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 suffering over the things AW said to me the other day... see the last post I made. I have suffered from depression and anxiety since the 7th grade and when my parents got divorced I took a serious nosedive from an already low place (this when I was in college). I managed to graduate but after graduation I became completely immobilized with depression and suicidal thoughts. In the midst of this I found God. In prayer I let God know that he could use me as he wished as I certainly had no use for myself. Not long after that AW literally showed up at my doorstep a complete mess. I wanted nothing to do with her. I had known her very tangentially in high school. She was persistent. She had the sweetest little 4yr old daughter. I prayed on it for a long time. She was divorced from her foster father and had been forced to move back in with her actual father who had sexually abused her up until the age of 15 when she was placed in foster care and her foster father took over the role of abuser. He got her hooked on pain pills and provided her alcohol and eventually after his wife passed away he married her. They got divorced after he punched her in the face one too many times. I got know her and her daughter and I just couldn't stand the thought of her actual father even possibly abusing either one of them. I prayed on it a long while and the answer I got back is that no bad can ever come from doing good. So I let them move in. After about a year we got married. No sex until after we made our vows. She was off of pain pills and wasn't drinking with any frequency that would be disturbing. She was back in counseling. Things were looking up. A year later she was pregnant with our first child. I had a new job that took us to another state but things went downhill from there. I prayed and prayed and the answer i got was that it would get worse before it would get better. It did get worse... I'm still waiting for the better. I believe that if I hold out long enough the better will come. I cannot leave my wife now. I have prayed about leaving her before and the answer I got was that I could leave her and it would be forgiven but that it is not His will for me to do so. I have needed to find a way to live with her and keep myself sane. After a couple of pretty serious suicide attempts and a couple of hospitalizations and with the help of alanon and you wonderful people I am finally getting there.
To finish my thought... I have been suffering from the mean things she said to me the other day and have been struggling with depressive thoughts. Thinking errors. I recognize that these thinking errors are mine and are not caused by her. "I am worthless, I should already have a job, I am lazy" need to be replaced with more rational thoughts like "I may not be working right now but it is just a matter of time and I will be. Even now I have worth without income. Earning money is just one part of the picture. I am a loving caring husband and father. I am certainly not lazy... I do all of the household chores except cooking as well as teaching myself computer programming and I also work out at the gym on a regular basis (though not the last couple of weeks which may be a part of the problem: tweaked my back and have had terrible cold). I feel better already. Don't know where I am going with this exactly... rambling a bit. Thanks for listening.
Hi Dponlyme, Sorry to hear you are feeling down, it is not surprising since you've had such a stressful time recently - and if you've been laid low with that horrible cold bug as well, then it sure can be difficult to resist those negative thoughts. But well done, I'm impressed that you see them for what they are i.e. just thoughts and not the truth. I did something called CBT with my counsellor and that helped me a lot with finding ways to feel more positive about myself. For example I know that I've been grubby recently because of my own bug and the lack of my usual exercise. For some time now I have been pulled hither and thither by thoughts of if I should or should not stay with AH and when I'm stressed by some domestic event or by feeling poorly these feelings run close to the surface. It is just a short hop before I find I find myself putting me down for even thinking like this. It is a hiding to nothing Once I see what is going on I think about what I would do for a friend who was in the same situation, and then I do that for myself. A bit of self love and care usually helps to restore my energy. There is one gift that I have promised myself though, and that is that AH's health is not worth sacrificing my own for - I want to be healthy when we get through this. I do believe that 'the better' will come when we let it and I find it normally arrives in small doses when I least expect it. A bit like the foxes that I see on our hillside struggling to find food in the winter snow. They don't seem to be fretting or loosing sleep over it, they just stay aware and go about their business and, presto! they find something that makes their day! Thanks for this post D, it helps to think on these things. Sending you prayers for a great day today.
DP - The backstory is helpful to know. It's hard to know when we are getting messages from our higher power vs. how much those messages get twisted as they interface through us. I think your devotion to your wife is inspiring and wonderful. However, you do seem to have a script written with you as her savior and as a martyr. Martyrs suffer. God may want you to continue to be their for your wife but I'm not so sure he wants you to suffer for her or to be her savior.
