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Hello - I am very new to the concept of recovery and looking for advice (or affirmation or guidance)...
My husband of 4 years is an alcoholic - but has not been able to admit it until recently - and it is this recent admission that I am struggling with. I have set boundaries only to give in with respect to his drinking over our 10 year relationship.... it finally came to a head 2 weeks ago. After separating earlier in the summer, I went back to him, believing the promises that he would not drink, he would choose us over drinking. It soon became apparent that was not the case, and only an empty promise to get me back. 2 weeks ago, he came home very very drunk (he works in the restaurant industry). He was verbally abusive (as he always is when drinking) and would not let me sleep. I had been seriously thinking of leaving before this, but this was the event that made me firm in my decision. The next morning, I announced I was done and wanted a separation.
I do feel that I am firm in the need to separate and the need for me to heal me and take the space I need for my own recovery. I am less firm on whether to sever ties financially (I can afford to buy him out at this point). There is that part of me that desperately wants the "miracle" - that he can live a life of healthy sobriety and we could be a couple again. I know it will take much healing on my part as on his (he says he's now in AA and knows he's powerless against alcohol - but only time will make me feel that this is true). I guess I'm just worried - am I making a rash decision to sever everything financially at this point - are there success stories where there is a period of separation and you can eventually find your way back to each other? Or would it be wiser to sever financal ties and view it as - what will be, will be? I know ultimately it is my decision to make, but any words of wisdom would be welcome!
Hello and welcome , I assume u are not attending Al-Anon meetings for yourself ,please find meetings in your area u need support give this program a few months before making life altering decission if possible ,you may feel entirley different in six months , sometimes separation is necessary for both parties involved gives both of you a chance to re evaluate your lives and u will be able to make an informed decission based on fact rather than anger and emotion . Just my opinion perhaps leave things as they are at the moment and feel confident in the fact that you can buy him out if necessary .. at the same time u need to protect yourself joint accts and credit cards with your name only . Never give up hope there is always hope - my husb and i separated for 6 months ,it was the best thing for us in the 6 months i found out that I was going to be okay with out him ,and he found that home was where he wanted to be. . sober and AA or stay where he was . I have never been sorry I stayed prior to our separation this program gave me the freedom to live my life while he did what he had to do I had learned to be happy regardless of what he was doing ,like you I did not want to leave my marriage - the decission to leave was my husb he had been dry for 9 months at the time and miserable hanging on by a thread when he left he started to drink again , I knew I could not live with active drinking again thus the boundary sober and AA or nothing . Niether program promises to save marriages just to return some sanity to my life . sounded pretty good to me . hehe
Aloha Colnago Gal...I don't give advise and can only share my recovery experience with you. Separation is okay...it's one tool that can detach a victim of the disease from the active disease and provide you an opportunity to learn more like Abbyal has share from her experience. Getting into Al-Anon helped to separate me from thinking, feeling and behaviors that I used which didn't work in a disease problem. What your husband and you have is a disease of compulsion of the mind with an allergy of the body. When he drinks he is not your husband...he's your alcoholic and trying to relate to him in the same manner as you do your husband won't work. On the other hand expecting him to just make a choice not to drink in favor of the family is not understanding the disease of the mind, body, spirit and emotions which isn't curable and only can be arrested by total abstinence. It is a progressive disease which if not arrested only gets worse and includes at times relapses from sobriety. This is a cunning, powerful and very baffling disease (like trying to expect them to JUST stop or control so that we won't be confused and afraid of it anymore) which often times results in insanity and or death. I suggest you use your separation time to come learn about what you and he are up against and why the membership has had to learn how to change the way we exist. The hotline number for Al-Anon is in the white pages of your local telephone book. If you call that number you can get the meeting places and times so that you can make the decision to come learn what we have found out. Buying him out might seem like one way of getting out of the problem however in time we learn that another part still persists.
Colnago, welcome to MIP. I do wish that you attend a face to face Alanon meeting and keep coming back to the boards, for much encouragement and experiences.
I do wish that you think about your relationship with the alcoholic as not so black and white.
