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When he got locked up on a mental ward after trying to kill himself on pills while wasted and I realized I was happier with him gone....that was the start of the end.
-- Edited by pinkchip on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 12:06:41 AM
Yes. I knew it was time when something stronger than me rose up from within me and said: Enough. I don't care what the church says, my parents say, his parent says, or he says. I am moving myself and my kids out of this hell. Then, a few days later, I knew exactly how to do it with no hassle, no tension, no fighting, no nothing but simply knowing how to give him exactly what he wanted - a weekend of partying with no complaint. When he returned to our home, the locks had been changed and he couldn't get back in. A power greater than myself led me to do what I did when it was time. There was Good Orderly Direction from the time I knew there would be no more living the way I'd been living to and through my divorce from him. He didn't even contest it. He wanted to know if my lawyer would represent him and of course the answer was "No." He wanted to party. He didn't want a wife and kids to interrupt his pleasure. I knew it and I knew what I had to do.
I didn't "just" leave. When I left I knew exactly why. I knew my part in it and I knew hers and I left after my part was changed. When I left her I loved her and had no reason to be married to her. (((hugs)))
I wasted time I could have been healing trying to avoid the pain of the breakup... it was a long hard road but looking back now I might as well have gotten started, the road was only getting longer each time I held on to what was wrong.. very much like alcohol seems to say to the alcoholic that the problem is the cure to their pain.
There is more.. but to answer your question my "bottom" the time when I knew I had to really let go, was when I missed the birth of my first grandchild chasing after the alcoholic man and his disease.
when I finally got to the hospital I was so embarrassed my family had all been trying to chase me down to find me.. and I was obviously a mess and this was all from emotional distress of being addicted to HIM.
THAT was horrible but I thank my Higher Power for this so much, it is my "litmus test" for my life now in some way... my new life that is now what I was trying to "force" this old life to be. All I had to do was let go and let God...and now try to grow with the help of my higher power! Simple but impossible for me to see for a time.
I still struggle with some issues, I think everyone does but I have peace in my heart and a calm mind most of the time now, and I know how to regain them and regroup if that seems to slip away, there is no person or no thing that is more important to me than the peace in my heart..
-- Edited by glad on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 12:52:50 AM
First time, (an untreated acoa), I was pregnant and child was my strength. Second time, when suicide and unending rage were more normal than logic. My moms I just learned was when she knew she would end up killing him.
I left when he endangered our child. He didn't mean to do it - he was drunk - but when I knew I could no longer trust him with the life of our child, there was nothing left for me. And it was at that moment that I lost all respect for him.
I left when it became clear we were both insane and passing on the dysfunction to our 3 children. I woke up and he stayed in denial. Best decision i ever made.
Mine was more like Jerry's. For me, I sat on the fence for 3 years wondering when it would be time to go. There was no ONE incident, there was no lightbulb going off, etc. It was just me working my program, growing stronger every day and learning more about the dysfunction that we lived in and that I contributed to and how.
I know there should have been points when I should have left and just walked out: when he got the DUI and started drinking 1 month later, when he beat our puppy after we had only been married for 1 year, when he berated our 2 year old son and threw him over his shoulder while the boy was screaming and crying and I was weeping, when he was sexually aggressive and inappropriate with me many times over the years, when he screamed and whined about my dying father who was in hospice at the time to the point where I was a weeping mess on the floor and my 13 year old son at the time was holding me, and all I heard was about how my father was a bastard, etc. Even though he apologized for nearly all those things and more, they could never erase the memory and he never changed. The problems just manifested themselves differently.
It was a slow process for me. Normal women would have moved on years ago. As El Cee wrote, I woke up and he's still in denial. We are in the process of finding a mediator or lawyers for our divorce and I am working on finding a place to move to so that I can finally live my life relatively chaos free. I love him enough to let him live life on his terms but I love myself more today and I know that I just can't live like this anymore and that was when I knew something had to really change.
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Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be!
The longer I stayed the more I felt I had to loose by not being with him, because all I had to loose was the investment I had already made, once the relationship ended I would have been unsuccessful, I would definitely have been "wrong" to stay and what about all that time invested in worrying if I should stay or not?
Totally living in the past and the future.
Twisted disease!
BUT this experience helps me in the now to realize when I'm worried about something I'm almost always living in the past or the future. All that pain has helped me get out of who I was, and I like me better now.