Ordinarily "nothing bad happens from trying to do good" is a true statement but all of us on this forum have experienced that when we try and do what is "good for" an alcoholic/addict it often backfires and turns into enabling. I can tell you that, as an alcoholic/addict the most toxic and harmful thing for me to believe is that I was/am a victim. I used to shop around and work guilt and enabling from anyone who would buy my story of how I'd been crapped on and that was why I had these issues and so forth. In some ways I literally was a victim like your wife, but it NEVER helped me to view it that way and anyone else who cosigned that line of thinking turned into one of my enablers.
I have also had depression and anxiety since about 7th grade. At times it has been crippling and at times I did think that whatever relationship I was in was probably my "purpose" or "what God" sentenced me to. I now believe that those relationships (particularly the last one with the alcoholic ex) was sent to me so I could grow and eventually get sick enough to stop clinging to pretty much everything (including the alcoholic and my own alcohol) out of fear and just focus on me and my own health.
DP, you are bashing yourself over not having a job, but you have a full time job already which seems to be taking care of your wife. You cannot be her rehab counselor, sponsor, therapist, or martyr. It does sound like she is so sick that she needs some serious help well beyond your ability. When you can't make her better or fix all that pain from her past, you get crapped on. I know you are in a difficult financial spot but when someone is that sick with addiction, they need rehab most of the time and then the enabler has to step out of the picture (not leave them necessarily or stop loving them)....just let them live on their own and regain skills to function as an adult. In my first year of recovery, I had to learn how to clean a house, groom myself better, cook, shop, pay bills all over again. All I knew how to do was go to work and drink. It was horrid but a necessity. If someone else was there like always to do that for me, I would have stayed sick.
So yeah. I do see there's potential for you guys and there probably is a lot of love despite the horrible pain of both your pasts and her addiction. In order for her to get better, she has to be in the position to be made to take care of herself and you generally either step out of the way during this process or watch from a bit more of a distance while she either succeeds or fails. Right now, she is banking on you viewing her as incapable and she's extorting that to keep her addiction active.
If money was no issue, you could ideally live in a little house next door and let her truly see how her addiction and choices affect her and stop her from being a full human being. In that time you would be able to focus on you, stabilizing your moods, and getting your career on track. When there is a toxic interchange going on with the two of you, none of this is going to happen. If she was to go into a long term rehab and then some state sponsored halfway...that could help too.
Again DP, you sound like a truly wonderful person, a dedicated and spiritual person, but you and your wife seem to have fallen into a pretty common rut for alcoholic marriages. If you really started feeling better and doing better in your own life, do you fear you would outgrow her? I know that I literally made myself sicker and lower functioning so that I could stay with my alcoholic partner cuz I knew that once I got better, the relationship would end (this was just me though and I don't know how much others, including you might have that going on). I had to believe I was dirt and worthless to stay in that relationship that was so full of pain and chaos and mistreatment.
Two broken people (no matter how much they love each other) restore each other back to health. Both parties need space and freedom to grow and heal as individuals and then come back to each other to form a healthier couple. I never got that before and always tried to force relationships to work where I was busted, the other person was busted, and our interactions were busted. It never occured to me to get enough distance to work on myself, let the other person work on themself and then maybe have a shot at happiness and a healthier relationship. I don't know how this could play out for you, but I do think this is the type of detachment that will be your breakthrough.
You are not weak. You are strong and caring. You are a miracle in fact. But you have suffered enough regardless of what you choose to do.
Hi DP, You sound like a fantastic guy who has taken on a "project". Your backstory is very interesting but you can't say it is all the will of your HP. Maybe she is put into your life for a season to teach yourself something about yourself or about life. What pinkchip wrote caught my eye, " let the other person work on themselves", and that is what I had to do with my AH. I had to make myself respect him enough to let him be. I remember saying to someone in the program that I was so angry that he didn't know all the little rules about life that I had learned as a child. He either didn't learn them or he decided to ignore them while he was drinking. Maybe your wife didn't learn them.... or maybe she did and it is more convenient for her to let you handle it all.
