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After speaking to my dh about his drinking and hiding it, he acknowledged it and told me he'd not drink again. He seemed pretty sincere and things between us had been good since then. We took a mini family 3 day vacation last week and the 3 of us spend all 72 hrs together. We hiked, fished, and went driving in the mountains.
Fast forward to today: he had been away on business this week. I really didn't give the trip much thought as he travels at least once a month. Last night he just sounded a bit 'off' on the phone. Not drunk or anything, just different. I couldn't put my finger on it so when he came home I looked at his expense report and noticed that his meals were running $30 at Gordon Biersch for 1 person. So, either he was cheating, drinking, or eating 3 hamburgers at a sitting. I have never done anything like this before in our marriage and a part of me feels guilty.
This is where I think I went wrong: I snooped, I called the restaurant and told them I needed an itemized receipt instead of just the signature customer copy. They obliged and told me everything on the receipt. 3 beers and a burger. OI! So, I'm ticked and he's been in a great mood today and I don't want to say anything but I'm sooooooo not happy right now. Sigh, I just needed to vent. Thx
Glad you came here to vent. This will be a good lesson in control. In my experience its better to say nothing like you said, this is the wisest choice. I know there is something in us that wants them to know they are not pulling the wool over our eyes and we know. But it changes nothing and it just adds fuel to the fire.
We must let go of the alcoholic and concentrate on ourselves and our own program.
next time ufeel like doing something like that ask yourself if you really need the pain and anger that goes with it . what diff did it make that you know he is drinking , you still couldnt do anything about it. I understand your need to know but to what end for yrs I rolled up the sleeve of a 100 . dollar blouse and dug thru the garbage to count the beer cans , why i dont know but I had to know how much , i never confronted him about it sooooooooooo??????? I love the question who is sicker the guy who hides the booze or those who stay up all nite looking for it?? duh that would be me . If your not already please find meetings for yourself u need support , I remember those talks u mentioned the ones we walk away from feeling like finally he heard me and he will stop only to find out the next day he didnt remember we had the damn talk . sheeeeeesh I used to call them fireside chats , finally when he got in the mood to do the * talk * Ijust walked up to him gave him a hug and said u dont have to live like this there is help. and walked away leaving the problem with him where it belonged , keep the focus on yourself and regardless of what he does your going to be okay .
I know this story so well! I didn't call up any restaurants, mainly because the receipts I found were already itemized!
In the beginning, it helped me to see that he was lying and protecting his disease. Like that saying, "How do you know an alcoholic is lying? His lips are moving." No matter how sincere he sounded, I discovered that if he ever said he wasn't drinking, he was lying. (He thought he was telling the truth, though -- "Oh, sure, I gave up drinking ... uh, a while ago.")
Later on my snooping confirmed that the rehab, the AA meetings, the sponsor, the extra promises, etc. had not had the effect I'd hoped. And the snooping confirmed that my instincts were correct -- whenever I thought something was a little off, yep, he'd been drinking.
So snooping helped reassure me I wasn't crazy. Because my A would tell me I was. "I haven't been drinking! You just have some kind of paranoia about alcohol! You need to get your head examined! Something's really wrong with you, thinking I'm drinking all the time!"
But after that, the snooping was useless until I'd decided what I was going to do if he was still drinking. He was swearing he was sober. (And he would have months-long sober periods -- he's a binger -- so sometimes he was really sober.) And he would swear that that meant he'd never drink again. But one day I opened a bag -- in our baby's stroller, no less -- and found beer cans, and that was it. That was my final act of snooping, because I left. It also explained why I'd come home the night before and found him passed out, leaving our baby in a dangerous situation. He'd sworn he had been really sick. But finally I saw the light about the lying and the drinking.
So after this long-winded post, what I mean is that alcoholics drink, unless they're in recovery and often when they are in recovery. And they lie about it. That's a given. So the only question is: What are we going to do?
