The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I have been seperated from my wife since September, but the emotional seperation has been for years. I have been posting to a divorce forum. In the beginning the addiction was this pesky little problem that once the marriage got resolved would get fixed. My wife is very high functioning and successful. (More common among addiction then you would think) I really had no clue how bad addiction could get until she moved out. It's kind of ironic that it took separation to really see what was happening, sort of like seeing the forest through the trees. Eventually it was the marriage that became trivial. No one ever dies because of divorce, but addiction really is a life or death situation.
It wasn't until I spent the night with her during DTs that I realized just how bad things had become.
We have two beautiful boys together. They love their mom and she truly loves them. I have been taking care of them while she has been in treatment. It was after I had discovered she broke our agreement and was drinking on the nights she had the kids that I insisted they no longer have overnights at her place. Not having her kids stay with her led to some crashes that eventually led to her seeking help from an inpatient facility.
She leaves her inpatient treatment center this Wednesday. We will take things slow, (actually faster then I expected) the boys will stay a couple of nights a week at her place building trust and if she stays in recovery building up to 50/50 custody. While I would love it if we eventually reconciled our marriage, I think putting that on the table would be too much emotionally for both of us. We will go to family counseling and just take things slow and build trust before deciding what will work best for our family.
That is my story as it stands today. To attempt to articulate everything emotionally that lead to this point would take "War and Peace" and this is just the beginning of a hard road ahead, but I do feel hope and I am looking at this as "living life" for the good and the bad.
My story is somewhat similar to yours - aside from the highly functioning/successful part.... My ex-AW got sober after many years of struggles, and is now sober for 8+ years, and earned her way back to being a good and loving mother once again for our two great kids (now 15 & 13). Kudos to you for recognizing and accepting that kids do need BOTH parents in their lives (hopefully both healthy and sober), and it sounds like you guys have a good game plan in place for that to happen.....
What about you, and your recovery?? Do you go to Al-Anon meetings?? I think this will do a world of good for you, as you have definitely been affected by your wife's drinking, and it will also help as you raise your kids..
Take care Tom
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"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?"
Please find Al-Anon meetings for yourself , this truly is too much for most of us to do alone , counceling is great but if not familiar with alcoholism in my opinion it s a total waste of time and money . sobriety is not the answer to all of lifes problems but it helps .. Louise
Thanks to you both, I think of forums as interactive journals and not a replacement to live help. I tend to listen and digest and then articulate, while I do share in meetings I have found most of my insight comes later, so it helps to have an outlet that I can take time to articulate in writing while still receiving and giving feedback.
I have a weekly meeting that I am attending and in only a couple of meetings I have found the insight gained to be irreplaceable. I am in a pretty good place, but am here and attending meetings because "life had become unmanageable". I definitely fit the profile of a co dependant and bounced back and forth from enabling to attempting to control my wife's behavior. I introduced myself because I realize that my wife's stay in rehab was a period of "calm" for both of us. I am trying to suspend any expectations at this time and work on myself.
I am concerned about help for my boys, as one is a teenager who I believe wants help, but is resistant to it at the same time. My younger boy has a tendency to internalize things and then let them out in bursts of anger. On the positive side, both boys have shown amazing capacity to express their feelings in therapeutic situations, it's just getting the older boy to go willingly that seems to be an issue. He has stated he does not want to go to ala-teen, but seems to do better with counseling when the focus isn't on him.
Your kids deserve one sane parent. Welcome to alanon, run dont walk to meetings, listen and learn all you can about addiction and enabling. Get a sposnor and work the program as best and diligently as you can. We are often just as sick if not more so in our thinking (control and denial and the ever present lack of personal boundaries) gets us into postions we never dreamed possible for us. It is our excuses and all the stuff we do for them (that they should do for themselves) that allows us all of the resentments we harbor.
This is a family and a progressive disease. We all like to lay it on the A (addict or alcoholics) in our lives yet we are a common denominator too and we teach people how to treat us based on what we are willing to tolerate.