Take care of yourself. Immerse yourself in detachment. Let her be in her HP's hands.
so much pressure especially of the man being the provider and strength of the family, etc.. i would think the feeling or thinking might be something along the lines of i'm not a man if.. well i don't know because i'm not a man, i'm a woman .. i know when others say things that hurt me it's because i begin to believe what they are saying because a part of me believes it about myself first. through my own personal walk with depression, when i got in alanon, did the first 3 steps and then wrote down my 4th step with my sponsor and then showed her the size of my notebook in step 5, she took one look and said, good God, no wonder you've been depressed lol . all those things i'd carried with me for years literally .. i saw it .. but i also saw me turning over my entire life to the care of my hp (God for me) .. from the time i dumped that thing looking back, i have Never been as depressed as i was way back when .. when my life became unmanageable without spiritual help, my life included relationships, work background, children, every single area .. my own beliefs about myself .. thinking feelings you name it ..
If you haven't been to alanon, i sure hope you consider it .. so many miracles but so much wisdom .. i was sharing in a morning meeting, we are wise just for turning toward these boards, meetings for help .. there is no problem wisdom can't find the answer to ..
Good luck over there.. i'm glad you shared this morning .. ty .. much serenity to you ..
the best image of me with my 4th and 5th step is in dickens Christmas Carol of Scrooges worker dragging the ball and chain .. that was what i felt like alive as opposed to in the story where the man is dead .. by the time i reached my sponsor i felt literally depleted.. Take care over there .. thanks again ..
I have read your posts for quite some time, and, I agree with the others, that you are a loving, caring man. There is, however, something within you that is providing you power by enabling your wife and keeping you sick; God does not want you to be sick and suffering. There was a time when I really wanted my husband to stay sick, then I could be the lovely martyr/victim, etc. I sabotaged both of us. This was too shameful for me to acknowledge, but there is no shame in it anymore...I have learned to look at me and others more impersonally. Be the noble warrior that you truly are...hugs!!!!!
I find in my own experience, DP, that I have to keep taking these things back through the first three steps.
1. I'm powerless over alcohol, and my life has become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him.
Breathe.
Have you worked these steps thoroughly with a sponsor?
I hear you sound like you have a lot of faith in God, but you don't appear to have faith that God will take care of your wife without your help, and perhaps you're pretty worried about whether or not God's *really* going to take good care of you if you're no longer in the role of caretaker for your wife.
These kind of decisions require a huge leap in faith, and really, you should only make those decisions when you feel in your heart of hearts that no matter what, everything is going to be okay. God loves you, God loves your wife - I'm confident God's got amazing plans for the two of you -- you just wont' see those plans in action until you're willing to hand over the steering wheel.
But I emphasize... you can only do this and let go when YOU are ready, IF you ever do become ready. Jumping when others say to jump can leave you feeling like a victim all over again and fill you with tons of doubts.
Know we're all here for you, DP. You and your wife and family. We love you no matter what, and we respect your right to decide what you want to do with your life.
wow... there is a lot to go over here. This is going to take me a while to sort through. I never expected this much of a response. I am grateful for all of the wonderful caring I hear in each response. It's so awesome to have this kind of feedback. I haven't really gone into great detail but just given a bare bones outline of the way I see things. I have a lot of soul searching and praying to do. Thank you all so much.
Once I see what is going on I think about what I would do for a friend who was in the same situation, and then I do that for myself. A bit of self love and care usually helps to restore my energy. There is one gift that I have promised myself though, and that is that AH's health is not worth sacrificing my own for - I want to be healthy when we get through this. I do believe that 'the better' will come when we let it and I find it normally arrives in small doses when I least expect it. A bit like the foxes that I see on our hillside struggling to find food in the winter snow. They don't seem to be fretting or loosing sleep over it, they just stay aware and go about their business and, presto! they find something that makes their day! 