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 reading these pages over the last two days and am very thankful that such experience strength and hope can be found online as well as at meetings. I used to go to meetings every week and I even had a sponsor towards the end, but I went travelling and moved cities and never got back into them regularly. Today I feel desperate and I am longing for a meeting (luckily there is one tonight I am going to), but I want to share my story here first - I am filled with guilt and shame and remorse at my behaviour over the weekend towards someone I love - as I believe it is linked heavily to my alcoholic upbringing. I am also afraid that I am unable to control my anger towards those I love - and myself.
My mother is my qualifier and thankfully 10 years into recovery. I was filled with anger towards her for a couple of years after she started in the rooms, and Al-anon helped. Helped me forgive and somewhat forget my own shameful episodes that led to endless fights as a teenager. I have moved now to a big city to work and study and have had such a full - and fulfilling - life for the last 9 months. It has been chaotic at times however, and I am searching and seeking to redraw boundaries.
The biggest problem with this boundary-setting is that I am desperately in love (desperate being the operative word) with a similarly chaotic individual. He is certainly Al-anon himself but has had no real idea of it - and in the spirit of attraction not promotion I have only hinted at my use of the program. He gets very angry (never violent) at little things, and often takes his anger out on me by shouting or hanging up on me. He calls me names and frequently swears at me. I like to talk things through, but when he's in that state it's very hard to reason with him. He drinks, certainly to excess sometimes, but I don't feel he is an alcoholic. Although one thing that frightens me is that he likes to drink when he's upset - I have a rule to not ever do this as in my experience it only makes things worse (as you will see below).
We have argued quite a bit in the past, but some circumstances have changed and we have been enjoying each other so much over the last weeks. When he is happy (and when I am too), it is wonderful, but then the boundaries start to break down. I spend more than half the week at his place, forget who I am and what I need to do, put off going to meet my own friends to meet his. He lives alone in a spacious flat so it's better for us to be at his place (I have a flatmate), but I can't help but feel I am losing myself by always fitting into his life. That said, he is mainly playful and fun and sometimes I see a beautiful future together - but I can't help feeling I have ruined it all this weekend.
Friday morning he was frustrated with me because I was being indecisive. He shouted at me in the car on the way to work, unprovoked (maybe I was whining a bit - don't we all?). I was fretting about going to a party that night with him and his friends as I had some dear friends to meet the next day (at a daytime event). I knew that if we went to the Friday event it would be late and we would miss out on Saturday. I asked him about the party - what sort of time we might expect to get home. He flipped out at me. He hates to plan things out. He is - as he likes to say - more 'spontaneous' than me. I knew I shouldn't have gone on about it but I did, and he got frustrated with me and hung up the phone, leaving me crying for an hour in the afternoon (a waste of my time - I have a big paper to write, resentmentville ahoy!). I vowed to stay home that evening (at least my instinct is good, following it not so good) but lo and behold, soon I am on a bus to his place with the dinner I planned to cook him in my bag. I asked him to apologise for shouting at me and being awful on the phone, and he did so very begrudgingly, snappily even. No real closure.
I arrived at his place frustrated and we had dinner (with wine) and left to go out. When we got there he ran off with an old friend of his - a buxom blonde! - and I met and joked with other people to try and pass the time. He eventually came to find me, and within a few minutes I had a terrible accident. I was sitting on a riverboat (very dangerous place for a party) and as I tried to get down I slipped and slammed my chin on the crossbar, cutting my chin and neck, slamming my thigh and hip into the side. I fell into the boat and have a recollection of everyone around me staring down. He cupped my face as someone got some ice and just as I came to he asked me "How did you get so drunk?". In my shock, I flipped out and lashed out at him. I hit him in the face with a hat I had been wearing and ran away screaming (in front of his friends). So many things were running through my mind - how DARE you tell me I'm drunk when you are much drunker than me and I should be at home anyway! How DARE you point out in front of everyone that the reason I fell was because I 'got so drunk' (I didn't consider myself to be drunk). I'm obviously sensitive to this sort of 'accusation' because in my heart and memories, being drunk is a horrible thing, and dangerous. I was truly truly in a rage, but I felt awful immediately for hitting him, so I started trying to punish myself by banging my head against a lampost whilst crying :( I know how crazy this sounds... I did it when I was 13 in my bedroom when I was in so much pain from arguing with my mother.