The kids feel all the pains that you both do, kids blame themslves. I know I grew up in it too - trying so hard to be the funny one, the hero, the rescuer -- to distract the adult and "make" them laugh or feel better. What a waste of a childhood!
Learn to focus on YOu and get a healthy program and own your stuff and allow ur AW to have the dignity to work it for herself. For all of us it takes us to surrender and to get brutally self honest and allow the HP to guide our lives.
Love is not about approval - it is about acceptance and support and forgiveness. We do not have to agree to have a healthy loving relationship with one another. Learning that I could have a private life and that I owed that to me as a human being - too was big news! You do have choices and you are no longer alone with this. Welcome.
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Light, Love, Peace, Blessings & Healing to Us All. God's Will Be Done. Amen.
Well dad, just like you have an idea of what recovery is and is not - in the rooms and in the meetings we listen and resectfully hear each other's ESH and what worked for them. Why should the teen do any thing, they are already confused with no emotionally mature guidance. As you get healthy and learn about who you are and what is tolerable and what is not acceptable for your life -- u will begin to change your own behavior by setting boundaries and following through on the consequences - for YOU. We can only control and change us, no one else.
As you get healthier then you will become a beacon of hope for your sons. As you get saner, it will become attractive to him as well, kids want security and structure, they will emulate the healthier parent. So we do it through attraction, not promotion. When you do the hard work and walk the walk, ur kids will be eager to find a place where they are known, accpeted, understood, appreciated as they are with no strings or expectations attached.
ps. it is our expectations that hurt us everytime! What really helped me in my adult relationships (not with a minor child) was to simply stop asking them questions - then I found I had no opportinities to control, judge, direct, manipualte or micro manage them and stay busy with doing that for (just) me. Try it for a week or a month and see what happens!
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Light, Love, Peace, Blessings & Healing to Us All. God's Will Be Done. Amen.
Aloha Dad...Most of the people I know including myself learn "after" the lesson, after we have a period of time to reflect on what we heard and how. I am also glad that you have entered the board...we got guys who have been where you have been and that includes me. I won't compare horror stories and just say I understand...It's just not a good journey when married to an alcoholic.
It doesn't get better or resolved overnight when you review how many years it took to get to the place. There is more practice, mind, body, spirit and emotions which forms and support the "habit" of drinking and using and she has just recently crashed and is attempting something different even while the alcohol is fighting for her life. What a battle for the alcoholic and everyone she comes into contact with...cunning, powerful and baffling.
Hold on to that compassionate, empathic and supportive character you have and allow her the dignity of her condition and effort to change it. She is a wonderful creation...and an alcoholic like my own alcoholic wife was. I had much to learn and to practice and that included how to be supportive and detached at the same time. I didn't get an owners manual for my alcoholic wife when I was born...I chose to marry an alcoholic and that is what came with the territory when someone does the same thing.
Alcoholism isn't a normal state and rather the opposite an abnormal, chemically altered state where friends and family and associates are looking for and wanting and expecting normalcy and getting the opposite. Don't need to tell you cause you sould well aware of it.
I hope you stay in the face to face meetings with an open mind and a Higher Power. I hope her rehab stay leads to further deeper desires to get and stay sober. LOL I hope you take your boys to Alateen...Get them there and leave them to the meeting and see what happens...get them the literature and see what happens. This comes from a former Alateen Sponsor who saw many miracles in those rooms. Surprising me that they change faster than the adult because they don't have the same time as we do in the problem.
Welcome Dad, glad you found MIP. Similar to your story once I accepted that getting out of the way may help my exah hit his bottom and seek help for himself, things went downhill in his life pretty fast. Fortunately I found AlAnon and my life although painful and anger filled for awhile got better and continues to get better. Keep coming back!
I find forums to be my outlet also. While I am in a meeting I hear and absorb everything but until I have time to sort and file my experiences with the info it is kind of jumbled. Being able to express myself later here in safe surroundings with supportive people is essential to me. We all find our own ways of using the tools we collect.