Oh man. I haven't done THIS exactly, but more because like what Mattie said - because what I found was already itemized, not because I wouldn't have done it.
It's hard, and I understand because I've been there. Thing is, the more you snoop, the more you want to snoop. Either you find things that don't add up so you keep digging for more "evidence," or you find nothing and you're convinced you missed something so you keep digging. For me, the digging caused me to feel physically ill - while I was digging, my heart would race and my stomach would feel ill thinking about what I might be about to find.
And do you know what? The fact that I knew about it, whatever IT was, changed nothing. It happened, whether I knew it happened or I didn't. Me knowing about it did not change anything, except that I was angry and I had violated someone else's personal boundaries. I had to learn that my AH was his own person and that even if I did not agree with his decisions, I had to accept that they were HIS decisions to make. I could not make the decisions for him, I could not show him the light and make him act a different way, I could not change anything. If he decided a change was necessary, he had to be the one to make it - and until then, it was not my decision to make.
It was really hard for me to stop snooping because I really felt that I had the best motives in the world. I wanted him to be sober. In the end, though, I decided that whatever my motives might have been, they did not give me the right to do what I was doing.
I had to take it a day at a time. When I got up in the morning, I would ask my AH to remove the obsession and desire to snoop JUST FOR TODAY. I would not let myself think that I would never snoop again - I would let myself think that I would not snoop TODAY. And then tomorrow, I would do the same thing. One day at a time, it is possible to stop the behavior.
Thanks all for the replies. I guess I just wonder how to keep moving on when I don't trust him. I feel betrayed, yet everything else right now in our relationship is fine. He had a nice time with our ds last night, they went out and played tennis together and then went out to dinner. They came home happy and everyone was getting along fine, we had a pleasant evening. Yet, I was sitting there feeling awful because I knew he was hiding something.
I can't go to meetings but will be starting counseling in a few weeks. All the Al Anon meetings are at times when I am not available. My son plays competitive tennis and has practice every night and my husband travels. We don't have any tennis friends that live around us and his practice facility is 30 mins from home. I thought about weekend meetings but we travel for tennis quite a bit, too, and are usually gone most of the weekend. Also, our son has anxiety disorders(go figure) and possibly Tourette's. He has sever separation anxiety and he sees his own counselor, so it's hard for me to leave him. He doesn't even like being at home with dad because of his constant worry about me. Also, I don't want to leave him with AH at home because husband isn't the best at choosing proper activities or TV shows for our 11 year old to watch. He just turns on the TV, sits there, and lets ds watch whatever stupid show he's got on. He knows I have a problem with this, yet he won't do anything about it. So, I feel like I can't ever leave my kid with dad at home alone: ds' anxiety is hard enough but throw in my dh's inability to discern what makes proper viewing for a child, make sense? Or am I just making excuses? I'm really hoping that counseling will be good for me and will lead me in the right direction.
Hi there ilovedogs. I do too, by the way, and am domestic servant to a Jack Russell Terrier and a toy Poodle. Now on to your post. :]
Ok you snooped. Did doing that make you feel better? Probably not. I remember the days when I was the world's most accomplished snooper. My A hid bottles of gin and vodka in every conceivable place, and often I would go on a scavenger hunt, find a load of bottles and line them up on the kitchen counter. The only thing "counter" about this exercise was that it was counter productive!! He wasn't fazed, and it only served to upset me more than I already was.
Am I scolding you? Absolutely not! I believe that everyone who has a loved one who is an A has, at some time snooped. As Abbyal said, do you really need the pain and anger that goes with snooping? No, of course not. Next time you are tempted, stop and think: "Just what am I gaining here?"
Best wishes to you,
Diva
__________________
"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
I want to know the facts. My exA cheated. I decided to stay . Some time later I had that weird feeling. I asked him if something was up and of course the answer was no. I installed a keylogger on my computer that he used when visiting and low & behold he was chasing after another woman.
