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A bit of background...I was married to an alcoholic for 19 years and have 3 kids with him. I finally left 3 years ago after living with it all of those years and him never being able to stop drinking for more than 2 weeks. He went downhill rapidly after I left him and was very angry and agressive towards me for 2 years. He finally hit bottom 8 months ago and with the help of my family and our oldest child he sought help and began on the road with AA. I was truely happy that he finally was doing something for himself and was even proud of him for finally dealing with his issues.
Fastforward to 2 months ago when he began to speak to me nicely and interact without anger towards me. A total change and a good one. I have always just taken it and never hated him for his anger. I knew he was powerless with the alcohol.
Ok now the issue....A month or so ago my oldest child told me about him making amends with her and her younger brother and it touched something in me that had not been bothering me in a long time and I have been a bit of a mess ever since.
It got worse this week when I borrowed something from him and he told me he wanted to talk to me alone at some point so he could take the next step and make amends with me. I got teary and walked away and have been a bit of an emotional wreck ever since.
I wrote out my feelings and I decided that I am happy and sad and angry and guilty all at the same time. I am angry that I was not worth it when we were together ( not rational i know lol but still came out of me in the writing) feeling guilty that i enabled him and wondering if i had left him 15 years earlier if he would have fixed his life back then and things would have been better for the kids and angry that he can say sorry and be past all of the things he did to me and the kids that he most probably doesnt even remember ( again this is irrational as i have always wanted him to get healthy and be happy)
I am in a wonderful relationship with a man who is not an addict and have been for the past year so I do not understand why I have all of these feelings now. I wonder if all of the anger that he was projecting onto me the last few years made the other emotional stuff stay buried and now that he has stopped that it is all surfacing?
Just looking for anyone who might know what is going on with me and if this is normal. I just feel like a total goof for feeling so weird NOW! lol
Hi... first of all, "normal" is a setting on a dryer, lol....
Sounds to me like you are lumping together his making amends, with the likelihood of reconcilliation..... Although the two "could" be related, they certainly don't have to be....
My two cents - if he is really honestly trying to make amends, he won't tie it to getting back together.... if he does, that likely tells you something about where he is in his recovery (i.e. not as far along as you had hoped).... Now if YOU are the one who wants to reconcile..... then that is a whole 'nuther story, and one that you'll have to figure out.... :)
Take care Tom
__________________
"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"
"What you think of me is none of my business"
"If you knew the answer to what you are worrying about, would it REALLY change anything?"
It is perfectly natural to still feel love for him. He is your kids dad, he is in recovery. You see him being responsible, growing up.I love how you admit to thinking things you know are not rational, but you think them just the same. Just let them run thru. they don't have to mean anything.
I cry sometimes for being so alone, my pretty head inside says,"my own husband didn't want me." I KNOW that is not true. He has wanted me all his life. but his disease wanted him more.
I see you are still grieving your loss. If only...truth be even if he found recovery earlier, he may not have grown in the same way.Just because he is making amends, does not mean that disease is not lurking in there ready to pop its ugly mouth again.
I believe tom hit it. Just becuz he is making amends and working his program, may have nothing to do with him being the man you always wanted him to be.
If my AH or ex, drove up and started wooing me again, it would be so very hard to stay away. very hard. But believe me I would. That scar never stops aching.
As much as they are in recovery, it is for him NOT YOU. He is not fixed honey. hopefully he is getting some peace away from that horrid disease.
I guess it would be to keep it in a healthy perspective. Comparing your now love to the A is really moot. They are two different men you love in very different ways.
We can love many, many people. We can be in love with more than one person at the same time. Just like with our kids, we love them, adore them in very different ways. NOT loving one more or the other.
I loved my first southern man husband like my best bud, my friend, my partner in life. He was fun and handsome and yummy. A real explorer like I was, we had fun fun fun doing nothing and so loved the kids.
My now ex ah was my love since I was 17, he got drafted. lotsa back and forth and mess. I was so deeply, sickly, unseparately in love lust with him. I would have done anything, went up in front of anyone for him. THAT kind of love.
