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Hello all. I am not a frequent visitor to this board although I have posted here before, and I have found it to be a very warm and helpful environment. My wife and I have been having a very hard time in our marriage for almost a year now. I am a recovering alcoholic in AA with almost 4 years of sobriety, and she has been (or was) a very active member of alanon for over 15 years. She was in alanon when we first met and started dating, and for the first three years of our relationship I was still in active alcoholism. My first exposure to a 12 step program was in accompanying her to a few alanon meetings, but again, this was before I identified as an alcoholic. We also have a 2 year old son who is just a wonderful little boy. Since our son's birth, my wife's participation in alanon went from 4-5 meetings a week to virtually no meetings at all in the last two years. She hs become increasingly angry and depressed over that time period and, after continually expressing her unhappiness with our marriage to me, she took our son to Florida for a month from before Thanksgiving up until a week or two before Christmas. She felt as though this would give her the space that she wanted (or needed) because in her own words she "was done with me." So, my wife and son have been home for two months now and while the first month home was largely good, my wife has now returned to a place of rageful anger and depression. She is seeing a therapist who has basically insisted she attend a minimum of three alanon meetings a week, but it's a good week if she gets to two meetings and even that is a rarity. She wakes up angry every day and blames me for her anger and depression. She lashes out at our son because she has no patience for him being a two year old, and she blames me for her lack of patience. She stormed out of her house on Thursday in the middle of a snowstorm because she wanted me to leave and I refused, so she went with our son to her mother's house. In seeing my own therapist yesterday and talking about this with him, he said plainly that none of this anger has anything to do with me at all, that it is her way of processing her own childhood trauma. He also recommended I g to some alnon meetings and said that it would be crucial to my handling this situation which is part of the reason I am writing this now. I went to a mixed AA/alanon meeting last night, and I definitely found it helpful. Her mother lest I forget to mention it, is an active alcoholic and was an angry and abusive (verbally, emotionally, and physically) mother when my wife was a child. Her mother (my mother-in-law) called me yesterday and left a voicemail stating that my wife had scramed at her and cursed her out in public yesterday which resulted in our son crying. She then left her mother's house and went somewhere else. I quickly deduced through looking at our online bank activity that they had checked into a hotel, but she didn't have the courtesy to let me know where they were. I reached out to a bunch of her closest friends yesterday and communicated my concern with her mental state, and I explained how angry and depressed she has been for the last few weeks. They were all very receptive to this and thanked me for reaching out to them. My wife returned home this morning with our son, and barely spoke to me at all before heading off to her job. What she did say was that she didn't want to be around me and that she didn't want to be married to me anymore. She also said that she was going to move into our guest room and have as little interaction with me as possible. Obviously that hurts to hear, but I am trying very hard to keep the focus on myself. What I'm realizing is that her sickness right now is no different than if I were dealing with an active alcoholic who went on a bender and was acting completely irrationally in every way. I don't discount that our marriage is very rocky or that my wife is stressed out at being a parent, but I need to remember that I can't fix her and that I am not responsible for her anger or depression. Things are not going to get better until she has the ability to address what's going on, but in the meantime I need to take care of me. I start a new job on Monday - one that I am excited about and one that will provide my family with actual benefits and a decent income whereas we've been struggling financially for a while now - and I need to put my energy into that and being the best version of me I can be. I have no control over whether she wants to angry, whether she chooses to yell at me or anyone else, or whether she wants to get a divorce. It is very hard though to not worry about such things.
Hmmm Kent... you are talking about the early days of my marriage... I was in Alanon then thanks goodness... the serenity prayer kicks in here... some of all the conflict comes back to the disease of alcoholism and the me the history of family dysfunction. But beside that there is the old saying: "when kids come along, love goes out the window".
On this board I and many others have spoken with the spouses of children of alcoholics. Speaking for myself I have been in the shoes of your wife- coping with family, and all those years of rejection and abandonment... maybe it is time for a miracle of some kind?
I had a restless night and came and ended up sleeping on the couch. A laptop and connections around the world are a great asset. Our daughter and grand-daughter are staying overnight. [The four year old is sitting beside me now!]
But as i stretched out for a welcome snooze I heard an almighty scream. The poor kid was having a nightmare. I was going to rush up the passage but my daughter dealt with it. When I was four and had nightmares no-one came. I owe it to the programme that someone was there for the wee kid.
Thanks, David. Yes, I believe it is time for a miracle of some kind. My AA sponsor keeps telling me to pray for my wife's happiness, and I'm taking his advice. Letting go of my own codependent need to fix other people's feelings is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, in many ways it is harder than putting down the drink.
Perhaps she is having some sort of bad postpartum depression? Or a mental health issue? Or... she might be drinking? My AW drank w/o me figuring it out for awhile. Mine was her diagnosis of mono that kept her on the couch, mixed with denial once she was passed out drinking instead of from exhaustion. If she won't talk to you about it you can't do much, so the same kinds of boundaries might be in order, like you are saying.
Peace
Kenny
Aloha Kent and welcome back into the board. That is partially my story also and the most important part of it was the Al-Anon Family Groups part. Learning how to remove myself as the target for the disease often meant my own self discipline with detachment. At first that was almost impossible because I learned I was fully invested in the actions/reactions which were normal as we sought to blame and defend and counter blame and defend all the time. We often did this to ease our personal pain without realizing that it did the opposite. Learning detachment so I could practice self focus was absolutely necessary and I had to create the atmosphere for that with meetings, literature, sponsorship and all of the other suggestions. In time my alcoholic/addict wife had to go " practice" the disease on her own and yes she would find substitutes for me from time to time and still the outcomes were the same. Absolutely no one can maintain their peace of mind and serenity and participate in the disease at the same time. Practicing acceptance, detachment, forgiveness, gratitude and the other tools of the program showed me that it wasn't all a total loss even while I came to understand that I would not and could not live under the threat of the disease. I loved her...I just didn't need her.