Do I regret that action? No way. What I did after that I regret (stayed), but knowing the truth is important to me. Sitting around wondering if they are lying is not an option for me. I didn't need to snoop anymore after that - I already had my answers. Why I chose to ignore them is beyond me.
The MINUTE I had that information the pain I felt in the future was on my shoulders. But I do not regret finding the truth. Continued snooping after you already know the truth is nothing but self-mutilation . . . but chosing not to stay in the dark and just believe the lies is not something I will do ever again.
Hopefully some day I will find someone trustworthy and snooping won't be necessary. In the meantime learning to trust myself and my HP is enough for me.
Tricia
__________________
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
We can help you thru our experience and give you our opinions on what works best in dealing with the A, but we cant help you do the work.
When I was married to the XA, I was desperate for relief from the pain I was feeling. The moment I walked into my first Alanon meeting over 20 years ago, I could feel it in the room, the relief, the compassion and experience of the Alanon members. These were my peers, they had all walked in my shoes. There was no denying that.
There is no easy fix it plan in dealing with this disease. Betrayal??? The Alcoholic is really betraying himself. Trust??? When an A hides , its from himself.
Finding an Alanon meeting is priority for you and your son, Im sure you can bring him with you. Alanon will guide you along this difficult path of living with an A and help you find the solutions you are looking for no matter what choices the A makes for himself . You have choices also. You have to understand the dynamics of this disease. Are you going to live always distrusting this person who is your husband and the Father of your son. There is a way to live with hope and solutions and boundaries . I hope you choose to seek this out.
You don't just want him to stop drinking, do you? 'Cause then you'll just be living with a dry drunk. So then your choices are narrowed to living with an active alcoholic or a dry drunk, neither of them very fun options. If he's an alcoholic, the only third option is for him to be in recovery - and if he's in recovery, you'll know it. He'll be talking about it often, unprodded by you, and you'll notice changes in his personality. If this doesn't happen, you have to decide whether you want to live with either an active alcoholic or a dry drunk that you feel the need to check up on (who will probably drink eventually, and won't be all that pleasant to live with in the meantime). As a recovering alcoholic, that's my take on the situation, for what it's worth.
P.S. He'll lie to you about the alcohol because he'll justify this lie in his head - "I have the right to drink, she shouldn't try to take it away from me, what she doesn't know won't hurt her, I'll be in a better mood afterwards so she should be happy I drank, I don't really have a problem anyway, I don't lie to her about anything else, I deserve to drink, if you had my problems you'd drink too, I work hard and I play hard, I'll just be more careful about drinking and it'll all be ok. On and on. I know all the lies, I told them to myself and believed them all. He can't stop drinking because he can't stop drinking. And he doesn't know it, he's in denial. But until he finally realizes this (hits some kind of bottom and becomes willing to face the truth) there's nothing you can do. No matter how much he loves you, he will not stop drinking for you - not permanently anyway. He can only stop drinking if he wants to recover for himself. The book Alcoholics Anonymous puts it quite well: He will be restless, irritable and discontent until he can again experience that feeling of ease and comfort which comes at once with the first drink. So, again, if he did quit for you without any recovery program, you'll be living with someone who is restless, irritable and discontent. In other words, mean.
-- Edited by FlyingSquirrel on Friday 27th of August 2010 12:27:34 PM
I've been living with a dry drunk for 15 years until this most recent issue. You can read my original posts on here I'm sure and find that I've been living with an angry, bitter, miserable, depressed man for the past 15 years. Now, not everyday is bad. Many days are quite lovely and we actually have a pretty tight family, but that's because I make an effort to keep things status quo around here. I live by walking on eggshells, organizing the pantry so that he doesn't have a fit because it's messy, keep things neat and organized for him. I don't nag, I don't ask him to do much of anything around the house because he's always stressed out about work and money. I cringe when the neighbor's are getting yard work done or when their dogs bark. He's been known to walk up to my neighbor's landscapers and ask them to use a broom instead of blowing for 20 mins. He freaks out about noise and dogs barking and how his rights are always being infringed upon.