But I married my first A, was pg with drafted first loves As baby.messy, during war everything is a mess.
war is over. I am in love with two different men. What a mess. I was so horrified and embarrassed. I think it was Elvis who sang about loving two different people. then that song torn between two lovers.. I realized I was not the only one. Plus my second child was my drafted guys boy. sigh messy.
Therapist told me, you don't have to be with either. WHAT??? no way. what a horrid thought.
sadly my first husband was killled. I was such a mess I was alone for eighteen years. first love drafted guy tried to get us back, but he was a drunk, made him stay away. then that was when he came back in recovery and on and on.
my POINT is. sigh, I wish I wish if wishes were wings piggies would fly, my first husband would not have died, my drafted addict would have stayed the heck away.
sigh. messy eh?
One wonders why in all heck would I think about a man in my life again....men are messy, confusing, enigmas, stubborn, silly, gads but I still want one.
One thing honey is time. I thought things to death. Now I have learned to mellow out, let things just play out.
keep coming back and letting us know how you are. love blabbermouth, open book, debilyn
The process took it's toll and he finally went into recovery and has been working a program which includes the 9th step which is making amends (changes) and correcting his mistakes (for himself by the way) and making restitution where due and...It is the same 9th step in the Al-Anon program which is for the family and friends alcoholics who have been just as affected as the alcoholic. We too have our part and if he has been the only one who has worked on recovery that means that he's taking care of stuff you haven't even looked into perhaps. He has arrived at courage in the solutions and in early Al-Anon I use to hear the warning...don't let your alcoholic by pass your own recovery. What that meant was that she would get better and I would stay sick. Might fit here? I was resentful that I was in Al-Anon and why should I be because she was the alcoholic? Then I came to under stand that I had a part to play in my whole misery that I couldn't hold the alcoholic wife responsible for and I had to fix that part. If I didn't it would always feel broken. That is what I have worked on...my own amends to myself...self fixing. I wasn't a pillar of right thinking, feeling and behavior while the disease raged.
My alcoholic wife got into recovery also and WOW I got to meet the person I never knew (she was a drunk when we met and married). She was a spectacular child of God and great person and I loved her like I never had before and she loved me also and we had no reason to be married because we had first married for the wrong self centered reasons in the first place.
I was once told by Fr. Joe Martin, a leading figure in alcoholism awareness and recovery (now deceased) that what you look for in recovery is the return of the person you lost to the disease in the first place. I never knew that person until after we destroyed each other and divorced and both got into recovery. Seems like maybe the return of the person you lost in the first place is causing the confusion. Only thing that worked for me was the program of Al-Anon. I use to pay a therapist and they refered to Al-Anon anyway. Saved a lot of money and my spirit, mind and life. MIP can and will help...we've mostly all been there and done that too and the face to face meetings of Al-Anon will do so much more along with the literature, slogans etc.
Just imagine that if you got stuff hurting that is hid down inside and has been for a while you're carrying it into your new relationship and haven't even known it. I use to call mine "baggage". I was married to an addict first and then had a relation ship with another alcoholic after and then married an alcoholic/addict after that. We do what we know how to do until we learn how not to do it.
You dont say if you have been to a face to face alanon meeting....I suggest you try and attend if you can. It sounds like you have some unresolved issues regarding the Alcoholic.
You also have three children with him, which will tie you to him always. Maybe he just caught you off guard by making his amends.
I think its all about how You feel and maybe the program of Alanon will help. Easy does it.!
Give yourself some time and examine what you are really feeling. Keep coming back and try the tools of Alanon.
Alanon and this board have saved my life. I am very new it all, but I can say for sure that if I didn't have this board and alanon and the literature I would have fallen off the deep end. Take care of you ok? Alanon is all about you and your recovery from him
Thank you to all of you for posting . All of you have been helpful. First off I want to say that there are absolutley no thoughts whatsoever of reconcilliation lol I am so happy with my life now and how things are going for me and in my new relationship. I went to alanon a few times in early marriage but at the time I was sneaking out to go there and couldnt leave the kids alone with him so I wasnt able to stay and I just wasnt coping well with the emotion of trying to talk about it in front of strangers. I was probably 24 or 25 at the time and very lost.
