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.
Hello all - I'm relatively new to Al-anon and just one day on this board. I've attended 4 face-to-face meetings and am always surprised and grateful for what I hear.
I am an adult child of a line of alcoholics on my mom's side. I've always felt different and like I didn't fit in. It wasn't until I unexpectedly became pregnant in 1999 that I started to become somewhat grounded. My daughter brought more love than I ever thought possible. My relationship with her awakened a lot of "wow I didn't realize thats" as my love for her grew and grew. I never realized how much love I did not receive as a child, I thought my life was normal. I was basically on auto-pilot from about 3rd grade on. It still blows my mind when I think about it. I cannot imagine not being involved in my daughter's life and actively caring for her on a daily basis.
This brings me to my current life crisis. Being an ACOA I have not been in the most healthy of relationships. I'm married to an addict (not alcohol or drugs) who is a compulsive spender. He suffers from loss of a parent at a young age and fills his life up with stuff to try to fill that void. It has caused us a great deal of strife. I've played my role that is for sure. We are separated and I am now addressing my issues and trying to understand what I need. Other than trying medication and blaming his actions on ADD his issues have not been addressed by him. I have to decide if I can accept him as is or if being on my own will be the most healthy for me. If I choose to divorce I will then only have my daughter 1/2 time - he is an active father. That part kills me and I struggle with that more than anything. How can I take care of myself and honor my needs in a way that also allows me to be with my daughter and be the best parent I can be. I don't believe he will ever seriously deal with his grief or loss and until he does his behavior will continue.
My ex-husband was (is) a compulsive spender too. He is one of the many whose addiction floats around among many forms. Mainly he drinks, spends, and hoards. And overeats compulsively -- he's enormous. He also has abused drugs and done some out-of-control gambling. So it's really made me aware of how addiction/compulsion can take many forms.
My first thought would be to wonder whether your husband, if you separated, would really have your daughter 50% of the time. Often custody is granted 50/50 but that means that you share decision-making rights, neither pays the other child support, etc. But in practice the child is often (maybe even usually) with one parent most of the time. So both get legal custody, but one gets primary physical custody. In one case I know, the parents shared physical custody, and it was supposed to be 3 days-4 days, 4 days-3 days, etc. Several years down the line, it has eroded to where the father has 2 days or 1 1/2 days and the mother has the rest. The father hadn't taken on board how tiring and intense it is to care for a child 24/7 and just kept ceding more time to the mother.
But if your husband did want to have your daughter for 50% of the time and kept to that, I would say that there's one possible way to look at it. Your love for your daughter is clearly strong, and so you know that having both parents (assuming they're fairly emotionally healthy and not abusive) in a child's life is a wonderful thing for the child. So maybe your love for her could rejoice in this plus in her life, which so many children don't have? So your love would take the form not of being with her every single day, but of giving her what she needs by letting her be with her dad.
Just some thoughts. Take what you like and leave the rest. I hope you'll keep coming back.
Thank you for your comments. We are actually separated now for a year (in two weeks). It has definitely been 50/50 as far as time is concerned and my daughter wants it that way. I support every minute she spends with her father - they love each other so much. It's comforting to hear that others face problems with addictions other than alcohol and drugs. I believe this program helps me with my alcoholic mom but it's really applying to my relationship with my husband. I really didn't recognize some of his issues as addictions until recently. His spending is so erratic - but in the past couple of years it has been focused on something that also impacts my fundamental values. He loves guns. He is not a violent person in the least, he just has a fascination with them. It's gone overboard. He's run up his credit 3 times behind my back and cashed out IRA's to pay them off. He defends it as his 2nd ammendment right etc but it's gone far beyond that. I've finally learned not to argue with him - he has an answer for every argument and will always win. The difficult thing is I'm the only one in his family that really knows about his spending issue. His compulsiveness and addictive behaviors trigger that little girl in me that was always trying to get my mom's attention growing up.
Al-anon is helping me at least learn to separate the emotion from the fact and pay attention to me. I've learned to not let him get me wrapped around my own axle anymore.
Your situation is clearly different, then. That's hard.
The more I understand, the more I see that all addictions can be interchangeable. No one but me has much of a clue about my ex's addictions either. He never lets anyone go over to his place so they don't see the hoarding, and they just assume he's broke so they don't see the spending. (He is broke, but that doesn't stop him from spending, of course.)
The guns would worry me just because so many people with violent outbursts were also obsessed with guns. Not that every gun collector is violent, far from it, just that it works in the other direction. But you would know by now if he had violent tendencies, I hope.
I'm glad he has a good relationship with your daughter. It's hard. Take care of yourself.
I'm sorry for your experiences as well. They sound just as difficult. My husband is also a compulsive eater like your ex. He's been heavy the entire time I've known him but has recently lost 80 lbs. Now his compulsion is stocking food for whatever might happen.
The separation has allowed me to breathe and now that I'm facing my issues and my part in all of this hopefully I can come to some resolution soon.
I'm very glad that you have begun going to meetings and learning to place the focus on you.
In my profession, I've seen the diagnosis of ADD used as an excuse as well. It's like alcoholism - yep it's a disease, but the alcoholic is responsible for dealing with it.
Again, welcome and looking forward to more of your shares. Let us know how you're doing.
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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
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