The biggest problem is that I have hit him in the face once before, after four days of holiday where there was drinking every day and a protracted fight about his total disregard for my plans and needs for rest and love (I get terrible PMS - PMDD even - and know I need to relax and stay away from coffee and alcohol during those days to avoid anxiety and resulting internal chaos). Similarly, I was exhausted and felt he was leading me into a world I didn't need (but then I followed and I'm stupid for doing that). Again, I should have detached with love, created some boundaries and stayed home while he was getting wasted with his friends. Instead I tried to keep up, bury my anger, and be a 'fun girlfriend'. Then too I felt so terrible for hitting him I started hurting myself.
Before me, he had a long relationship with an abusive girlfriend who drank heavily and he has told me in the past he wishes she was dead. Now I feel I'm slipping into similar violent behaviour against him and I hate myself for it. I don't consider myself a heavy drinker - I am quite wary because of my mother - and I have certainly never been angry in this way when drunk - until now. I am certainly not a violent person - I have had a couple of abusive alcoholic boyfriends whom I pushed away physically but recognized my Al-anon repeat behaviour and got outta there. I have never, ever hit a boyfriend before.
On Friday night, I raged against him for a while and demanded to be taken home. He went back to the party, frustrated with my screaming. We stayed there until the bitter end; I fell asleep on a sofa waiting for him. He is very forgiving but I know - and I hope - he is not the kind of person to take this sort of behaviour from me over and over again. Once might be an accident, but twice is starting to feel like a pattern. I don't want to lose him; I know he is capable of so much love and care - but I can't see a way out right now.
My mother always says, after a crisis, "Do the next right thing". When I woke up at his place the morning after, I had a good long cry and tried to talk productively with him about my anger. I apologized profusely and told him why I think tension builds up and I burst out (which invariably meant talking about HIS anger). Needless to say I missed my day with my own friends who were visiting, which made me resentful, but as I was injured from my fall and the subsequent shock and horrible behaviour I didn't feel like seeing anyone.
Yesterday we had a lovely day together and using a lot of teamwork cooked one of the best meals we've ever eaten together. I am determined to make this work - I have been since the beginning. I am trying to remember progress not perfection, but I never want to physically hit him ever again. How do I manage this? What is the next right thing now?
Thank you for reading.
-- Edited by santaclara on Monday 30th of July 2012 06:49:24 AM
I'm so sorry you're going through this, and glad you have found us.
To me it sounds as if more recovery tools could be very beneficial. I know very well that feeling of, "I did things I am ashamed of, I never want to do those again, how can I make sure this never happens!" And vowing to be better next time. I imagine this is very much like what happens in the mind of the alcoholic after a drunken binge. I imagine it happens to everyone whose behavior comes from places inside them that they don't understand.
The only success I've had in tackling this behavior is through recovery. Learning a ton, working the steps, having a sponsor, and so forth. Because sadly new ways of responding aren't things that happen overnight. In my case it also involved leaving behind the old chaotic people, who were pulling me back into chaotic behavior.
It sounds to me as if you might want to take the AA quiz, to see if your own drinking is a factor. Your BF's drinking sounds worrying, but of course the fact that he was drunker than you were doesn't mean that your own drinking might have played into the situation. In my experience, part of my problem was the stuff I didn't suspect, and the stuff I did suspect was often not part of the problem. I think that's the part of the Serenity Prayer about "...the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
I'll add one thing that I hope does not fill you with alarm the way it would have me. Some of the most helpful things that got me into recovery were the fear of losing a boyfriend. It had me an in absolute panic. Down the line, I realized that losing the boyfriend would have been a very healthy step! I thought it would be the end of the world. In fact it was the beginning of the world. So I hope you can avoid my problem of feeling filled with fear at the idea of losing someone. HUgs.
Thank you Mattie. I know I am much more serene when I go to meetings even just once a week, and make sure to focus on myself. I am grateful for your advice about fear of losing someone - I know my life has become quite chaotic again as a result of meeting this guy, and I have become someone I really don't want to be. Part of that someone I don't want to be is someone that drinks too much, or drinks against my better judgement, i.e. when under stress or after an unresolved argument. I work very hard at hold back on both these points, but I can work still harder. I should go with my instinct and stay home when I feel unresolved anger simmering underneath our evenings together. I know I need the Al-anon tools to remember that my feelings are real and I cannot bury them and pretend everything is ok at a party. This has failed miserably twice, and I cannot let it happen again.
