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Post Info TOPIC: Dealing with a spouse's enabling


Newbie

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Posts: 3
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Dealing with a spouse's enabling


I wrote yesterday that my 21 y.o. AS tore up all of the family pictures throughout our house. If i had been home I would've stopped him, even if it meant calling the police. My more serious issue is that my husband was home at the time and didn't address it. He says my son was "lashing out" and just needed to get it out of his system, but thought the destruction was isolated to stuff in his room. Yesterday instead of supporting me and confronting our son, my husband went to a football game with friends. Apparently I'm making too much of this.

This has been an ongoing saga with me tying to set boundaries and consequences (from a very early age) and my husband negating them. Its obvious that I will need to leave them both in order to separate from the effects of my AS's behavior. I am trying to find the strength to do so. I feel like my whole life has been a failure. I am mourning over pictures of a family that never really was.



-- Edited by LKSG8R on Sunday 8th of October 2017 04:18:40 AM

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Lisa


~*Service Worker*~

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Posts: 17196
Date:

((Lisa)) attempting to respond to alcoholism in the home is difficult for most as it is an extremely divisive issue . I would get to a meeting, call my sponsor and suggest that hubby read some of the alanon literature regarding the disease . Maybe he could attend a meeting on his own.

Sending positive thoughts and prayers



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Betty

THE HIGHEST FORM OF WISDOM IS KINDNESS

Talmud


~*Service Worker*~

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Posts: 11569
Date:

(((Lisa))) - my AH and I were never aligned when it came to understanding and accepting the disease in our boys. We still aren't. I doubt we ever will be as we are different people. There is no doubt that to him and my sons, I am the 'mean one'...so be it.

It is in Al-Anon that I learned to take care of me, establish boundaries I could live with and detach from the insanity of the disease. Living with this disease was just too much for me and Al-Anon gave me tools to find my way. Keep coming back - there is hope and help in recovery!

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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging.  Pause before assuming.  Pause before accusing.  Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret.  ~~~~  Lori Deschene

 

 



Senior Member

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Posts: 160
Date:

my mother was always enabling of my younger sister's drinking.  She would nurse her when she had a bad hangover.  My sister got sicker and sicker and there were no limits to her drinking.

At that time I had no knowledge of al anon.  I was the scapegoat and some of the pain of that is that you are the only one who acknowledges there is a problem.

My younger sister still doesn't acknowledge she has a problem and now her son's are showing signs of alcoholism.

Alcoholism is pervasive in my family, cousins, uncles, it is across the whole family.

I know today I do not need to fix them all.  I do not need to feel guilty about their behavior.

Some family's do indeed do a lot for an alcoholic.  I know some people who are addicts/alcoholic who have family's who know a great deal about addiction.

Unfortunately there is no "given" about when and if someone recovers.  There is no magic formula of if you have the right combination they are going to stop drinking.

I always tried to believe if I did more I would get a result.

I went looking for my sister once, spent weeks looking for her.  I persuaded her to leave the environment she was living in. I still to this day do not know how I found her.

She certainly had access to more alcohol in that environment than she had back in the family home. Then I felt guilty about that I could not bring her into a better environment.

Then I felt guilty when I learned she had children because I felt responsible for those children.  They certainly grew up in alcoholism but I don't know that I could have done anything for them to change that.

Admitting to being powerless has been a tough undertaking.  At the same time it was and is the only time I can come to any peace about dealing with any alcoholic.

 

Maresie. 

 

 

 

 



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