Geez my Dad died when I was only 24 and I always wanted him to leave my Mother, but he stayed for his reasons and they made it 30 years together before he died. Now fast forward almost 10 years and I appreciate that they put in the effort to stay together as screwed up as they were, they are my parents and I love them. I wished I could have told him he wasn't the big idiot I always treated him like, but you know, he knew. I left my exAH for myself as much as my children and am not looking to them too much for reassurance, but early on my now 14 year old asked me not to go back to my exAH 2 years ago when she thought I would. We just couldn't play nice together nor move through our stuckedness and I chose the best choice for me. I am more than okay with it and though I still love him, I do not care to be around him at all. I am a more serene and relaxed person at this point in my life and I will take that to the bank daily. Your reasoning may have been more for your children, but they were children and only know what children could know. It is our job to protect them and ourselves to the best of our abilities and learn to let go and let God with the rest. Sending you much love and support!

Only time will tell I think, both my children 24 and 21, voice alot of anger towards me for their failings, I came from a broken home and wanted better for them taking my marriage vows very seriously, sometimes I feel an enormouse amount of guilt for staying in something that pains me and yet I belive they can see and work out for themselves the true origin of their character by knowing form where they came and why, I hope as time goes on they will relaise like me the y have choices too and with a little bit more life under thier belts they will learn to see we all coma at things from diffrent places and diffrent strengths and weaknesses, diffrent reasons and accept that until we know otherwise we do the best we can.  

If I have learnt anything it's ? the grass isn't always greener, deal with what is real stay in the now, I used to be soooooooooooo angry with my mum, blaming her for me not having a dad, but now that I am a mother myself, I can see how I must of hurt her she never had any other relationships, she must of been one hell of a woman to cope with four children as a lone parent, at the end of the day all I can do is what is best for me, and leave the rest for them to work out for themselves.

love

Katy

  x

My dad is an alcoholic, thankfully sober now, but he wreaked havoc on our household for many years when I was a teen. I used to beg my Mom to leave him. She never did and they have been married for over 35 years. I'm 29 now and married to an alcoholic. I'm thankful my mom stayed with my dad. I have two young children and they have a great relationship with my husband. I don't know what the future holds but I would like to believe that whatever steps I take, my kids will appreciate and understand it later on.

I think it depends on the situation.

In my case, my father was a bad alcoholic (are there other types? ) and never got into recovery, much less admit he had a problem. Our household was chaos because of the drinking, with my siblings, mother and I always at each other's throats and infuriated with my dad who just got drunk every night while we suffered from our own symptoms of alcoholism. It's hard to say what I wish my mom had done -- now that I'm an adult, I have more appreciation for the position she was in -- three kids, her the only consistent breadwinner, and the man she once loved suffering from a bad drinking problem he never attempted to fix. I do wish she left him earlier on -- I feel like as his disease progressed, it got harder on us and at that time we didn't know what was happening other than my dad chose the bottle every night over his family. I wish my mom had been in Alanon, or directed us to Alateen, or something. In a way, I feel like i never had a childhood because when I look back on it, I have trouble coming up with many truly happy memories, and just conjure up images of my dad passed out on a couch, his cigarette's burning holes in the couches, being 8 and making marks on liquor bottles to see how much he drank, and just having to deal with it without any one helping us (my siblings included) understand what we were dealing with.

My mom did eventually leave him, after she found out he was cheating, when I was in my freshman year in college. Within two years he died, from what I believe were alcohol-related health complications. I spent years being angry at my mom when he was in the house, then angry at him while he was in the house and out of it, and finally I told him a year before his death that I didn't want to have a relationship with him. I don't regret that at all -- his drinking, and I think drug use as well, had gotten so bad, there was no way to have a relationship because he was so sick at that point. The night before he went into surgery (he fell into a medical coma after that and never woke up)., the best he could muster to my teenage brothers and I was that all of us had made mistakes and that we needed to work on it. He couldn't even tell us he loved us. I think he did, but I think the disease had just warped his thinking so much he was unable to express it, or to admit how much his drinking had hurt us.

It makes me sad that he essentially died alone, but I also feel that he could have at least sought help at some point, but chose not to. It's only within the last few years (he's been dead a decade) that I've been able to put my anger at him at rest.

My mother and I are very close now. We talk openly about my dad's alcoholism, what it did to her and to me. We talk about my current husband, who is an alcoholic attempting recovery as he deals with with additional issues stemming from combat-related injuries. She's so supportive of me, and of him, and that means the world to me. She understands the disease now, and helps me realize that I need to take care of myself, and that my childhood steeped in alcoholism is still affecting me as an adult. She's not in alanon, but I wish she would as I think there's still a lot of lingering effects for her. But that's her decision to make. I don't blame her for my childhood, though I wish it had been different -- I blame the disease.