I have taken the AA quiz and feel fortunate to not answer 'yes' to more than four questions. I do very much feel the social pressure of drinking though, and I know I need to be strong enough to stay away from levels of drinking that make me feel uncomfortable. I simply cannot afford to drink or go out all the time, and I am always trying to emphasise to this boyfriend that drinking is expensive and if he wants to afford to travel, redecorate, even have a family, it should be the first thing to go. I have had a year of real frugality (and very little drinking) that proved to me that drink is not as important to my life as travelling and studying. I have been around the world and completed an master's degree since then - all because I focused on myself and didn't allow any straying from my self-discipline. Then I meet this man and throw myself at him and have all these expectations that he cannot ever live up to.
I think the shock of falling off a boat and hurting myself quite badly made me feel ashamed - it made me think that I AM just a messy drunk like my mother. In reality I should have been the person I really am - on my sofa at home in my slippers. I am going to make a real effort to be this person and act as an example rather than an enabler.
I pray that I can find myself again, hand my shame and guilt over to my HP, and move on with my life. This is the lowest point of my life, and I can only see a tiny glimmer of light that comes from the program; from forgiving myself which seems such a long way away. It's devastating. I feel so lost.
I imagine that everyone here has been at that point at some time. Truly alcoholism pulls everyone around into chaos. Sometimes new lows are a turning point -- our own "reaching bottom" -- I imagine everyone here has found that too. Maybe this is the time you will look back on as the point where everything became clearer and started getting better.
I absolutely don't mean to tell you anything about your situation, because only you know what's right. But when I looked at the AA quiz again, I note that it says, " Did you answer YES four or more times? If so, you are probably in trouble with alcohol." (This is at http://www.aa.org/subpage.cfm?page=71.) If alcohol is a contributing factor -- and we all know exactly how powerful alcohol can be -- then applying program rather than willpower might be the thing that makes the difference.
I look forward to hearing what others have to say.
I hope you'll keep coming back and keep on taking good care of yourself.
I think you have already kind of answered (at least some ) of your questions.... you need to return to meetings, and return to choosing a recovery.... for YOU.
Whether or not your particular 'stuff' will be resolved in Al-Anon or AA remains to be seen - getting yourself back to meetings - Al-Anon for starters - is the best thing you can do for yourself.... If you end up in AA, so be it (you certainly wouldn't be the first who entered the doors via Al-Anon)..... Either way, this is about you re-finding yourself, and I would encourage you to choose recovery once again....
In the immortal words of our friend JerryF on this site - I would encourage you to "run, don't walk, to the nearest Al-Anon meeting" :)
Glad you have found your way back to us
Tom
__________________
"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?"
Oh so now I'm immortal heh? Or did Tom mean to say Immoral? hmmmm
Welcome santaclara...it is good to have you here with the rest of the family. I read your post and Matties very very inciteful response to it. Her response reminded me of the love and compassion I received when I first found Al-Anon. I'm glad you have been going also.
Your post reminded me of a sponsor session I once had as an early sponsee where I had this story to tell in much the same way you have here and when I was done telling it my sponsor told me "Listen to your story as if you were someone else and then tell me what you think about it and the person telling it". I learned to self reflect on the consequences in my life that came as a result of the choices I was making and I've learned that I need to make better choices and do the thinking that results in those choices.
I asked an alcoholi/addict to marry me while at the same time thinking of how to tell her that I needed to be apart from her; that I was going to let her go. We use to do the insanity you speak of in this post with monotonous regularity and also use the words "love you" at the same time. We were in love with being in love and didn't know how to actually do it...actually practice love. People in the program use to tell me that I wasn't in love...that I was in "lust" because I kept coming back for more abuse because the lust was so anestithizing in between. I don't know where they learned that from but I am glad they taught me stuff that might have been causing me to stay in an abusive addictive relationship taking abuse and giving it as if it was my main career. She and I hurt each other often and deeply and it was habit even up to getting married. Alcohol is a solvent...it dissolves, blood cells, proteins, brain matter, finances, jobs, businesses, governments and marriages and more. Of course I sense you already know that and that you have learned alot from your recovering mother. Congradulations to her from another recovering double in the Pacific and congradulation to you for staying with the program. Just a "by the way"? I got into AA after being alcohol free and a full time member of the Al-Anon Family Groups for 9 years. I finally did an honest AA assessment and was ready to learn about relapse.
