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 making more posts on here lately because things are just not good at all right now at home. I'm furious and frustrated and a variety of emotions. I'm just letting it out here because you people are the only ones who seem to understand what I'm going through.
telling my alcoholic boyfriend that he would no longer be picking up our daughter from daycare, he said some hurtful things and stormed out and hasn't been back since yesterday morning. He has attached himself to this friend of his who drinks with him and doesn't judge him to drink nor even recognizes he has a problem. I'm just starting my job and didn't get much of a paycheck to get groceries for the week. I bought all I could to get us by for the weekend but we need groceries for the week. I don't get home early enough to make a grocery run during the week so I always need to do it on the weekends. His mom has been generous enough to offer to help out with groceries.
It's embarrassing and frustrating that it has to come to this but I am realizing how much I can't depend on him for even the simplest things anymore. Taking into account his disease, I am also making aware of what effort does he really make for us anymore. He has put us on the backburner for other so called priorities in his life. His friends, drinking, golfing. And just a little time for us. I'm not happy either way if he's home drinking or out drinking. When he drinks he gets really rowdy and obnoxious and clingy sometimes, loud, etc. So I'm usually glad when he's away but when he is away for this long and missing out on responsibilities and things with us, it's upsetting to me. The more this continues the more I want out of this misery.
Someone made a response to an earlier post of mine that they wouldn't give their signicant other an opportunity to disrespect them when they didn't depend on their alcoholic and depended on theirself only. I have been thinking about this all day. I just wish I made more money to not have to depend on him financially at all. When he frustrates me I get so consumed by him and his lack of respect back at his wrongful behavior or action that I lose all sense of reality. I really want to stop this behavior and detach. It's hard in my situation I'm living in. I have a kind of toxic relationship with my mother. She was very controlling of me and still is and I feel like I have repeated the same behavior with him because of his drinking. I have lost all patience.
I need to detach and really consider if I want a future with him anymore. Something's gotta change whether it's me with detaching and not in a position to depend on him anymore financially or for anything else or he needs to make changes in his life because things are not good at all right now. His disease has been this out of control since during a time when I was pregnant, I'm hoping he will bounce back to before. He wasn't sober before these bad past few months but things were alot better then. Drinking less and making us more of a priority and a more loving man.
I know I have made mistakes and am not perfect but when he's not giving me much to work with anymore with our family and relationship, what's the point of staying together anymore. If this is how it's going to continue then I want out because this is just too much disrespect to live with anymore but if he makes changes in his life, we could still have a chance but then I wonder is it too little too late or do we need a break.
Ahhhh I need serenity to my life. Too much worry and thoughts in my head.
I hope you can get to meetings, because learning more about how it all works helps clarify our minds. Some meetings have childcare -- if you call your local Al-Anon number they should be able to tell you which ones.
The choice of whether to go or to stay is individual and will be different in every case. But no one should have to stay just to keep a roof over their head or food in their cupboards. I mean that's a very unfortunate situation (though common) and keeps us from really being able to choose freely. If you choose to stay, ideally it will be because you see a way that that would be serene and joyful, and you would stay because that's the best emotional choice.
With that in mind, you might look into your options for child support if you decide leaving is best. I don't know if you're in the US, but if so, every state has child support laws. It doesn't matter if the parent is unemployed (the state figures that the child still has to eat! therefore both parents need to help). In the cases I've known where the parent was unemployed, the child support was around $200 a month. That's not a huge amount but it's a little bit. The state has ways of ensuring that money doesn't go for other things. (Funny how they may say they don't have money for child support but they have enough money to buy booze!)
In your thoughts about what's ahead, you might take into account what his stated thoughts are about his alcohol use. Does he want to get help, has he indicated that he accepts that there is a problem? I think we'd all stay with our A's if they decided to get help and stick with it. It's that they don't decide to. The question I wish someone had asked me early on is: What would you do if you knew that his situation was not going to change? Because I kept waiting for the big change to come. But I wanted it a heck of a lot more than he did.
