The material presented
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I have tried Al Anon and individual therapy in the past and I continue to struggle so I thought I should give it another shot as I am determined to make 2015 a better year.
Here's my story. Several years ago, I met my soon to be ex-husband. Our relationship in the beginning was nothing short of a fairy tale and I fell deeply in love with him. Throughout the time we dated (just over a year) we did not live together and although I knew he was a drinker because we would go out to dinner and social events, I was not aware of the extent of his drinking until after we married. The first red flag was our wedding - my husband went out with his friend before the ceremony and drank heavily - to a point where the minister questioned whether we were going to go forward with the ceremony. I was unaware of all of this as family and friends did not want to ruin my day so i didn't find out until I walked down the aisle and could smell the liquor coming out of his pores as we stood there saying our vows. Given the intimate nature of our wedding, everyone knew of his condition which only added to my hurt and embarrassment. Instead of my husband addressing the issue after our wedding, things only became progressively worse as once we moved in together I was able to see that the drinking was a much bigger issue then just bad judgement on our wedding day. I discovered that my husband had been involved in DUIs and had also been married more times than he conveyed to me but by this point, I was pregnant and desperately wanted to make it work for the sake of our child. During my pregnancy, our relationship continued to deteriorate and he was seldom home. Over time, his drinking turned more belligerent and he was both verbally and physically abusive. On one particular occasion, he attacked me and choked me whereas the police became involved. Still, I tried to protect him - that was until his drinking started to impact our child. There were blackouts and drinking and driving related incidents and despite seeking the intervention of three different counselors, he still denied there was a problem. In fact, he manipulated me into believing that my issues with his drinking stemmed from my family background (i had a family member who was a drinker) and he even managed to convince his family of this. It was then that I felt the need to file for divorce because I did not want our child to be impacted by this type of lifestyle. When i filed for divorce, I attempted to settle things amicably but he was angry and vengeful and tried to fight me for sole custody of our child. This prompted my exposing all of the events that occurred during our marriage and the divorce turned into a war. His denial continued to grow and my anger in turn grew given all of the lies that have been told to cover up his drinking issues. As I end what has been the longest year of my life, I still continuously wonder how or why this all happened. How does a fairy tale turn into a nightmare and how does one rebuild after being involved in such a traumatic situation?
Questions constantly run through my head. Did I make the right choice? Could I have done more? Could I have said more? Could I have approached things differently so that he would get help? Why didn't he love me and our child enough to get the help he needed? And then there is the blame.... How didn't I see this in the beginning? Is this really my issue and not his? Why can't I accept that I am powerless?
I am so sad about the possibility of what could have been a wonderful life together and although I am hopeful that time heals all wounds, I believe that I have a long long road ahead of me because I don't even know where to start in order to rebuild
Hi, i can relate to your story. I left my ex alcoholic partner too and there is some healing to do. I joined alanon which is a fellowship of people who have been affected by alcoholism just as you have. Ive been in the fellowship for over 2 years and i learned that i ended up with an alcoholic because of my own issues and ive been working on changing parts of me. If you got to the official alanon website you will find meetings in your area. You will get the support you need as well as a program of recovery for yourself and this will help you not end up in the same kind of relationship again in the future.
you wrote: Questions constantly run through my head. Did I make the right choice? Could I have done more? Could I have said more? Could I have approached things differently so that he would get help? Why didn't he love me and our child enough to get the help he needed? And then there is the blame.... How didn't I see this in the beginning? Is this really my issue and not his? Why can't I accept that I am powerless?
I went back and forth in my mind and heart like you describe for 7 years and some people here on this board did a lot longer. The ongoing issues the build up of bad memories and the continued manipulation of the alcoholic almost destroyed the part of me I would have called my soul. I constantly began to think anything bad that happened must have been totally my fault due to my bad choices or rather because I was not "good enough" to fix it.
The thing is our souls are actually not what this disease is destroying- I would call it the outer shell of our soul. YOU are still you, you still have a lot of life to live, more importantly you have a young human being that will love his or her self as they see you love yourself build on you for you and also for that child, grow, learn develop as you would hope that little one will.
In my experience it took just short of 3 years for me to heal enough to feel like myself. So a total of ten years is a long time to get into a bad situation- experience tons of pain and heal but gosh this made me stronger and better able to live what is now a pretty darn good life from the inside out rather than living my life from what is outside inward.
I'm still learning each day, but I see almost all of what I need to learn goes back to keeping my eyes on what is good for me and how to do that.
Hugs and prayers for you and yours!
-- Edited by glad on Friday 2nd of January 2015 08:23:36 AM
Welcome Viv Attending alanon and using the tools is the most important thing you can do for your recovery. Keep coming back and using the tools It works and you are worth it.