None of that will change, alcohol or no alcohol. I've seen how he can be when he drinks too much. It's really pathetic and that's what I'm concerned about. He may only be having a drink here and there right now and having a few beers with dinner, but what it can lead to is what I'm concerned about.
I am glad that I've found a counselor but I won't be starting until mid-September. For now, I know this is just one more thing he's throwing on the fire. What really gets me po'd is that he can sit there and judge everyone else in this world yet hardly ever takes a good hard look at himself. He's so consumed by work that I also feel he's letting our relationship slip through the cracks and that's been something we've been discussing. I told him his stress over work is killing us. But, truthfully: it's always something with him. Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's his frustration over photo radar, sometimes it's the neighbor's dog barking. I don't think it really matters anymore, he just always needs to have something to be miserable about. SIGH!
Flyingsquirell: I saw what you edited to add in your post. You know what he said when I confronted him after finding a gin bottle in the trash? He said he was protecting me. He didn't seem too ashamed of himself, either. He told me had had been having a gin and tonic every night for about 3 nights and that it took away his chest pains from stress over work. But, he said he'd stop drinking if that's what we needed to do in our marriage.
I also have to add that my dad was/is an alcoholic. He was a passive drunk, though. He'd just sit and drink after dinner and sit in his chair and do nothing. Unfortunately, my mom had given him an ultimatum: quit drinking or I'm leaving. He chose drinking and she cheated on him, got caught, and they got divorced. This all happened when I was in college but my younger sister is pretty scarred by it all. My dad is also part of my own issues: He has blamed me for his divorce and after 20 years he's still bitter and angry about my mom. There was a time when I wasn't even allowed to mention her around him. He'd completely freak out on me. Again, this is just part of the whole puzzle, right? Sure does keep life interesting!
All I can say is that my snooping has brought me a lot of self-inflicted pain.
I'm an analytical person, and the snooping part of me is that "fact-finding" part of me that feels it must without a doubt have absolute PROOF that something is not right instead of just trusting my intuition.
My AH has proven hundreds of times over that he is not trust-worthy. He lies and hides things. He will lie even if telling the truth would really have no negative impact on him. He will lie even when caught red-handed.
But that snoopy part of me feels like even though I knew he was lying to me, that I had to find out FOR SURE.
I never felt good about it. I would check bank account records, phone records, email, internet browsing history. I would find things that just HURT terribly. And then I'd sit there feeling like a victim.
Snooping just makes me feel bad... but mostly bad about my own character. It's a nasty habit I learned from my Dad, who was always snooping through my things to see if I was up to no good when I was a teen. It hurt terribly - one of the worst things I can ever remember was I was keeping a journal and he'd apparently located it and read through it and came up to me made an off-hand remark about something I'd thought was kept very private in my journal. I felt violated.
So... knowing how it feels to be on the other end of the snooping spectrum is what I think really makes me feel horrible about my own decisions to snoop.
I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again... I hope my HP can eventually guide me to a way where I can start learning to trust my instincts and my intuition without having to get snoopy.
Oh, I done my share of snooping, I considered it a part of my program early on. LOL. I've cut my finger digging through the kitchen garbage after midnight, and I got caught checking the back seat or her car in the garage for cans. I still remember a voice standing in the doorway say, "RLC what are you doing?", my heart dropped about a foot. I'm not usually at a loss for words, but that was my deer in the headlights experience. After that if the thought even crossed my mind all I had to do is remember the look that must have been on my face that night.
Ever who first said that this disease makes us as crazy as the alcoholic in our life about had it right !!! I realized that I had the problem if the highlight of my day was to see how many beers she had drank.
As Abbyal correctly said,................Sheeeeesh.
