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.
Here's a question I haven't seen posed yet...is it enabling if you're helping your qualifier get to their AA meetings? Not offering to help, but if they are the one to ask?
He's now out of the house but would like to come shower before going to his AA meeting in the morning. He's staying in his shop right now and there is a bathroom but no shower. He has moved most of his things out, it's only been 48 hours, but he also asked if he could clean up here while he was working in the neighborhood today.
Since he's working his job and not blowing it off, I said yes. I told him, "yes of course, you're working nearby and I don't mind helping with that". I also told him that I don't mind him cleaning up before his meeting. We have both made it very clear how much we love each other but I have made it very clear that his actions/temper/anger make it unhealthy for him to live with me. We're still figuring it out but we tentatively would like to keep having a monogamous relationship. I was ready to bail at first but as long as he's out of the house and I can breathe and have peace in my home environment then I am still willing to have him be part of my life while he is going thru treatment and trying to improve his life.
Am I being over optimistic, too easy on him?
On a bright and shiny note, I'm moving my bedroom upstairs in the house to a bright and sunny room that I love and I'm going to decorate it as pink and girly as I possible can! I've never been a girly girl but I recently ended up with a whole slew of vintage pink porcelain poodles and WTH! Pink curtains, pink chair, pink party lights and POODLES!!
The general definition of enabling is when we protect them from the consequences of their drinking, or when we do something that they can/should do for themselves. So if they lose their license because they got a DUI, but we drive them all around so it doesn't inconvenience them, that would be protecting them from the consequences. Also probably doing something they should do for themselves - we don't normally drive another adult around to all their work and errands, because part of being an adult is getting yourself where you need to go.
I don't know what your situation is, so I don't know if your driving fits into that or not at all.
One thing I've experienced is that A's often like to rope us in to their recovery. When my A was spending one of his brief times in AA, he was trying to choose between two sponsors, who were very different kinds of people. He asked me to tell him which would be better. I could just see that later on, I could be blamed for picking the "wrong" one. It's like he wanted to hand the effort and the responsibility of recovery off to someone else. It was also a way of keeping me on the hook, entangled in his life and his business.
You asked your A to leave but he's wangled his way back into your house already, which is something I've experienced many times. They come over "just" for some little thing, but after a while they start sitting down, and a couple days later they ask if they could have a bite to eat, or hey, why don't we watch this thing on TV, or whatever... Just eating away at the boundaries. They are masters at it. It took me a long time to catch on. Also I was feeling frightened at the aloneness and the separation and the loss of my own addiction (my A and the turmoil he caused), so the continuing connection made me feel safer ... until the insanity and everything rose to a fever pitch and we were back in the same mess again.
I hope you'll work your recovery hard and take good care of yourself.
Here's a question I haven't seen posed yet...is it enabling if you're helping your qualifier get to their AA meetings? Not offering to help, but if they are the one to ask?
I don't see this as enabling, it's about caring. He doesn't have a shower where he's staying & that's his own making- but it's not like you're giving him money to drink, excusing his behaviour etc. you 're being neither kind nor unkind in my view & that's important. Yes u could argue he won't feel as bad about himself if he goes to his meeting clean & therefore maybe not at rock bottom. But eaqually he might not even face going if he can't meet his basic human need to be clean. I'm not saying everyone should do this, but I think in your situation it's the right thing to do!xx
It could be guilt and fear on your part. When i split with my ex, i kept him holding on for a while too. I left him but i felt really bad qnd so sorry for him and because i felt like the person holding him together i thought he would fall apart completely or die. So, i kept him at arms length to let him think there was hope but deep down i wanted it over, it hadnt worked, was not likely to ever work, i knew it was done but he remained in my life for2 more years, periodically causing problems and his drinking did get worse. After about 6 months of alanon i could see my motives and i ended it completely. It felt good, it was right for everyone, i was playing at ppretendin. To live in the truth has been so liberating and he did get worse for a while, but he ended up with noone in his life, rightly so, who would feel comfortable with a slobbering drunk person full of self pity? So, having felt the full natural consequences that his drinking brought him, he stopped and is in Aa. We dont see each other, we have children and we do pass paths at times but im free from it and will remain so unless i lokse my mind or something drastic happens.
It's only enabling if he could and should do it himself. He's new to going to AA. After a few months, he should know enough other people to get rides most of the time.
Are you being optimistic? Yes. Are the odds of him staying sober not in his favor? Yes. But that doesn't mean you are doing the wrong thing. You sound like you are putting up good boundaries and protecting yourself from the havoc of the disease one day at a time.
When my son was trying to get sober and he hit a bottom I told him he could stay for a few days, shower, have a meal and get back out and make a plan to pick himself up and start a new. I gave him a date to be on his own again with no excuses he would have to keep that date in mind, that was my boundary. In the meantime I also told him he could not come in at 2am or have any alcohol or any other substance on my property, I did not bug him or lecture him I just let it be but with lots of prayer on my end. It worked for him and for me. I think I would have a hard time if it was a husband or a Significant Other that I still loved and keep my boundary. But there are those who are stronger than me. Giving them a date when they need to be on there own again and sticking to it is really helpful.
Even I like the room...hmmmm and why not if it makes your heart smile. He doesn't get to go in the room...repeat that. Its your space.
Greener in program we learn about things like motives and what our addiction looks like, feels like, sounds like and is. Our program is about us knowing us. How will you answer the question in 2 weeks or 6 months or a year or so. Enabling for me was doing anything which made the situation worse which subconsciously was just about everything and I had to learn that with practice and the people in the program and MIP. Sometimes I think I see it clearly and make a decision only to find out that what I needed more was experience. My sponsor taught me to think of the consequences I wanted and then making the decision based on that. I had to listen to a lot of the fellowship in order to expand my thinking otherwise I was sure to be doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.
My problem is me and I am responsible for my consequences. I'm sure you are a great person and very caring and loving; all of us here are that also and then how did I end up within the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction as a good, great, caring person? I'm pretty sure that you know the great commandment...Love God with your whole heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself? I had to learn how to love myself in order to know how and when I was loving my neighbor else wise what I was doing wasn't loving even if it might have looked that way...my motive was "me" only.
Try something different? If he comes over to use the shower...leave before he does and return after he leaves. Kind? yes, caring? yes, loving, yes both you and he, motive? (((hugs)))
I had to learn how to spend more time on myself than I did on my addiction...my alcoholic/addict wife.
I have been asking myself the same question. I asked him to leave but do not want to cut him off from his kids. He is staying more than 1 hour away. I said he could stay over 1 night to be with the kids and I went to my friend's. I could not get him out of there fast enough and I think in the end it just confused him and my youngest child.
He also wants me to spell out exactly what he needs to do in order to come back. I feel like I have enabled him long enough and he needs to figure some of this out himself. It is hard to figure what to do.
