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.
My abf and I had a good weekend, we got a lot accomplished, he helped me dig up and plant a flower bed at our new place. We talked and had a good time. Today he has a job interview. He is not driving right now (guess why?) and so I went and picked him up to get him to the area of town he could walk from my work to the interview. It was a mile and a half walk from my work to the new interview place. When I picked him up to get him here, I could tell... there is a look on his face that I know all too well, that he must of at some point gotten something to drink this morning.
I didn't ask questions or give him a hard time, just brought him here. He said "can I use the car to go to the interview?" I did the right thing and said no, that I needed my keys to get into work and my locked drawer at work. He said "ok, I will sit in the car til its time for me to walk". Now he has been texting me the whole time he was walking saying how awful this walk was. I stayed positive the whole time and didn't feed into it. I know that if he hadn't drank this attitude wouldn't have happened. So it seems in the text messages that he is a little on edge that I wouldn't let him drive. When he hasn't had a drink, he never asks for the keys because he doesn't want to get in trouble. He asks when he has drank. I know I did the right things, but I am sitting here feeling guilty. :( I think I mostly needed to vent and get this out. I feel better now that I did.
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-youfoundme
Let go and let God...Let it be... let it begin with me...
I guess I should say, that me even sitting here thinking "did he drink or not?" constitutes me not focusing on me. I know. I remember that if I have to ask or wonder, he probably did. Just now when he called to let me know he made it to the interview, he sounded as normal as pie, but that doesn't really prove anything either way. Ok, I am concentrating on my addiction. I am slipping today, and I did so well over the weekend working on me. I have found it very difficult with the timing of face to face meetings in this area to get to an actual meeting. They are few and far between and the times are not right. Maybe I need to make my own meeting? LOL
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-youfoundme
Let go and let God...Let it be... let it begin with me...
Great work Not giving the keys because he does not have a driver's license is a good enough reason to refuse him It does not matter if he is drinking or not!!!!
Keep the focus on you and be proud that you Took Care of You.
By the way it is easy to start a meeting Find a local hospital or church basement with a room. Negotiate a time and day and contact intergroup regarding formats and literature You would then be on your way!!! I did that 20 years ago and the meeting is still running
What I found out over many years' experience is that every time I suspected my AH was drinking, he was. That is, he had little ways that he seemed a little bit "off," and for a long time I was confused about whether that meant he was drinking or whether I was paranoid. After a while I discovered several ways I could tell whether he was drinking. (For instance, he'd disappear into the back yard, to a place where he didn't think I could see him -- he didn't know I could see him by looking out of the kitchen window. He'd be back there swigging from a bottle and then carefully hiding it. I got wise to several of his strategies like that.) I understand why Al-Anon says not to go snooping, but my snooping in that case was useful because it validated my instincts -- I wasn't just paranoid, he really was drinking. Then I realized that all those times he seemed "off" but I dismissed it, he had been drinking too. It sounds as if you're also watching what your bf does instead of what he says -- that's so helpful.
But isn't it crazy how they try to pressure us and manipulate us to enabling, and pretending their drinking is not a problem?
I got so I would say, "I don't know for sure whether you've been drinking or not, and I don't want you to tell me." [Because he'd just deny it -- he never admitted it.] "But in the past you've been drinking in situations like this, and the anxiety about it is too much for me, so I can't participate in [whatever]." This meant we didn't have to bicker about whether he'd actually been drinking. My view is that his pattern of drunkenness was so bad that it didn't matter whether or not he was drunk on a certain occasion -- if he didn't want me to draw boundaries against his possible drunkenness, he shouldn't have gotten drunk so many times in the past.
Stepping aside and allowing him to experience the consequences is the best thing you could have done for him. You have nothing to feel guilty for. You have ever right to pat yourself on the back
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You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. Lama Surya Das
Resentment is like taking poison & waiting for the other person to die. Malachy McCourt
My two cents too...guilt is a feeling; a choice. You can choose any feeling you want about anything. How about gratitude and satisfaction and hope? Those can work. It can happen. Course I had to learn that stuff when I started too. Not superman...anymore. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