So you're in family...MIP family...many of us have been there and done that similar to how santaclara does it and no longer do it that way. Stick around and keep coming back because the program works when you work it and you don't have to live sick.
(((((hugs)))))
I've decided that I like Immortal better than Immoral. My HP likes it better too!
I see your hurt and dispair...you have come to the right place.
So many points in your post, but the main one which I see is your fear.
'He gets very angry (never violent) at little things, and often takes his anger out on me by shouting or hanging up on me. He calls me names and frequently swears at me.'
Please recognise quite clearly that the above behaviour is abuse. Which these days is named as emotional violence.
You have started to lash out and this reaction can be part of chaos and fear.
The Serenity Prayer will indeed help as is reading books like 'Why does he do that?' by Lindy Bancroft and 'Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out.' by Patricia Evans.
When you let someone trounce your boundaries and convince you to do things you don't want to do - anger and resentment will build. That is not healthy for your relationship. You are free to attend events separately. You do not have to do everything together. You stated you felt you might be "losing yourself" in this relationship a bit. There you have it.
It has been my experience that every time I gave up my plans, my friends, my time to myself....whatever - I got angry and resentful of the person I was dating. Also, his cursing and hanging up on your and calling you names- that's not acceptable either. I do think heading ot alanon will help tremendously Counseling is another option too because aggressive communication (verbal OR physical) is only going to get worse unless you both commit to arresting it now. From your story, both of you sound like you are guilty of aggressive communication and that is a relationship problem that you might consider working on together.
I recently came upon a tool of dialing back and dialing up. When I am around someone (my current roommate for example) who is provoking me and making me angry I have to dial back our relationship. In the past I always dialled up I upped my efforts to explain, review and look at what was going on. Around an alcoholic I expect them to be an alcoholic. I don't think it is an issue of whether they think they are an alcoholic its whether I think they are (and I don't need to tell them that).
Boundaries for me are all about self boundaries. Am I taking care of myself? How do I feel? How do I set balance. If I am around someone who is very demanding (my roommate can be) I have to dial back because I would expect to be resentful if I let someone take over my life. I have to be able to be around people who can hear "no".
I am very much used to the kind of relationship you speak about. The intense fights, the shame, the guilt the anger. The blame, who is at fault, for what, how, who else is at fault. The bottom line for me was that absolutely I was not taking care of myself.
The issue for me with al anon was that I had to let go of so much excitement, conflict and "blame" in order to focus on myself. I am not an alcoholic but I do find if I drink my boundaries are less rigid and my boundaries are pretty important to me. I also find if I drink I am around other people who are drinking and what and when to stop is a big issue.
Everyone has accidents and some of us do of course over react to them. Over reaction is not an easy thing to analyze or understand especially in the middle of a relationship that is intense, conflictual and of course full of the need to try to control someone. The opportunity for self reflection generally isn't there in the middle of intensity.
I know when I was with the ex A he took up all my time and energy. What he was doing, where he was, what was next was a huge draw for me. I am very grateful to the program of al anon for helping me to get to a place where I understood that I needed to take care of myself first and others second.
Phew. I have been slowly reading all your replies and digesting them. I think it is incredible that this forum exists. I have probably set a record for the most searches done on here in the last three days (!) poring over the ESH of others (see I'm even getting the lingo!), desperate to know that I am not alone. I cannot tell you how much shame and guilt I feel over becoming physically violent not once but twice in the last two months. The agony is just so strong that all else goes out the window - recovery is all I have left to restore me to sanity. I have faith that it will. (I just wish I could give myself an Al-anon holiday, and go to every meeting that exists. Sadly I have studies, work, an internship. Thank god for this forum.)
Mattie, canadianguy: I guess I am in trouble with alcohol - and I have been all my life. At least it has always made my life unmanageable. My mother drank and drank and drank and told me I was worthless and she'd wished she'd never had me. My father (dry drunk, from what ma says) was even more of a confusion because he argued us all (me plus three wives) into knots, holding a kitchen-courtroom where he was judge/jury/executioner, determined to make us all feel as crap about ourselves as possible - but there was no alcohol involved (at least in the years I can remember). Once I started having relationships I found similarly chaotic people, and clinging on to every nice thing they every said to me/about me, and yes, JerryF, using lust as an anaesthetic! Any 'nice' boyfriend I had fizzled after a while; my heart just wasn't in it.
