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Post Info TOPIC: confused


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confused


So, here I am working another night shift at the detox and my A and i have a fight.  She is sober, well was when i left the house. Has been sober a week now.  But we had a little fight before I left for work over the smallest thing and she texted me saying that I am hateful and mean and all this stuff.  Basically saying that I treat her like dirt.  I dont understand it.  I have been by her side since day one and have forgiven many nights of verbal abuse because of her drinking.  She always said i am the best thing that ever happened to her and that i treat her so amazingly and make her so happy. Yet tonight i get all this dumped on me that I treat her so horribly.

It hurts that she feels this way cuz I thought i treated her good and have put up with so much.  Maybe i am treating her badly and not realizing it...i asked her to explain how ive been hateful and she told me to think about it... that is not fair :( I want to know.  Maybe I am acting out or treating her differently because of all the bull crap i have to deal with when she decides to drink and put our life in to chaos.  Maybe deep down, I am punishing her for everything and my feelings have changed because of the drinking without me realizing it. Or maybe i dont treat her the way she so perceives and she is just being irrational.

I dunno, I just want to know if this would be normal? Has anyone else had this happen where you have subconsciously treated your A different with realizing it? I am trying so hard here to just enjoy the sober days and be kind and loving for our relationship, for her and for myself.  She is not answering any of my texts anymore so I guess she gets to be done with conversation and god knows what shes doing now.  Ugh, just here to vent cuz i am stuck at work again with all these feelings and im just so upset and dont know what to do.  



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Carly


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(((((Hugs))))) Carly, it is confusing isn't it?

I don't know how you are behaving so all I can do is tell you a bit of my own experience.

Yes, my behaviour did change a bit. I was angry and resentful and I did not like myself much since I did not understand why I had allowed myself to be treated so badly. I did not like the fact that sometimes I shouted back. I did not like the me that I was becoming, my behaviour was very out of character for me. It took me a while to start forgiving myself.

I bottled up a lot of feelings to try and hold our marriage together and sometimes those bad memories jump up and dance on my serenity. Sometimes I worrying about what might happen in the future. All of this makes me jumpy. Most of the time I am conscious of this but if RAH says or does anything when my thinking is bad and not yet held in check I have been known to huff, snap, snipe or count to ten. I have also had my evenings pretty much to myself for ten years due to RAH's drinking so sometimes I just need a bit of privacy and time for myself. You might see us referring to 'my side of the street,' and I consider all these behaviours to be mine to sort out. It is why I need alanon.

That said, I am also aware that RAH projects and imagines things that he thinks that I'm thinking or doing and that makes him appear to act irrationally sometimes as well. He also has his own guilt and shame to sort out and this makes him super sensitive.

All of this results in us both walking on eggshells - which generally leads to tension eventually.

I find that the best approach for me is to try to live with dignity and enjoyment. When I feel a bit of self pity I give myself a treat, when I'm hungry I eat, when I'm tired I rest. I try to do something just for me everyday - it is a bit like being on medication! I have also found that yoga, meditation and exercise all help to take my mind of things while also transforming some of that negative nervous energy that I've stored up. I find it best to keep my mind focused on me as much as possible.

It is not right that you receive angry, hurtful texts. Your partner may be projecting her own feelings about herself or she may genuinely feel angry with you about something. Is it important in the scheme of things? Is it something that you can control? Probably not, so therefore try not to think about it too much. Sometimes I've found it helpful to just say something to the effect of 'your message hurt me, I'm sorry you have these feelings. Shall we plan something nice to do together to make up for it?' If I get a negative response to something like that then I plan something nice to do for myself instead!


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~*Service Worker*~

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Like milkwood, I can't comment on how you are behaving but, it sounds as though you didn't feel you were being unkind until you were accused of it?
Generally, if we are behaving unkindly, we know it without having someone else point it out!
I know that my A cannot be responsible for his own feelings and, if he feels bad, he will search and twist situations around until he comes up with a way to blame me. He does this a LOT more when he isn't drinking.
I can't change that behaviour but I have begun to learn to change the way it affects me. I try to walk away when I am being blamed and criticised and choose an al-anon slogan to repeat to myself while I get on with doing something that makes me feel good, whether it's getting the washing put away or reading a book or even getting out for some fun.
"Getting Them Sober" by Toby Rice Drews is quite a good book for understanding and detaching from this kind of behaviour from an A partner. It helped me to understand and stop being hurt by the constant accusations and unkind words.



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If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? (Lewis Caroll)



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Wow. Thank you so much Milkwood. EXTREMELY helpful. Focus on me, focus on me, focus on me. Sigh. Hmm...gave me a lot to think about and actually really helped. Thank-you times a million.

xoxo


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Carly


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Okay thanks so much Missmeliss...I will look for that book at the library. Detaching is one of my biggest things I have been struggling with. I have the book Al-anon faces alcoholism but I feel like i am still focusing on her instead of myself when I am having to read all this stuff and then write on here and then write in my journal. It just seems its always about her and not enough about me. So you are both right - I need to go for a walk by myself or treat myself to a frozen yogurt when she goes on her rampages cuz i am too focused on her and her feelings.

