have fun without them.
It seems that the situation seems to ahve gone downhill from there...
I can only offer the same advice to you that I do to other women in the same predicament that I took MYSELF!
If you have children and you are living with a spouse whom you KNOW engages in illegal activity you are putting both yourself and your children at great risk. Every state has a department of children's services and they take illegal activity in the home extremely seriously. Especially when it involves illegal drug use. If your husband gets caught with his marijuana, and you KNEW about it, you can be charged also and your children taken from you as unfit parents and placed in foster care.
I cannot emphasize enough the role that we as parents have to protect our children from bad influences. A responsible parent simply cannot condone the use of illegal drugs in the home around children. I know that when you are in a dysfunctional marriage to an addict the abnormal comes to feel normal and the illegal activity starts to seem like no big deal. Well, it IS! We have to help each other to continue to know what is normal, and healthy for children.
Please dont' think I am preaching. I had to make some tough choices concerning this situation myself. I too had to leave an addicted spouse who was taking illegal drugs as soon as I found out. I could not risk niether myself, nor losing my daughter.
I do know a woman who looked the other way to her husband's marijuana use. He got bolder and bolder in his use and was arrested one day and he happened to have enough of an amount to be charged as a "dealer" even though he was not. The wife knew about it, but just ignored it, she just went to work and took care of their son. The husband was a real creep (addicts are not known for their morals or honesty) and tried to turn "informant" to get a lighter sentence and implicated her and claimed that she knew about it and thought it was OK. That made her an accomplice to illegal drug activity and an "unfit parent" in the eyes of the law since they had the drugs in their home. BOTH went to jail and the child ended up in foster care. I saw her when she got out, she was having trouble getting a job as a convicted felon and she needed a job to try and get her son back, she bitterly regretted ever ignoring such a serious problem. She denied her involvement but when they gave her a lie detector test, she knew all about it so failed it, and was found guilty of complicity.
Please think of your children and the danger of letting them live with and be around an illegal drug user, no matter who he is.
It sounds like you have a good plan to go to your parents and have them help you. I hope thigns work out for you and that your husband finally realizes the danger he is putting your family in to engage in illegal drug use.
It sounds as though, despite his addictions, he really loves you and your children. Maybe after you leave you can do some research into the penalties for illegal drugs use int he home around children that you can share with your husband to get him to see the seriousness of his actions so he can hopefully get some treatment for his addictions.
I'm an alcoholic in recovery 2 years so maybe I can see things from a slightly different perspective. I can totally relate to your husband's irrational, irresponsible behavior. Been there, done that. That's what addiction does. It distorts your entire value system. The biggest problem is that you believe all the rationalizations you tell yourself to allow yourself to use. The denile is so strong, Alcoholism is defined as a progressive, fatal disease.
Try to understand, your husband is not the cause of the mistreatment, his disease is. Until I really started my recovery, I never believed Alcoholism is a disease. It is. Our brains our wired differently than normal people. The brain chemistry is different. You can't reason with an active alcoholic to stop drinking anymore than you can reason with a diabetic to will his blood sugar levels to be normal. Treatment is needed for both. Once you understand this, your recovery can start. Once HE understands this, HIS recovery can start. Unfortunatly most of us have to hit bottom bad enough to get help. If he's like most of the rest of us, he doesn't like what he's doing, but he honestly doesn't know why he behaves the way he does.
Along with going to Al-anon, try to get to some AA open speaker meetings. The more you hear other recovered A's stories, the better off you'll be to understand and help your husband. Before you move out with the kids, maybe you could try get him to go to an open AA meeting with you. Good luck. This disease sucks.
WOW everyone, I am so touched by all of the responses! I have so much to say but I will have to come back when I am not so tired. I can barely keep my eyes open but I felt I needed to write and tell you all how much I appreciate each and every word you have said and how much it's helped me already. I have no idea what got into me...the boy's last night here was so tough b/c my husband wasn't here for them. We woke up the next morning, packed up and my oldest kept asking where daddy was. Daddy didn't show up in time before they left so they headed out. He got there about 5 minutes after they left. I was so pissed and told him to hurt ME, NOT my kids! I just wanted to let him suffer and say you have to suffer the consequences but I called my parents anyway. I couldn't bare knowing my oldest would have to suffer b/c of a mistake my husband made. So my parents had stopped for breakfast on the way out and we ended up meeting them there. After we left something inside me made me say some really odd things. Although I really wanted to beat the heck out of him I found myself thinking about how you all said that this is a disease and that my actions and display of a good attitude could help the situation. I just kept thinking of how miserable he looked in McDonalds and that he was pale, sweaty, hung over and just plain SICK. He couldn't possibly want to feel that way. I told him that I love him... that I know he's going through some hard times...but that I can't stay and allow myself or the boys to be hurt anymore. I told him I'd always love him and that I was there for him if he needed to talk. He just nodded his head and acknowledging what I said. I knew it had sunk in b/c of the expression on his face....he almost looked confused!
My boys are with my parents right now and my husband is staying at his best buddy's house while I am at home. They are definitely NOT good influences on each other. I went to see him today to talk about things (since he wouldn't answer his phone) and I woke him up at 3 in the afternoon. We sat outside and both cried our eyes out apologizing to each other for hurting one another so bad. This is the first sign of any emotion I've seen out of him all week. I thought I would go there and he would be cold and heartless like he has been for the past 2 weeks but it was amazing how open and emotional he was. Is it possible that he is already seeing a change in me and that sparked a change in him? Is this normal for A's to be cold and distant one day and then break down and become more "human" the next day? I talked to him later tonight and he was back to his distant cold self again. I'm not sure why he is so open one minute and then back to being angry the next. I just don't understand! I was so completely relieved to see the human side again. I was starting to wonder if he had any emotions left at all.
Isabela...your post hit the nail on the head. That is EXACTLY what happened in our situation. I have lots more to add but I have to get to bed now before I fall asleep on the computer desk. Thank you alll SOO much for being so caring, understanding and comforting to a complete stranger. I have gotten so much hope and inspiration from you all.
Thank you alll SOO much for being so caring, understanding and comforting to a complete stranger. I have gotten so much hope and inspiration from you all.