-- Edited by glad on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 07:32:08 PM
-- Edited by glad on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 07:34:09 PM
My final breaking point was something so small, yet powerful enough for me finally leave. I must preface by stating that I had plenty of cues, reasons and incidents which should prompt a sane person to leave a long time ago but my nail in the coffin was the mere look of hopelessness in my.daughters eyes when during one of his drunkin tantrums (which usually laste anywhere from 2 -3 hours) he was screaming so loud the kids couldnt sleep....I proceeded to tell my 13yr old to try to ignore it and go to bed and she looked up with such a tired, hopeless look in her eyes and said " what for I cant sleep bcuz he's too loud"...the look on her face tore me apart on the inside .......after I prayed on it, it was all a blur...things started to fall into place financially and with family support...all in divine order I left with the kids/dogs in tow. Its been 4 months and its been an emotional hurricane for all involved, even for him. I left with the hopes that he would hit his bottom and that we could eventually reconcile but I also understood that none.of.this may come.to pass and that I have to be prepared for that....Im.just really.day by day right now as.no.two.days are.the same
Was there a moment when you just knew it was time?
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When he pushed me back over the kitchen sink, and I kicked him in the groin and I grabbed his step dad's bayonet and went after him, chased him down our street, I wanted to cut his head off....I knew, when our landlord pulled me off him, and he and his brother confronted the alcoholic and warned him "any more abuse and we are coming at you" Iknew it was done...i mean done for good when I knew one of us would die if this sicko marriage continued.....I was done taking abuse...i knew i would hurt him or worse if we stayed together and he abused me again.....
to this day, i will NOT allow me to be a victim.....I can take a fair debate or constructive esh from a person, but abuse??? Nope, i will NEVER allow it again..........
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Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
Strong enough to leave came when it was more powerful than strong enough to stay. I felt I had no choice. I had self-doubt for a long time regarding my decision. However, I have come to believe with certainty that I followed the path my HP set before me. When in doubt, don't comes to mind and something I thought about often when I was on the fence. It's ok to not know until you know- and- life is full of twists and turns and unpredictable.
For me it was a gradual thing. It started when my wife had to hide how much she was drinking/smoking weed from me while she was pregnant/breastfeeding that I had to finally admit that she had a problem. Having kids changed me. For the first time ever I put my foot down and said if she didn't stop putting her addiction ahead of the safety of our children I would leave and take the kids with me. And she knew I meant it (for once). It was the beginning of my recovery and also the beginning of our end. Her contempt for me in that moment was palpable. I'd like to say that I didn't care what she thought, but I'd be lying. The love I have for my kids is one of the first things that over-rode my egotistical need for her approval. She stopped using long enough to get our second child onto formula, but after that I heard the old "You knew who I was when you met me" line as well as her oft-repeated "I'm a drinker" self-identification. Bottom line: I'm not changing, despite all the damage that's being done. It wasn't long after this moment that I went to my first Al Anon meeting and surrendered a few more of the illusions I was clinging to. That was 6 months ago.
It ended with me recognizing that I'm a coward. It ended with me facing the pain of my bad decisions and grieving the loss...facing what I was addicted to and why. She doesn't have to change, but I do. And the new me isn't going to stay married to an active alcoholic and model that dysfunctional behavior for his kids. Granted the new me still has more in common with the old me than I do with the man I want to be, but one day at a time. I think I'll keep coming back.
At least I made some decisions and I'll live with the consequences. I have a lot of issues I need to work on if I'm going to be the role model to my kids that my father never was to me. I want my kids to know their father is someone who loves himself and takes care of himself as well as them. Let them see what I can DO. Talk is cheap and I've been talking the talk for far too long.
As for my wife, I love her enough to let her go and live her life and pursue happiness on her own terms. We've agreed to share custody. I pray that she doesn't make the mistake of putting our children in harms way, but if she does I'll be ready to take appropriate action.
I knew it was time when I realized that MY behavior had become crazy. I was a maniac every time he was out late; I had begun looking though his wallet, coat pockets etc (and finding all kinds of things) and I did not like becoming that person. I knew I could not stay in it if he was not pursuing sobriety and he was not.
There were many things that brought me to the end of my rope where I realized as Yanks stated above my behavior was so out of control and I was not ok staying the way things were.
There were specifics where I knew I couldn't go back .. I really could step back and see he wasn't done with this part of his journey and I didn't have the luxury to drag the kids through it. The long term effects of alcoholism are to great and to devastating to watch my kids be hurt consistently by the insanity of the disease that was drowning both their dad and I.
It was a painful process for me not of letting go of him .. I had a big fantasy of who he was/is .. it was letting go of the idea I was being rejected .. I want to qualify that by saying I was rejected by a reject. There is a great Alanon speaker who coined that term although I use it all the time .. LOL!
3 years out it was the best decision I have ever made for us all. He's not done and that's ok .. the kids and I do not have to participate in his fantasy anymore.