I've never been particularly 'poor me' about the childhood however, perhaps because of mother's recovery, for which I am very grateful. Also I have found I don't remember much - whole teenage years have literally disappeared from memory because I guess the pain was just too much. There is literally a chunk of my life, at boarding school when I was 16-18 after many years of alco-chaos from parents that only surfaced recently. I also consider myself very lucky - I went to live with the principal of my school and another set of sort-of foster parents for some periods of time. I consider that they enriched my life and being a big fan of the gratitude list I find it hard to be too down about the bad bits. But obviously my parents' behaviour has affected me and my behaviour... And I've not really worked through that with a sponsor or through the steps.
Too hard: I really appreciate you mentioning fear - not least because at the meeting I went to (RAN to, almost literally, JerryF!) fear was the main topic. I like to think of myself as brave and strong and independent (I travelled India, Asia and Brazil all by myself - not bad for a wee blonde girl) but oh my last night I realised I fear a lot of things emotionally. I fear rejection, abandonment, not having my expectations met (and as a perfectionist that's a lot of expectations), etc etc. I now also fear losing total control of myself and hurting someone I love (and myself as a consequence).
I fear my boyfriend's negativity towards me, which is pretty frequent. Most of the time I can tell him that I won't be spoken to like that, but he always finds some justification for calling me a c**t or an idiot, or telling me to 'f**king grow up' (Friday's particular gem that stayed with me all day and doubtless into the party). It is devastating. I have even thought him somewhat like my father in his irrational rage towards me - another man who would say everything under the sun to hurt me, but insist that because he didn't physically hurt anyone, it wasn't really abusive behaviour. I guess I thought I could just NOT BE upset, just 'get over it' when someone I love and look up to treats me badly. Hmm, not so... :(
pinkchip and orchilover: Boy am I ready to keep those boundaries rigid; keep our live separate but for the things I really want to do (like a nice bike ride we have planned on Thursday). But I fear (again fear!) being too militant, uncompromising, or unfair. For example: A few weeks ago he invited me around to his house for a Sunday dinner, but when I heard on the phone that his drinking buddy was still there at 7am, passed out on the sofa, the place was a wreck, they had woken up still steaming, and that there was talk of finishing off the whisky in the morning, I freaked out and went to a meeting instead. Cue text messages all day telling me that - because I had reneged on our plans (my argument was that HE had by talking of drinking in the morning) - my stuff was on the doorstep, it was over if I didn't call him immediately, etc. God I'm actually starting to see that this is probably fairly alcoholic behaviour... And that it was fair of me to avoid it, given my rule about such things...?
pinkchip your suggestion that we both engage in 'aggressive communication' was really insightful. I actually did a lot of Googling on this and I think this will be an interesting side to my recovery within this relationship - whether he can admit that he too is aggressive with his words remains to be seen. In talking to my bf about the weekend, I managed to tell him pretty calmly that I think he is angry towards me unnecessarily. He sort of manages to rationalize it... 'You really wind me up'. 'Well, you said X and I though that was totally unreasonable' (when I can't see that it was TOTALLY unreasonable, apart from it hurting him, which is fair enough). I keep trying to tell him that 'my feelings are real' and telling me 'that's bulls**t' (another repeat offender) when I try to express them isn't fair, but he doesn't really get it...
Reading this back I can see that I still have Al-anon tools in there somewhere, they are just blunt and currently underused...
*sigh* I have always managed to control my rage-response before, but the truth is, both times I mention above where I have lashed out, alcohol (plus shock in the second instance) was involved and this is what makes me think some bigger changes need to be made. I have absolutely no fear of not drinking. I am happy to work my Al-anon program; to work on me to make sure that I am no longer fearful, resentful, angry - and of course violent. I don't want to live in this chaos. I have a lot of issues to work out! A scary huge mountain of them...
A couple of questions:
There must be a bunch of people out there who started out with their AHs drinking alongside them, but then started seeing what was really going on and stopped, or didn't drink with them. Is there any benefit in trying to teetotalise our relationship (as it were)? Or is it just a question of living and let living? Being a good example?
Also, I wonder a bit about the 'alcohol is the symptom' theory, which I've read something about. What does this mean?
Sorry if these are a bit naive.... but any ESH though on the topics would be great.
Thanks again, you guys are just fantastic.
With love, SC.
PS: Sorry for the essay, I'm a bit of a writer when I get going. It will be what saves me!