So, to answer your question, I think what I need the most when I was living with my alcoholic dad was for someone to just talk to me about what was going on so I would understand and not have to lock up all the feelings inside. Whether she stayed or left him, I just needed help trying to understand what was wrong with my family.

My dad wasn't an alcoholic, but he was abusive emotionally, and sometimes physically to me when I was young. He would pick fights with my mother and say terrible things to her that made her cry. When I was five years old I can remember him pinching my thigh and telling me I couldn't be Wonder Woman when I grew up because she didn't have fat legs like me. Looking back on it as an adult- and after years of therapy- I can see that he suffers from major anxiety disorder, which would lead him to be irritable and mean when feeling anxious and stressed. He and my mother got married the weekend after they graduated from college because they were expecting me; I think at the time he thought that was going to be a great thing because he was escaping a household where he was verbally abused, but after putting in some time, he resented the fact that he had the responsibilities of a husband and parent when he was still in his early twenties and all of his friends were still out living it up, so he took out his resentments and frustrations on us. But at the time I didn't understand why sometimes he would be playful and affectionate and other times pick on me or fly off the handle over minor things. His words and actions definitely took their toll; I'm going to be 40 this year and I have never learned to love or accept myself or feel like I was worth much of anything, because it was instilled in me from such a young age that I was fat and stupid, and being fat and stupid makes you worthless. The funny thing was that when I wasn't fat at all- not until he moved out. Then I gained a lot of weight because I felt like I was finally free to eat without someone making nasty comments, and then I went overboard. When I hit middle school I started getting picked on for being chubby, so I developed eating and cutting disorders and almost had to be hospitalized over it. I can remember getting off the school bus when I was in kindergarten and first grade and finding a place to go hide in the neighborhood if I saw his car in the carport because I was afraid to go in the house (never knew which side of him I would get). I BEGGED my mother to leave him from a very early age. She never got it together to do so on her own, he finally left when I was eight years old because he was having an affair with the woman who is now my stepmother. My point in all this is that, as much as his treatment of me did impact my psyche and cause major issues for me, I can only imagine how much worse it would have been had I continued to remain in the house with my father until the age of 18. I just wish it had been my mother who had made the decision to leave him instead of letting him run off and leave her. But that's a whole other story.

I don't know that your kids will ever realize what you had to go through in leaving their father or think to thank you for it. If you are looking for that sort of recognition I would start a dialogue with them about it. Unless they have the experience of trying to raise a family with an alcoholic spouse, they probably never will be able to fully appreciate what you went through. But I think you also have to look at it from the perspective of who they might have turned out to be had you not left. There's your affirmation right there. You totally did the right thing, and as someone with three young kids and an AH, I can tell you myself that it was an incredibly brave thing.

I can't say - mine are getting to the age that they see their dad for who he really is, mostly. There is stuff that is confusing to them because they aren't involved and it's not appropriate to discuss with them.

My 3 kids have all reacted differently. Youngest was 3, he did not "process" the divorce until just recently, about the time he turned 8 (he's turning 9 in a couple weeks). He mostly feels sad/frustrated that he has no memories of an intact family (not his words, but his description of this is spot on). So we talk about it as much as he's willing. My middle son was affected the most. He felt responsible because at the time, the most severe abuse occurring was to him - and it was why I left but I never discusssed it with him. he had come to me and asked me to leave his dad.... but I had already decided to leave well before he said it. So he had a "God" complex for several years and kept thinking he could get us back together. It was sad and heart breaking. I do not think he will ever feel "glad" for it, it crushed him and damaged him pretty badly. He was 8 when it happened but his IQ is so high he was functioning much higher. My oldest I think is glad. He is the one who confronted his dad, told his dad he ruined my son's childhood and was the first child to refuse to go see his dad once I finally decide I wasn't going to play along with "the court papers say so". He was just turning 15 when he first demanded he wasn't going anymore. It was a back and forth game for awhile but it forced his dad to recognize he couldn't control everyone like he thought. He threatened jail and all sorts of mayhem and nothing ever came of it. CA lets teenagers decide.

I get enough "verbal talk" from my teens that they see through their dad. They know he's a sexist pig, they know he's abusive and an alcoholic though functioning. So at least in that I can say that we need to give kids a lot of credit. They see more than we think.