I don't think you can. Al-anon is for us to let go of their disease and work on a better life for us, mind, body and soul. If the alcoholic doesn't go into recovery its only a matter of time when the relationship will end. Just my opinion.

I've known of people who seem to have done it, but they did lead very separate lives.  And I can't say they were as happy as they would have been with a healthy, non-drinking spouse. 

Alanon teaches us to love ourselves, look after ourselves, value ourselves and living with active drinking is the opposite . Living with a person who does not meet any of our needs or very little, whose behaviour, through drinking can be delibrately hurtful and mean. How much do we give up for the alcoholic? Love, friendship, trust, sex, financial security, peace of mind, sleep, a parent for our children, progress in this program? For love? What kind of love is it?

When I think back to the reasons I had for staying in hell, I said love. Now I see I stayed out of fear, addicted to drama, obsession, pride, denial. I dont think it was ever love. Maybe in the very early days, maybe for about 1% but it died really quickly and in its place were fantasy ideas of love. In my experience love cant survive active drinking.

-- Edited by el-cee on Wednesday 9th of April 2014 08:47:44 PM

I did love my husband and I didn't love the disease that distorted everything and could turn a simple statement into a reason for war. I truly didn't want to divorce him and I wanted freedom from the disease more. I think it is possible to love the man and not the disease or what it does to the man. Even now, although we've been divorced since 1979 and he's been dead since 2001, I can think of him and feel warmth and a smile when I consider some of the things we laughed about and shared in common. But the disease was too much for me to live with and I had to say goodbye to it. Truth be told, I never married again in part because I was waiting unconsciously for him to actively pursue a recovery program. About a year or two before he died, I saw that we would never be able to be remarried even if he did pursue recovery - there was just too much difference now in our maturity level and our personal development. But, I'm still grateful to him for my children and the ways I grew that might not have been possible without my marriage to him or my love for him. That doesn't excuse his bad behavior but his bad behavior was due to a disease for the most part. Beneath it all was a person who I shared life with as a wife and later as the woman who gave birth to the children we co-created.

I am reminded of the phrase: Happiness is an inside job.

I wish I could say I've been with mine the whole time and it's been fine, but that's not what happened. BUT having said that, before I left, I was at a happy and serene place even though he was still active. And no we were not leading separate lives. He still provided for the family, we still had intimacy, we were learning to communicate better.

Then I left. And he got sober. And relapsed again. And is working on his recovery once again. We are talking about remarriage.

I ran into an older woman who was in AA while at a bookstore and we got to talking for an hour. She'd had 17 years sobriety and then relapsed. Her sponsees did an intervention on her. She now has another 25 years of sobriety. We were talking about my A and I getting back together and was I sure of doing that. The conversation turned to, nobody is perfect. There are issues in everyone. I myself come from a family that has a lot of dysfunction. Dealing with them can be almost worse than dealing with the alcoholic issues at times.

The key really is: living this program. If you're living the program, you can handle just about anything. I think the more important question when deciding if it's possible to be happy with an A is, who is that A underneath it all? Mine doesn't cheat, he doesn't lie, he doesn't do a lot of all those things that everyone says "they all do this". Such an untrue statement. He is simply a very good decent man with a horrible disease that he's trying to get a handle on. He too is deserving of love and happiness.

I am really struggling with this right now, my husband is a dry drunk, and our son is an active barley functioning A, we are living a very fractured life together,and whilst we can have wonderful carefree days together these are few and far between and these episodes of happiness always seem to happen when I am feeling that I have to leave, largely I feel very alone and most of the things I would expect a healthy loving couple to be doing and talking about together we are not, I feel so bogged down with their problems, and lately I think my only option is to remove myself completely from all of them, this is not a new thought for me I have been here many times before and fear and worry have always held me back, I am thinking right now I need to do this gently, no granduoso of I AM LEAVING AND NEVER COMING BACK! No this time I am saying look this situation is making me feel ill, and I need to be away from it for a while, I need to do this for myself foremost, I am going to look at a place later today, I have started to ask myself what do I want? what do I want my future to look like?  I have tons of experience of what my life is like with a's and I have very little experience of life away from drama and chaos, I would like to see what that feels like. 

