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This is my first time posting on a board like this, but I could really use some words of wisdom and/or encouragement.
I met my fiance almost 3 years ago. At the time he was a long distance truck drive and was home 3 nights a week, every Tuesday and Friday and Saturday. We fell in love so quickly...I was so happy. Since we were only together 3 nights a week, every night seemed like cause to celebrate. He always had his brandy and I would usually drink too. More drinking than I usually did - I would usually just drink on the weekends socially. I didn't always drink during the week, but whenever I saw him he did. We went out a lot, went to karaoke bars, just had a lot of fun. The drinking never seemed to be a problem.
Then he moved in with me and planned on taking a local truck driving job so he could be home every night. In the process of moving, he hurt his hand, and was out of work for a couple months. He moved in and things went downhill. His drinking increased to the point of us fighting constantly or him just sitting in a chair passed out. He rank daily, starting earlier and earlier in the day. He got meaner and meaner and was verbally abusive, but it was like Dr. Jeyklll and Mr.Hyde. He had moments of being the guy I had fallen in love with.
Our first Christmas living together was when I found out he was an alcoholic. He spent Christmas in the hospital detoxing. I was in shock. How could I have not seen this? Over the next year he would detox in the hospital 2 more times and finally do a 30 day inpatient rehab. In each case he was back to drinking within a week. After the first detox I really believed he had stopped drinking. I accidentally came upon a hidden bottle and discovered that he was also a liar and a sneak. Hiding bottles, sneaking drinking...I finally had my eyes open to the fact that he had been lying to me over and over.
Fast forward to now...His moods are up and down. In and out of jobs...I have been supporting him most of the year. He never had enough money for gas, but always finds money for a bottle. One minute he loves me, the next I am a bitch. Up and down, up and down. If I start arguing with him, it has began to get physical a couple of times, but not to any great extreme. Tonight after we talked about him having to stop the drinking if this relationship is going to make it, I came home and found him drinking brandy again. He never goes to meetings. I have been to a couple al-anon meetings and will be returning to one this week. He doesn't even have a sponsor. He says he likes the taste of alcohol and he's Tommy Gaving (from Rescue Me). He says once he gets the job he wants, that everything will be okay and his drinking will taper off. I am trying to patiently wait for this job to come through. In the meantime we can't stop arguing. I have so much anger in me.
I know there are so many recovering addicts in the world...is it unrealistic to expect that he can get through this? I'm at my wit's end. I am so sick of tired of being blamed for everything. I don't want to give up on him either, though. I feel so hopeless and alone. Do I just give up on him and move on with my life? I have lost so much respect for him.
Welcome Shealah, I'm so happy that you found Miracles in Progress and reached out. You'll find you're not alone and that there is hope and help for you.
Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive, fatal disease that can be arrested and never cured. We are powerless over this disease, because we did not cause it, cannot control it and cannot cure it. Living with the disease of alcoholism we develop many negative coping' tools that keep us isolated, frightened, unsure of ourselves and focused always on others. Al-Anon is a recovery program that was developed to help family members recover from the devastating effects of living with the disease.
Attending meetings, finding a sponsor, working the steps, living one day at a time, keeping the focus on ourselves, daily Al-Anon readings, making asset and gratitude lists, all work together to restore self-esteem and self-worth.
No one in Al-Anon will tell you what to do with your relationship because the answers are within you.We will simply help you to find the serenity, courage and peace to go within and take the actions that will help you
I cant and won't tell you what to do. I can offer my experience, strength, and hope as a recovering alcoholic with several years sobriety, and also as a person who has been in past relationships with alcoholics. First off, yes...there are alcoholics like me that are sober and in recovery, however, I wanted this recovery so bad when I finally got sober. I went to AA daily, simetimes more than daily and I still go multiple times a week six plus years later. Your alcoholic is currently showing almost no interest in recovery, and the few times he had a spark of an interest, he didn't surrender or have the rigorous honesty, humility, openmindedness, and willingness to latch on to the program and stay sober. So..you are holding out hope for a recovery that he has expressed almost no interest or real desire for. It took me ALL the willingness, gut honesty, TONS of meetings and total surrender to AA to get this. It was painful and I had little to offer any romantic relationship until I was about a couple years into my sobriety. Your A is nowhere close to that at this time. Being an alcoholic, I went through years and years of sick and manipulative denial towards self and others. I convinced myself and others of all the BS arguments about my drinking. So I will tell you that what I hear in your share is all that same BS from a person that doesn't really want to stop drinking and isn't really ready. So what do you do? Lots of alanon. You need support to detach. Your A is not evil, but he sounds completely ensnared in the disease and the disease is abolutely horrid and has taken a toll on you too. It is a complete mind screw to love a person with active alcoholism. They plead for your help and push you away at the same time. They have amazing potential and moments where parts of them unscathed by the disease come out and you see a great person there underneath the multiple layers of sickness. BUT...the alcoholic is so so so very sick. More sick than you realize even. His soul is sick. The best thing to do for now is to latch onto your own recovery in alanon. You can decide on the future of the relationship later, provided he doesn't get violent with you again. Safety comes first. For now, reach out, make sober friends and supports in alanon. You need and deserve that to break the isoaltion and in order to not sink into his progressively worsening alcoholism. Please get help for you.
I am glad you are here, Shealah.
I cannot tell you what to do. You are the only one who can know what is right for you. I can just share that, in my experience, my wife has always said "if only ....... I wouldn't need to drink so much."