I have been separated from the alcoholic for 2 years, filed for divorce, but not final yet because of some red tape. I probably will go ahead with the divorce. As I do not want to be legally tied to him for any other problems he may or not cause.
As for a miracle, I still pray for that miracle for him, that he will find sobriety and live the life Im sure he wants for himself, but is such challenge due to the compulsion, like Jerry said. In all the years , which was 26 years, My only hope and wish, no matter what he did was that he stop drinking and find sobriety. That must be the first priority , if we are to share the same roof. Wanting a normal relationship is not possible if the alcoholic is active. We dont stop caring because we separate or divorce. I just choose to live, because living with the A was not good for my health. Separation does bring serenity and a time to work on yourself, clears out the cobwebs. Of course using the tools of Alanon and my faith have carried me thru.
Alanon has a phrase: "One Day at A Time" the only way to live your life.
Thank you to all for your incredible insight. I do plan to start going to in-person Al-Anon meetings (my grandfather has 50+ years sobriety through AA and recommended it to help me understand things). I do also wish for the grace to be able to view our situation not in black and white and recognizing that I need to heal myself and get myself to a healthy place! Thanks for the warm welcome - your responses really made me feel like there is help and understanding out there!
Gen I am going to share my experience with you. Which is no way a strange one in the A disease dilemma.
My ignorance almost got me to lose everything I had worked hard for. Had raised my kids alone, widowed. They were grown, bought my home, had money in the bank, had a payed for neat jeep and a new pickup.
A came back, in recovery for years, the man I loved deep in my heart all my life. Almost two years he wooed me, big time.
I married him, we bought another house in the country. I put our finances together, both names on everything. ignorant.He treated me like a husband a real husband does. I was precious, loved, supported, was in other words, very spoiled and spoiled him back.
He had a brain tumor surgery, relapsed. His disease robbed me, lost everything, I was left living in my barn, renting my home so as not to lose my place. PLUS I was paying all the bills, his bills from his contractor business I had no idea he was not paying.
I was alone, starving, freezing and grieving as my mother just died, my old pot pig and my dog was stolen. I was hanging by a thread. Had to stop college, many, many years in, my career suffered, I had to quit due to beind disabled.
All the heaviness of what i was left with destroyed my health in many ways.
I was almost dead. MIP found me. Was online all the time all night long in chat. They kept me alive.
was in my tiny room in my barn, in my bed with my laptop fed by an extension cord from the main house. Spent my time with several people in the chat room that became my reality, my home, my family.
I got myself going slowly. Put everything in my name. AH came and went for years. Mostly went. I would only put up with his abuse so long. When he became physical out he went again, back to mommies to Mrs. Enabler.
With everything in my name, his disease could not touch anything. If he got into recovery great, if not I was blessed with a little time with him.I learned thru al anon how to live with the disease.
If he left or when he left, all i had to lose was him. Which almost killed me the first time, and everytime he left or I pushed him out, I hurt again. But I learned to be ok with out him.
I believe the best thing we can do when we love an A who is our partner, we must protect us both from the disease. The disease does not care that it is taking out forty to sixty to? every day for dope. does not care he does not pay his taxes. That everything you always paid and got returns goes into his disease toilet.A's spend lots of time sick, it gets worse and worse, sucks more and more of the life around it.
Because I believed in marriage and was ignorant to the disease he had, I allowed the accounted to make our stuff joint. IGNORANCE. In my career, money was taken out for taxes etc. I always got a chunk back. When it was joint, it made ME responsible for his stuff too. I was told he paid it. He still owed after the taxes were done.
For years I paid back thousands while I had no toilet or warm water or power, paying off his stuff, he lived with mommy.
The disease gets worse, it always does. It is the way of the disease. It is a bunch of symptoms like any other disease. If they stop using, that is only a symptom of the disease, does not mean they are no longer A. Addiction is in the dna, some have more markers than others.
For instance if on paternal side most everyone has dark hair and browen eyes, the maternal side, mostly blond but a few dark hair and eyes. So the chances of kids with dark hair and eyes is high.
Same with Addictions, the more addicts or people with those dna markers on each side, the stronger the addiction part of a persons dna is there.