I am in a lot of thought at the moment, I am trying to view this in a positive way, healthy growth for me some how!

regards

Katy

  x

 

 

 

Katy, my son has issues too, im very new into having some peace in my life but I realoy like it. I think your plan sounds really good, good motives, all about you needing some time to heal.x

Dear el-cee,

I have spent much of my life resenting and blaming and beating my husband up and myself too, It was all I ever wanted was to have a happy family life, I think for as long as I can remember that has been my needs my wants my dreams, until alanon I never considered for one minute I was not in a place myself to know what or how I needed to be to accomplish that, I took the experience of my childhood and wanted to create the opposite and I what did I do? I created the same same, I was attracted to people that were different somehow usually people that stood alone, people that I thought I understood because I thought they would understand me, I wanted them to be able to fix me as much as I wanted to fix them, so much has happened in between, I am learning things about myself every day things that were so ingrained inside of me that are actually holding me back now, this week I am learning I have to be true to myself whatever the cost to others, the way that I am feeling is because I am not fullfilled, I have tollerated so much unacceptable behaviour, and I don't like the person that makes me into, I am not bitter about the troubled years any more, don't get me wrong i was, but now only sad I think more so, but I am certain it had to happen that way for me to learn about myself and be myself, I am still not there yet, I have read alot this week about getting out of the way, I want to change the legacy of my past, for my own children, my husband is a good man but we clash terribly, his influence and manipulation and negativity are too damaging for me now, my hair is falling out and I am tense and on edge around him, and now with our son jeez no wonder I am doolally, I write all this with so much conviction it is what is in my heart to do, but doing it is another matter, god give me strength!

love

Katy

  x

El-cee - you and I seem to be in very similar situations. My A left me and at one time I thought there has not been so much that has happened that we cannot repair our relationship. Today I look back and cannot believe the abuse I took from that man. I cannot believe the verbal and mental abuse he handed out to his children and I stood there and let it happen in fear that if I said a word his rage would come full force on me. Just like you, today I cannot even imagine forgiving or having compassion for this man. I look at him as a walking disease that hurts and infects everyone in his path with nothing but pain. He has scarred his whole family in ways we will never be able to heal. I have nothing but contempt, anger and resentment towards this man for all the destruction he has caused and continues to do so. What I do know, is that for the most part I am happy to be living in a home where I'm not verbally and mental abused on a daily basis. I'm allowed to be happy without punishment and I can be me. I do not go home and walk on eggshells anymore.

As far as being happy and living with an active A, in my experience it is nearly impossible because they are so unpredictable and irrational and are professional liars. My A literally told me that if he saw me happy or in a good mood, his sole purpose would be to bring me down and make me sad. There were many nights where he did everything he could to make me sad and he was very successful at it. He comes from a family of A's. Most are sober, his father is a dry drunk. I cannot for the life of me figure out why his mother stays with his dad. He does absolutely nothing for her, she is the sole income and the home and anything of value has to be in her name because he is not responsible financially. He brings nothing to the marriage, as far as I can see. He often leaves for weeks at a time with very little to no contact with his wife. She has her own separate life and they do almost nothing together. She seems happy, but maybe she has resigned herself to the fact that this is how their marriage is and it will not change. I know I want a better marriage for myself and that is not going to happen with my stbexah. I truly believe that my HP removed my A from my life so that I can lead a happy healthy life. This is just my 2 cents and I know it sounds bitter, but I hate this disease and the pain it inflicts on everyone around it.

'Happy' is relative, in my opinion (and for me, I have to subsititute 'mentally ill person' for alcoholic here, since I'm in less contact with my qualifiers, but in daily contact with an unstable person). I found through codependency work on myself that I could compartmentalize and be happy at times, but in the end I realized I was short-changing myself by constantly being on edge, as to when the next shoe was going to drop. So the happiness/peace I craved was like a parallel line to reality, and the two never met, because I could never fully relax and live in the moment. Perhaps that's MY failing, but I like to think of it also as a natural reaction involving 'fight or flight', and that to sustain that kind of hyper-awareness would probably make me very ill or a shadow of myself at best.

Your story is the one ive heard most, where the partner got into alanon and the a followed. It gives people hope and the readings hint at this too, especially the odat. In my meeting im the odd one out, im the only one who has left my a. I admire the courage and the recocery work needed to stay.x