HUGS, RLC
-- Edited by RLC on Friday 27th of August 2010 01:34:42 PM
I've been living with a dry drunk for 15 years until this most recent issue. You can read my original posts on here I'm sure and find that I've been living with an angry, bitter, miserable, depressed man for the past 15 years. Now, not everyday is bad. Many days are quite lovely and we actually have a pretty tight family, but that's because I make an effort to keep things status quo around here. I live by walking on eggshells, organizing the pantry so that he doesn't have a fit because it's messy, keep things neat and organized for him. I don't nag, I don't ask him to do much of anything around the house because he's always stressed out about work and money. I cringe when the neighbor's are getting yard work done or when their dogs bark. He's been known to walk up to my neighbor's landscapers and ask them to use a broom instead of blowing for 20 mins. He freaks out about noise and dogs barking and how his rights are always being infringed upon.
None of that will change, alcohol or no alcohol. I've seen how he can be when he drinks too much. It's really pathetic and that's what I'm concerned about. He may only be having a drink here and there right now and having a few beers with dinner, but what it can lead to is what I'm concerned about.
I am glad that I've found a counselor but I won't be starting until mid-September. For now, I know this is just one more thing he's throwing on the fire. What really gets me po'd is that he can sit there and judge everyone else in this world yet hardly ever takes a good hard look at himself. He's so consumed by work that I also feel he's letting our relationship slip through the cracks and that's been something we've been discussing. I told him his stress over work is killing us. But, truthfully: it's always something with him. Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's his frustration over photo radar, sometimes it's the neighbor's dog barking. I don't think it really matters anymore, he just always needs to have something to be miserable about. SIGH!
You're describing me, pre-A.A. The only thing I disagree with is your statement "None of that will change, alcohol or no alcohol." It CAN change - but only if he'll work a program of recovery.
Why don't you make a deal with him - find a place that has both an AA meeting and an Al-Anon meeting at the same time. See if he'll go to one meeting "just to see what they have to say" while you go to the other. Tell him Al-Anon suggests you try them out for at least 6 meetings and ask if he will do the same in A.A. while you are doing yours. Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.
I snooped a great deal around the ex a. I looked at his phone messages all the time. i never got much out of it. I found it fuelled the obsession. Generally if he was using I knew about it. In al anon we adopt the three C's, we can't control it, cure it and we didn't cause it.
Do you have a copy of Getting them Sober listed above. I highly recommend that. I know for me personally it was very hard to get my head around all the concepts of alcoholism.
You know what, I have never snooped, in 26 years of marriage, it all came to me.
If I went to his bathroom for extra soap, open the door and the beer cans were right there.
Go to the downstairs storage look for my bowling shoes, vodka bottles , I never had to snoop. In the end when he was really out of control, he would leave the vodka bottles on the kitchen counter thinking he was hiding them.
And when he use to stay out nite after nite for years. I could have followed him, but it would have taken too much of my energy. I was living my life and doing my program. When I found out he was cheating, and he now was the Father of twins from this woman, he sat me down and told me. Was I surprised about the cheating, no, the twins yes!! I still hoped for his sobriety, I knew all this activity was caused by his altered state. My only concern and hope was for the Alcoholic, that he somehow would find sobriety. But they choose their destiny. There always trying to figure out how they can live and still drink.
naaa not a bad thing..I was a snooper, until I realized that the snooping only fed my illness. What was the point, I really knew before I went looking. I had just made that my life's misson. Why? I don't know, I found better ways of catching them and they found better ways of hiding. What is insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I was truely insane. I got into alanon and learned I had a life to live and I wasn't. I had to learn one little stumble at a time, still don't have it down pat, but I am not that whirling dirvish I was when I got here.
I fed my sickness all the while I had my finger pointed at someone else. If only they would change their life, my life would be wonderful. When did it change from MY LIFE to their life. I over heard a member of AA point to the alanon meeting and tell a friend.."There are the sick ones!" I thought how true...I am giving my life away...for what??? It was truely a light bulb moment for me.
. Some time later I had that weird feeling. I asked him if something was up and of course the answer was no. I installed a keylogger on my computer that he used when visiting and low & behold he was chasing after another woman.