Hugs S :)
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Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do "faith". - Brene Brown
"Whatever truth you own doesn't own you" - Gary John Bishop
The decision to leave is difficult, but the clarity comes when you know you keep waiting and waiting for things to improve and they just don't. Then you wonder how long you will wait, and suddenly you realize YOU have to take control over your own life......waiting for someone to change in order for you to be feel content even SOUNDS crazy, doesn't it?
It takes courage, and guts and a belief in yourself.
If you decide to leave just take each day as it come...don't try to project too far into the future..that makes it overwhelming.
I wish you luck in your decision and peace in whatever your choice....
I gave my boyfriend of a year and a half too many chances.....and believed too many tearful lies that he wasn't drinking. Started with when we met, he tearfully told me his wife died at 49 from alcoholism. So sad he said he stopped drinking when she died.
That started a year and a half of lies. And tears. And hiding that he was all along, drinking heavy amounts of vodka, drinking and driving and hiding his drinking from me. I found him passed out twice in November, and he swore, with tears that he was done drinking. Christmas Day he was drunk again, and I spent dinner with his adult children and they told me how bad it really was.
The moment I knew I had to end it was when his 27 year old son looked at me and said, "Take good care of him."
I haven't seen him since, although we do talk on the phone, he's going to AA meetings and still drinking off and on. It's hard to be alone and I miss the fun times we shared but more and more has come up to make me realize I am doing the right thing by moving on.
I was married to my AH for just short of 30 years when I finally decided that I wanted to leave. He wasn't going anywhere- every time I asked him to leave, he would come back a day or two later with promises that were soon broken. One and half years after attending my first Al-Anon meeting, I started to have a certain clarity about not wanting to "dance" with my AH any longer. I was exhausted and, not only was his drinking taking an emotional toll on me, but a physical toll as well. My weight was going up, my blood pressure was going up, I couldn't sleep at night and I was starting to stop taking care of myself. As my family physician said right before I decided to leave, "You're getting sick right along with him. Save yourself- you can't save him if he doesn't want to save himself."
So I got off the "merry-go-round" and started to move the focus to just me. I got better- mentally and physically- he died a year later from this horrible disease called alcoholism. You'll know when, and if, you need to move on.
Yes, I knew it was time to leave when I was taking my AH to the ER, and on the way out the door he went into the room where he hides the booze to try and get one last swallow in before we left. He had been drinking and in bed for 4-5 days. I was shocked....and I remember telling myself "this is your life." That was my rock bottom incident...and there were other things that happened before this....but this one hit me like a ton of bricks. I moved out last March.
I knew it was time when I had so much contempt for him that I dreaded when he was coming home from work or waking up in the afternoon after drinking all weekend. He started going out and leaving me with the kids more and more, or hiding in the basement every night drinking. If we were in the same room we fought. He started blacking out and getting scarier than before and he had been scary enough in front of my oldest already. I still didn't leave until I had a crush on someone I worked with. After I had left and since I couldn't be alone I took up with a much older man that wasn't much healthier than my exAh, just sweeter. I realized I was so afraid of being alone and I leaped from one unhealthy man to the next and was quickly ashamed of myself, especially since I hadn't even filed for divorce yet. I stopped dating the man after a few months I realized he was stalking me when I could actually get away from him, he just showed up every where I was. So I started al-anon, found my sponsor and decided I had to be alone for a year and just work on myself and break the cycle of me and finding unhealthy codependent relationships and I found MIP. I have worked hard on myself and have still kissed a couple frogs when I tried dating, but now I know sooner when it isn't working and run quicker, because I now know who I am and what I deserve. Sending you love and support on your journey!
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Sending you love and support on your journey always! BreakingFree
Al-Anon/Alateen Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 800-344-2666
" Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
"Serenity is when your body and mind are in the same place."
i really feel strongly that for me my conscious mind wasn't even involved in me asking/telling him to leave. I didn't know that i was going to say it a minute before I said it. It just came out, in a yell, boiling up from deep within my body. Enough was enough. My mind kicked in when I didn't take it back, I didn't unsay it, I didn't change my mind, and I haven't in the 4 months since. I don't know for sure that I never will, but I'm just trying to live in the day and today I don't want to ask him back.
After I had my daughter& she was 6 weeks old(she is now 9 months old). The abuse became more extreme & his drug usage got worse. Finally, when the police showed up at my parents door looking for him due to him using my car to do something illegal, traced the plate back. Then child services called me. I immediately went to my moms and ended up going to get everything I owned out w/in a week. 4 years was a long time to deal w/ such a destructive relationship! My child saved my life to be honest!