It is funny I was wondering if me going now might be a good idea just to deal with this inside of me . I have talked all of this thru with my new guy and he is supportive of everything. He is a widower and has his own issues with his kids and grief but luckily he barely drinks at all. That part was a must for me with a new partner.
I was with ex since I was a teenager and loved him since I was 16. I am sure that I thought I could save him from himself as he always had problems with alcohol and his mother was an alcoholic.
I was just very confused with my feelings that came out of nowhere. I think maybe he was just so angry and a mess for the 2 years after I left him and no communication that was even remotely dryer setting "normal" lol that having him talk nice and be so healthy for the first time in forever caught me off guard.
He has not yet made amends to me he just told me that he needs to talk to me and do that. I wrote him a big letter giving him my feelings on the whole thing and how emotional it is. My BF said that maybe I am having an issue with him being able to get rid of his guilt so easily. I dont think that is really it but I think part of it is that he doesnt even remember all that will be stuck in my memory forever and that part is hard. IN the letter I wrote to him I said that I was having a hard time with that and gave a couple of examples from 18 years ago that changed my whole life and due to the kids. I think I am emotional because He can let it go and I cant let it go. Maybe that is it. I mean this all sounds a bit nuts the way I am saying it lol but I will not forget it and noone else really knows what I went thru even the kids dont have alot of memories of the early stuff and after a few years I just learned how to keep them protected and safe from the majority of it so even they dont know the whole story. Boy I was a great enabler lol.
Aside from the fact that I didnt keep up with alanon. I have taken a couple of courses on addiction that have given me some insight. I love how I tell everyone to get counselling but I dont do it myself! lol
Ok I will stop rambling now. Thanks for all of your help and I think I might just have to look into the ALANON thing.
His making amends isn't letting it go. His making amends is about making himself responsible for what he did and also for correcting his problems that he might never drink again and live that way. "We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it" is from the first 164 pages of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous entitled "How it Works". If he is dilligent in his recovery and completely honest he will use his past to correct his present in order to have a sober, serene, spiritually balanced future life and be of help to other alcoholics.
I am also a member of AA...a "double" as we say in program. There isn't one item of my past envolvement in alcoholism that I will not or cannot remember. Where as at one time that life was filled with all of the justifications to behave that way today there is no justification for what I did other than I drank and then did it. Alcohol will cause a person to do things they would not normally do if they did not drink.
What he cannot remember is stuff he has never claimed to remember after drinking not other stuff. And he is a good person and always was just an alcoholic is all.
I fully believe that this will be his new way of life forever. Never before has he done anything like this in changing his life so drastically and I am glad for that. He has a whole new set of AA friends and attends meetings at the very least a few times a week . I know in the beginning he went everynight. My step dad took him and fed him dinner for the first few weeks to help my kids out and well to help him too. HIs family was not supportive and his parents already passed on. Noone believed he would actually follow through with AA.
He is at this point doing better than I ever thought he could and I think maybe I was pmsing or something lol I feel alot better after sending him the letter but will feel even better still after he gets " the talk" out of the way. Wont be till next week at least though as I told him I was going away for the weekend and I am pretty sure he will respect my need to wait until after that.
Thanks again to all for your replies. I am going to keep reading stuff on here and learning more and hope that I dont need to use the info past dealing with myself in this next part of my life!
Good for you literally for sticking with it and listening with an open mind and keep learning about the disease because it effects everyone it comes in contact with. There is an aspect of alcoholism or alcohol intoxification (being poisoned; drunk; under the influence etc.) which is called blackouts. These are scarey because at random times the drinker will be fully involved in what is going on around them and not remember one aspect of it. It is real as alcohol wipes out short term memory and the ability of the person to be present while they are present. I've had my share and have apologized for what others have said I did while at the same time wanting to deny it. Alcohol is a mind and mood altering drug in the A class.
Funny thing I was at the gym today and Dr Phil was on and it was about an intervention and he was going on and on at the mom for only going to 2 alanon meetings in 2 weeks It was interesting and good timing for me to hear about al anon some more from him. It just made me think more that there was a reason that was on today . I never watch that show or really any tv for that matter. I do have a belief that all things happen for a reason and that all things work out in the end if you work at it. I am going to work this out ! lol Thanks again!
