The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
This is my first post. I've been trying to figure out why I am struggling with removing myself from the situations my husband's drinking creates. Why I feel the need to constantly text or call to make sure he's okay and beg him not to drive. Or why I beg him constantly to stop or point out how this is hurting him and our family. Or to send yet another heartfelt email explaining why his drinking makes me so anxious and sad.
I think I've figured it out. I'm worried that if I stop doing all of that, I'll stop caring. There are people who I have loved in this life that I am now perfectly fine not seeing or speaking to for years on end because of their alcoholism. I have been surrounded by, abused by and have detested alcoholics all of my life.
I love this man more than I can ever possibly explain but I am afraid that if I don't do all of these things, I'll slip into the old hatred and indifference that always came before. I don't ever want to despise this man.
Welcome to MIP Mlang, what a good question you bring to our forum, thank you so much.
My husband is an alcoholic and I completely understand your concerns. I'm so sorry that you have lived your life with so much alcoholism around you but I admire you for realising that there are other ways of being as well. In my story, when AH had his affair, I put all of the blame and responsibility onto alcohol and the other woman and made a big effort not to think about him at all - it was my way of protecting my marriage and keeping my home. I didn't stop to worry about what I was doing to myself by trying to live with all that madness, I thought that I would be flexible and strong and, in time, truly loved. Oh boy, if I had my time over I would change that way of thinking!
A few years down the line and AH has been sober for 18 months and life is a whole lot better but those negative feelings that I stashed at the time are still bubbling up and getting in the way. I think it is because I did not dealt with them at the time. The result is that I don't feel like I WANT to value my husband as much as I thought I would and that makes me feel awfully bad about myself, let alone how undermining it must be for him. Its fairly natural to feel this way I think. After all, if we were characters in a movie the audience would have been throwing eggs at the screen and would have forgiven me for being very upset. So why didn't I do that for myself? With the help of Alanon I am learning how to ditch these new negative emotions and to shift my focus to my self care first, that way love can follow. I think I'm learning, thank goodness!
Alanon and MIP are helping me to understand myself better, helping me to keep the focus on myself and what I need. It is a lesson that is totally new for me - whoever knew that I had needs and that it was ok to want as safe place to feel vulnerable!!!!
Something that has helped me to let go is the realisation that I had already told my husband what I thought - and that I only need to say things once. It is not my job to be a policeman and he really does know what I think. Once my message has been delivered it is up to him what he chooses to do. I don't need to worry about his choices any more. What a relief!! If his bad behaviour continues, and if it continues to upset me and undermines my health, then it is up to me to choose what I want to do next. There is potential in that one for some difficult decisions but I'll be making them honestly this time! My responsibility, I think, is to protect myself and my self esteem - I have to live with myself at the end of the day, and it helps to be respecting myself so that others can also see that I believe that I deserve respect and am capable of respecting them. Who would have thought that that was where the solutions might come from??!
I hope you stay with us - I know you are going to get some fantastic advice and encouragement from other folks here.
I stopped care taking and started caring properly with alanon. Obsessing about someone, being addicted to a person isnt caring, its not even loving someone. Its unhealthy and its fear based not love based. Caring and loving a person is completely different when we get healthy. Its about loving them just as they are without the need to change or fix them. Its allowing them their own choices even if that means drinking themselves to death. I think to be able to care properly about another person we first need to be able to care for ourselves and about purselves first. All the obsessing and focussing on another human takes away the time, care and attention you should be giving yourself.
Welcome to MIP. My experience in relationship to my own loved ones with this disease and my fears for them kept me spinning. I had been traumatized by some things that happened before I married an alcoholic and before I gave birth to a child who would become an alcoholic. I felt powerless over those experiences - which I was - but I had never dealt with them because they had been too traumatic for me to look at and to heal through. When I was ready to look at some of what happened in my younger years that led to some of the thoughts and feelings I experienced with my now deceased x and my adult son, I could better release myself from trying to control something awful happening to them and learn to live better in today. The program has helped me with this in many ways and to learn to live one day at a time whether or not my adult son continues to drink. I didn't cause my original traumas. I couldn't control them. I couldn't cure them. I could take my focus off the people in my life whose behaviors generated things in me that pointed to my need to heal from old stuff and move on from them into present time. I recognized that just as I was powerless over the folks who traumatized me originally and the ways those happenings affected me, I was also powerless over my loved ones and the ways they were affected by traumas that can be traced directly to alcoholism and its destructiveness. I can say honestly that I have never stopped caring about my x who died 14 years ago this month nor will I ever stop caring about my son or my other alcoholic relatives. What I can say is that by tending to myself and caring for myself, I have been able to work through things that have gotten in the way at times of my own serenity. The program has been beneficial to me in many ways. I hope you will find that to be true for you, too.
Dear Mlang Welcome to Miracles in Progress. I understand your real concern and would like to assure you that if you decided to find help for yourself in alanon meetings you would immediately find that it is ok to continue to love an alcoholic while not checking up on him and while taking care of yourself.
You have described actions and feelings that we all are familiar with because in an effort to control the uncontrollable we become confused as to the constructive actions to take.
Alanon offers new constructive tools to live by as we regain our serenity, and continue to live life on life's terms. Please look for the meetings and attend Your sanity and peace depend on it.