Thank you all for the insight. It is a blessing to be able to speak to people who have had similar experiences as it helps me know that I am not alone. I hope to find out about how to attend some meetings so that I can learn some of the tools that you have mentioned to help me with rebuilding. I deeply want 2015 to be a better year and more importantly, I want my child to grow up with the least amount of exposure to any of this so I agree that it is important for me to heal for that to happen.
Hi Vivian and welcome to MIP- you're in the right place. I relate to your post. I tortured myself with years of self-doubt, but my doubts faded and was slowly replaced with confidence as time passed and as I continued to work my program, find new perspectives, and develop new skills. I understand my odds much better now if I were to bet on potential in a relationship and what that means for me. I'm even learning to practice saying nicely, "this isn't working for me", "i'm uncomfortable with that", etc, and not feeling obligated to provide explanations.
Bud, thanks for sharing... I have good days and bad days and i just want to get to the point where my good days exceed my bad days. I know that life is a journey and that we all get thrown curve balls but understanding the "why" is hard for me. Very very hard. I am going to continue to educate myself and learn more about the program in hopes of picking up any tools that I can and even if I only make slow progress, I guess that is better than no progress at all.
Viv: Hello and welcome to MIP. I, too, have asked the why question until it no longer made sense to ask it. There are so many answers to that question - any or all being true or not true. In one of our readers, "Whatever I need to know will come to me without any effort on my part" was a big help to me in this. Practicing 1, 3 and 11 helped me focus on myself, my HP, and doing the next right thing as an act of service or sanity and learning to stop questioning so much the why of something but the what now of something.
A friend of mine told me a true life story that helped me with this why questioning: She was and is a delightful person who gave me permission to share this story. Her Mother was mentally ill. She spent her childhood watching her Mom deteriorate and being driven off in ambulances to a psychiatric hospital. My friend excelled in school and in her work life. She married her best friend and they lived together happily and brought two beautiful boys into the world.
Fast forward their lives together. She caught her husband with her female best friend. Both her boys - both in college told her they were gay at a time when it was incredibly dangerous to admit it and to live it. One of them had contracted Aids. She lost her high position with a company after it was sold and being told she had "no people skills" when the very opposite was true as her employees and friends had experienced for years. She had to sell her beautiful home that she had designed, decorated and furnished. After she learned one of her sons had Aids, she was driving through her hometown. She couldn't stop crying. She kept asking the question over and over and over again? "Why???? Why????? Why?????" She tells of hearing "a voice" for lack of a better term. The voice said: "J, pull over." She did what she was told - so startled by this crystal clear message. Then, the voice said: "See that oak tree over there?" "Yes." "When you can create an oak tree, then ask Me why?"
She stopped asking that question she had been asking for years and started asking other questions that led to more joy and service in her life and a happy marriage to a man she could trust and admire. Unfortunately, her first son died in her arms of Aids. Her second son died this past year of the same disease although he was in his 50s. The question why never truly helped her through incredible suffering that no one would wish on anybody. The Responder to that question did and helped her stay alive, loving and hopeful.
-- Edited by grateful2be on Saturday 3rd of January 2015 12:36:39 PM
-- Edited by grateful2be on Saturday 3rd of January 2015 12:38:15 PM
-- Edited by grateful2be on Saturday 3rd of January 2015 12:45:49 PM
-- Edited by grateful2be on Saturday 3rd of January 2015 12:48:42 PM
Grateful2b - Thank you for the insight and story. I am in tears as I read your message - it helped me to see a few things that get lost sometimes. 1. It helped me to see that others have much greater struggles and make it through and 2. It helped me to see that I have to change my focus on answering the "why" (its doesn't change the fact that I still want to know the answer though - lol - i will have to work on that).
I guess the moral of the story is that my recovery/rebuilding will take time and hopefully over time i will stop blaming myself and learn more about myself in the process so I can live a happy and fulfilling life in the future.
(((V))) What a grand day is coming for you, Viv, when you recognize the truth that nothing of this disease is your fault and you owe nothing and no one an explanation for that which is truly not explainable - probably not in our lifetime anyway. We've only just begun to truly research the brain, DNA, genetics. It is true that we are powerless over the disease, our loved ones and the destructive cycles of the disease. Yet, we are not helpless and the program does help us live life in productive and fulfilling ways to the best of our ability one day at a time.
Questions constantly run through my head. Did I make the right choice? Could I have done more? Could I have said more? Could I have approached things differently so that he would get help? Why didn't he love me and our child enough to get the help he needed? And then there is the blame.... How didn't I see this in the beginning? Is this really my issue and not his? Why can't I accept that I am powerless?
I am so sad about the possibility of what could have been a wonderful life together and although I am hopeful that time heals all wounds, I believe that I have a long long road ahead of me because I don't even know where to start in order to rebuild
Thank you so much for writing this. I have been saying the same things but I realize how insane I sound when I read someone else writing what I've been thinking myself!