For years, I actually believed her, and continued to make ......... happen single handedly, and with no impact whatsoever on her drinking.
I heard "when I get a job I like...." and "If I could only go back to school....." and "If I just didn't have the stress of going to work..." I encouraged her to make the professional changes she seemed to think she needed in order to be happy. But, the thing is, in my experiences, each theoretically positive change resulted in more drinking, not less, because she is an alcoholic. The justification for her drinking was the present situation, and every time I eliminated one justification, another appeared that justified even more drinking.
Keep coming back, and make yourself your top priority. There is hope and there is healing.
__________________
Skorpi
If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. - Lao Tzu
Aloha Shealah and welcome home to the MIP board. Now you have others in your life that know what's happening, where you've been, how you've been feeling and thinking and how your spirit has been dragged thru the mire. We have been there and done that also and got in contact with Al-Anon and each other here to support and encourage ourselves into sanity and serenity. You are in the right place. Yeppers it sounds like you have qualified for this by having a genuine, real alcoholic in your life and you are not alone. We were all newbies at one time or another and IT SUCKED THEN too for us. By finding the rooms of the face to face Al-Anon Family Groups and attending to recovery in those rooms I got my life and my sanity back. I was born and raised in this disease...it is what I know...it is who I marry and work with and play with, with the exception of now recovery is a daily part of my life. You didn't cause this, you haven't been able to control it and you will not cure it.
Look in the white pages of your local telephone book for AL-Anon and call that number to find out where and when we get together in your area and then come as early as you can so you can listen to what it was like for us, what we learned and how it is for us today. Come here (home/MIP) often and check out the twice daily online meetings we have here and participate. Get the literature and follow the suggestions.
I will keep your alcoholic in my prayers...along with you cause that is most for now that can be done. (((((hugs)))))
Thank you for the kind words. He has been drunk all day and will not stop verbally bashing me and I am about to lose my mind. it takes everything in me not to explode. The sadness and hopelessness is overwhelmng. I dont know how much more I can take. :(
Suggestion...Stay on the board and scroll back in time and read forward. There is a lot of valid help here just for the reading. Stay in the moment...the MIP moment. He is not being real so you are not being treated real by a real person...make sense?
We are not supposed to tell each other what to do here. Please don't take that as anyone NOT telling you to leave or NOT telling you to stay as a sign of anything except respect for you and your choices, and in my case knowing that you will eventually do what you really want to do deep down inside and it will work out for you because you made the decision.
I'm concerned about the violence you mention, I'm concerned because I've been where you are, most of us probably have.
You don't have to take the next perfect step, you just have to take the next best step you can to the best of your understanding at this time. Progress not perfection. if you don't have one an in person sponsor who appears to you to be the type of person you would like to be would be helpful. I wish I would have chosen a different first sponsor (you can change with no hard feelings by the way) I chose a pacifist, sweet loving and 100% submissive to her recovering alcoholic husband. Since that is not me we really didn't click,,, luv her and she taught me tons.. but we were not the best match.
As for this very second...I liked to read or do something I loved before I became obsessed with him all the time, for me it was yoga and exercise or being outdoors, I tried to love myself a little even if my mind was racing about him I would at least try to think of myself or others I love...take a mental break from him and let him sit and drink..try to detach...minute by minute.
-- Edited by glad on Monday 23rd of February 2015 01:00:18 AM
I'm new to this too but just wanted to say hello and good luck and I understand you a little bit....reading posts on this board is helpful to me right now as I try to figure out what's happened in my own life, I've no answers!
Pinkchip - your words resonate with me. He does not want the help. He does not have the desire to get better. It is absolutely a mind screw to love someone with this disease. I have tried to get his parents involved (he is 49) just for support, but they are getting tired of hearing about it. I think they just want to close their eyes to the problem and not deal with it. I am going to an Al-Anon meeting tonight. I asked my af to go to an AA meeting, and was yelled at to get off his back. He is already close to drunk, and it's not even 4 p.m. I truly want to help him so he can be the wonderful person I know he can be when he is not poisoning himself. I feel like things are just hopeless. You can't impart desire for help to someone. They have to want it for themselves, and he seems to be happier just living in a drunk fog, not working, not contributing to the bills, and in my opinion being a pathetic excuse for a human being right now. Vent over :)
Having watched some of Rescue Me, it seems to me you have the perfect means of objectively looking at your situation. Would you want to be in a relationship with Tommy? When Rescue Me was on, it was before I had had the introduction to addiction, and before I knew I was associated with it already because my wife was in the very first stages of it. Tommy drove me nuts because he would go in and out of being rational all the time. he would be ok for a while, then do something really stupid. i didn't understand then. I still don't understand now, but I have now experienced it and know that I wouldn't want to go anywhere near it.
Tommy had some good traits too, very loyal, companionable when not stoned, so a lot of people liked him, but when they got too close, they often got burned.
My alcoholic wife would do completely irrational things when active as well. She was drunk the afternoon after she had seen her probation officer for the first time. All kinds of stuff where you would say "what the heck is she thinking?" But she wasn't. She was in the grips of a disease, a mind-changing, irrational disease, and she wasn't ready for recovery. Now that she is in recovery, it is amazing when I look back at what kind of irrational behavior I experienced and just accepted. Thank HP for Al Anon, I finally started to see how I could change myself and adapt my boundaries to her, instead of holding firm to what I knew to be right.
Keep coming back here for support. And keep up your f2f meetings too!