Some people have a few dna markers, some have so many they don't have a chance.
Both my kids have dads who were A and their dads were A. My side zero as far as we can see. Thank you hp they are not A.
My ex AH, both sides flaming A's all over the place generations past.
What I am saying is, what would want us to take a chance knowing this? Are you ready to lose it all? Addiction is insanity, do you want to trust an insane person?
I am a determined, stubborn woman. If I had not been I would be dead, but because I learned from my own experience and from my MIP friends, to not put my life in the hands of an insane person.
So here is my experience. I don't have to tell you what I would do. Knowing this disease gets ever so much worse, and if you read as many posts here as you can, you will see what the disease loves to destroy.
It has taken me years and my health to get me ok and content where I am. I am still fighting for my home. I no longer have a nice vehicle, no longer can help others like I used to and want to. I live with chronic pain, mostly physical now, but that takes its toll on my heart too.
Been long enough now that my attitude is," ok now what?" I still look for options, and I KNOW, that horrid, lieing, manipulative, lieing, abusive, thieving, hateful, demon disease can't take anything from me anymore. Took everything, even my AH.
Back to as healthy as possible, content, serene, never worry, one day at a time. Does not mean I don't lose it, sob, depress, lost, lonely, but I have my foundation back. NO ONE will ever take that from me again. NO it is not stuff, it is an inner peace. Guess when you almost lost it all, something changes.
so I share my experience. not unlike a thousand others.
Welcome to our Al-Anon worldwide program and fellowship. We learn in Al-Anon that no one should give advice to a newcomer, only suggestions. We can only share with you what has worked for us using the principles of the program. I can greatly empathize with your separating and then reconciling with his promise of *going to be sober.* I did that with my first husband for forty years. I forgave him over and over. I did not do that for him ... it was for me. BUT, it was based on my insecurities. I had two children and knew I did not make enough money to survive on my own, and he threatened me every time I would talk of divorce that he would leave the State and I would never collect any alimony from him. So, I stayed with him. Actually, I lived most of the Al-Anon principles all of those years. I concentrated on our two precious daughters, and created hobbies and interests for my own self ... I taught myself piano, something I always wanted to do as a child, and I became an expert seamstress and good at tailoring. And I love to read and write. Unfortunately, those hobbies were all done in isolation. I went to work every day, and kept all our secrets at home under lock and key.**
You are the only one that can decide if you have reached your own bottom, as an alcoholic does. I have been in Al-Anon many years, the number is not important ..recovery means how much I actually use the program every hour of the day. During those many years, I have seen many miracles in relationships when the actively drinking alcoholic becomes a sober alcoholic and attends daily AA meetings. One couple in particular I recall in Las Vegas, had been married twenty years or more. They were separated for three years and then remarried. They had a beautiful relationship because they both worked their own Twelve Step program of AA and Al-Anon.When you attend Al-Anon meetings, you will meet many happily married couples that work each program. I am married now for the past ten years to someone that has been sober for thirty years. He went to Al-Anon meetings with me almost daily for seven years when we were first married. He did that to help the *small boy who grew up with two actively drinking parents.* He found a lot of help also working the Al-Anon program ... people that knew him for many years when he lived in Hawaii before, were amazed at the changes in his personality when we moved here to live. We have a beautiful relationship thanks to both programs. I was on my own and working the Al-Anon for about four years when I met him. If I had not had that much recovery in Al-Anon ... the relationship would not have lasted very long. I had too much excess baggage from the past to make it work. Al-Anon helped me become emotionally healthy***
Separating and working on your own self with the help of going to face to face Al-Anon meetings will help you immensely. As they told me when I joined the fellowship, *keep telling your self you are going to be okay no matter what happens to the alcoholic.* My best suggestion is that you read the chapter in the Big Book of Aloholics, *To the wives* I think it is still Chapter Five in the new edition also. In fact, read the whole book ... it will enlighten you about the disease of alcoholism if you have not read it.**
With Al-Anon hugs and love from Maui ... Mary Glen Scot, author of the E book Awakening to the Power Within. iUniverse.com