I think the slogan "dont poke the bear" could work haha

Thanks :) feeling grateful for this board

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Carly


~*Service Worker*~

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Frozen yogurt sounds great - just saying the words makes me feel better!!
I like the Getting Them Sober books as well - I resisted for a while because of the title since it sounds rather focused on 'them' but actually it helped me a lot to realise that when RAH acts out it is fairly normal and rarely about me.
Don't poke the bear is pretty descriptive as well - I wouldn't do that voluntarily!

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~*Service Worker*~

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((((Carly ))))...Yeppers this is normal for an alcoholic relationship...Dysfunction is a word I  had to keep in mind all of the time with mine and a thing my sponsor taught me, "You're living with your wife and ...your alcoholic and at times you have to decide who it is that you're with".  Then there were the lessons on alcoholic paranoia and the ones about manic depressive and passive aggressive and all of the other skewed mind and mood altered conditions.   The last word of the second step is "Came to believe a power greater than ourselves  could lead us to ...  SANITY.  Two weeks with out alcohol for my experience was that my alcoholic/addict was dry...not sober.   If she has had a drinking career longer than two weeks, she has got a loooooong way to go to reach sober.   If you have been with her for a long time the same rule applies regarding your finding serenity.  Get into the program, stay in the program, practice the program and keep coming back to the program...and MIP too.   (((((hugs))))) smile



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~*Service Worker*~

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Carly, dont doubt yourself. As are very manipulative and it probably suits her to lash out, make it all your fault and then voila, theres an excuse to drink and its your fault. Its typical a behaviour. She will likely use this technique everytime it works. Its not really anything complex, the complex part in my experience is how we, the sober ones, behave. We are so willing to be the victim, the martyr, we put up with this unreasonable behaviour over and over. Theres reasons for our behaviour, for me, I had to join alanon and learn about the effects of alcoholism to understand my behaviour and I have been changing it ever since.x



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Hmm yes...thats right about the sober vs dry thing. She is one week dry. I need to get my butt back to more meetings. I know they help me so much and I have learned so much. I desperately need to find my higher power.

I kind of thought of this too - if an accusation comes with no explanation, then is it really true? When I am asking her what I am doing that is so hateful and all i get from her is "think about it" with no actual explanation... then that possibly means she is saying things out of anger and doesnt really know how im being so "hateful." Just doing a lot of reflection I guess. Her words hurt me but maybe it really has nothing to do with me at all. Or maybe she just has too high of expectations of me. Who knows.

Thanks so much <3

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Carly


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um you are talking about an A who is not in recovery.

This person is not sane. There is NO rationalyzing to be done here.

Of course you are doing just fine! A's love to try to tear everyone down around them, they want to be around others like them.

They cannot be as nice as we are, as serene, thoughtful, well, honest.

Please most alllll A's pull this bolony!! YOU are not crazy, you are NOT doing anything wrong. It is that sick persons sick sick sick thoughts.

A good man, Tom, also known as canadian guy, said this, when you look at them, see "sick, sick sick" on their forehead.

YOu be you, do your best, to heck with their sick lies, and twisted thoughts.

sending you love cuz we LOVE you! debilyn



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Putting HP first, always  <(*@*)>

"It's not so much being loved for ourselves, but more for being loved in spite of ourselves."

       http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/meetings/meeting.html            Or call: 1-888-4alanon



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You can borrow our Higher Powers while you are calling out for yours.  Mine said it would go support you.  Listen well cause mine does speak.   ((((hugs)))) smile



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~*Service Worker*~

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Hi Carly,

When my AW was active, she would use information to manipulate me for her to be able to continue drinking. She would tell me truths, half truths, lies, damn lies, and worse yet statistics. And I couldn't disentangle any of them, she was so good at it.

But she wasn't qualified, especially while active, to tell me anything that was wrong with me. Once I found some serenity I became qualified to find lots of things wrong with me. Some I even found were things my AW had been telling me for years, even before she was A - imagine that. But I was the one that had to find them, not her. She can tell me what is wrong with me all day until she is blue in the face, until I agree nothing is changing anyway, and same with me finding things wrong with her.

The thing I did find that I was doing while she was active was not having compassion for her. Sometimes I would quietly leave the room, but other, more stressful times, I would yell and try to reason with her disease and listen and fight with the long drawn-out reasons she would give me for why she was drinking. There really was no reason to yell at her or belittle her for having a disease. Of course, there was no reason to engage either, so I ended up just leaving when she would drink, any parting words from her turning from buckshot into water off a duck's back. She really hated me afterwards when I would engage her, outwardly because she didn't like being disagreed with, inwardly because she was starting to think that I hated her, and that would give the disease another reason to make her drink. So any detachment I could muster while wife was A was good for both of us in many ways.

Kenny


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