Yes! I do worry about this. Sometimes I think maybe my love is not strong enough and that's why I don't demand that he seeks some sort of treatment before he destroys our whole family and business...but that's my craziness talking.
I am learning how to live in my own hoola hoop, and stays out of his. It is a struggle every day, but with al Anon you will learn some wonderful things that will make life much more livable and sane! So glad you are here - I think you will learn some great stuff from ese wonderful people!
I do understand what you are saying Mlang. I am married to an A who can be quite abusive and whom I still love. Al-Anon has taught me that I can still love AH even though I do not have any power over him to protect or make him change. Al-Anon has taught me how to take my self-respect back and to keep my respect for AH as well. We cannot manipulate the A to stop drinking but we can do is set boundaries as to how the A's drinking affects us. When I sense that AH has been drinking, usually by the tone of his voice and his body language, I disengage ... I refuse to converse and remove myself from the room or even the house. This enables me to maintain my serenity (very important to do) and not feed into the Alcoholic's chaos. It does not matter to me anymore that he made the choice to drink or what he has to say while he is under the influence, because under the influence of alcohol his judgement is severly impaired and therein comes the abuse to me and my character. In order to stay in this marriage, Al-Anon helped me to find serenity by learning that I had to accept that I cannot control AH or the disease, when I did that I regained my self respect and created a level of empathy and respect for him as well.
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"Forgiveness doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it
does prevent bad behavior from destroying your heart". ~ unknown
I agree with others that the program taught me how to love in a healthy way. I do remember crying and fussing while with my ex-alcoholic, that if I really worked on myself, I wouldn't "need" him and if I didn "need" him, then I wouldn't "want" him. Well the fact that I even had that thought was telling. And when I did start working on myself, that is indeed what happened. Not saying your situation is the same. For me, I am grateful because I have a relationship now where I do not have those fears. I not scared of losing love for my husband and it is related to not needing him and not wanting to change him. It feels good.
Thanks everyone. I think I feel this way because my whole life, my dad told me that I was "hard" and "cold" and that someday, I was going to run someone off that way. I've come a really long way in terms of showing people affection and being a forgiving person (which is not my default setting)
I guess I equate "detach" with the same kind of detachment I felt and practiced as a child to protect myself. That was a very dark place for me and every bit of me is screaming that I can't go back in that hole.
Al-Anon is a very gentle, one day at a time, listening, learning and healing time. It took me a long time to get to some things I needed to see, to feel and to work through. We start in the program with baby steps. We make a gratitude list each day. We make an assets list (the things we know are strengths or gifts in us). We might choose something fun to do just for us for the day and that can be as small as listening to one song we enjoy or as big as traveling somewhere knew. There is a website for Al-Anon where we can download free helps like a detachment card or the Just for Today card. We go to meetings. We find a sponsor by listening and watching others in our group until we see someone who has what we want. Then we ask them if they'll sponsor us and if they say "yes," then they help us work the steps and learn some of the tools that can better help us enjoy ourselves and make the changes in our life that we want to make one day at a time.
Mlang, allow me to chime in a bit late - for me with my ex-A, after getting out of the marriage because he wanted his path and I couldn't continue on it, I ran through a series of emotions that were probably normal - anger being the strongest. What I find now, four years after our divorce, is that I still have caring feelings for him. Make no mistake I won't ever be a part of his life again, but my path to recovery included a lot of thinking about what went into making HIM the way he is, the childhood he had, the reasons why he was the way he was - it healed a lot of my anger and leaves me able to consider him with compassion. My father drank because his father did and researching his life gave me the gift of compassion for the losses he suffered that turned him the way he was.
When I was able to detach from my ex and really see what was going on, I was able to understand what wasn't mine to control or fix; and, that his decisions lead him not anything I do or don't do.
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I am strong in the broken places. ~ Unknown
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another! ~ Anatole France
I stopped care taking and started caring properly with alanon. Obsessing about someone, being addicted to a person isnt caring, its not even loving someone. Its unhealthy and its fear based not love based. Caring and loving a person is completely different when we get healthy. Its about loving them just as they are without the need to change or fix them. Its allowing them their own choices even if that means drinking themselves to death. I think to be able to care properly about another person we first need to be able to care for ourselves and about purselves first. All the obsessing and focussing on another human takes away the time, care and attention you should be giving yourself.
I could not agree with this more.....my ex A's, I focused on them and never on me....i had no "value' I guess, so i put my energy on them...i see that as self abandonment....to obsess about someone is to try and control and control is out of fear......el-cee is so spot on here....re-read what she says and think about it.....by allowing them to be what they must be is letting them learn their hard lessons if need be, but that is their life, not yours.....I put me first, now...i take care of me....i will aid another who is trying to help themselves, but the ones who want a free ride, ME doing the caretaking??? NO!!! thanks to al-anon, I no longer do other's jobs....I spend my energy on ME and my self care............
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Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
This causes me to reflect on a question that my sponsor asked me long ago about my constant need to control and direct my alcoholic/addict wife. "So is it about love or is it about addiction"? Up until that time I would answer love and then comparing her compulsive hold on alcohol and drug use to my compulsive hold on her I had to admit my addiction. You're worth the change and he's worth the opportunity to find his own recovery. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
