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.
Yesterday, sober AH was given 6 months in jail for his DUI - to begin in April this year. Hopefully for our financial sake he will get work release. Things are better of course because he is sober, but at times my anger will crop up, the hurt feelings, the betrayal, I just can't seem to forgive him for pushing everything to the absolute edge. I am beginning work on my fourth step so maybe that will help.
On the way home lastnight I just seethed with anger, then of course wanted to cry. He asked if I was okay, and I broke down. I just think I needed to communicate to him that I am still hurt (well I couldn't help it anyway, it just came out). I cried and said to him I was just still so mad about all that he had done. Then of course I felt guilty, because he had already had a day in court learning what his punishment was for the DUI. Am I wrong in communicating this to him? I am trying to forgive and let things go, but sometimes the hurt and betrayal and anger just crops up again. Things have changed in our relationship, and the weird thing is, he doesn't remember half of what happened when he was drinking anyway. He is sick, I know this, that's why I tend to feel guilty about bringing anything up.
All I can do is pray for my sanity and health, for my happiness, and whatever happens, happens. I pray also that he finds his path in life, whether it be sobriety or not, but I do know now that if he drinks, I will not be there with him. I think I went through all of this chaos to finally know that is not the life I want. It was hell.
I realize I need to pray for this, and writing this is helping.
Heidi.... I don't think we are ever 'right or wrong' in bringing up our feelings, etc., but my sponsor worked with me for years, to make sure that I was aware of my expectations.... I guess, over time, I was able to make the awareness shift on whether I was bringing stuff up for ME, cuz I needed to get it out and process it, or if I was doing it with "expectations" for my A, and how I hoped she could or would react. If you're doing it for you, and not tied to specific expectations of how your A will respond, then I think it is healthy..... If you're doing it to initiate a response from your A, or to try to push him towards his accountability, etc., then it might not be as healthy for either of you...
Hope that makes sense Tom
__________________
"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"
"What you think of me is none of my business"
"If you knew the answer to what you are worrying about, would it REALLY change anything?"
i am remembering as i read your post the time the police followed my husband home, right up the drive way. they arrested him as my two young daughters watched from the living rooom window as their daddy was taken away in police car. his lawyer called me into his office and asked me if i would be a witness to whatever the defence was. i started to cry. right there in the office. the lawyer looked at me and grunted in a very disgusted manner saying........, ''well, she is no help to us.'' the gulit i felt over not being able to help my husband at HIS most important time because his lawyer thought i should was overwhelming. i look back now and see the insanity of the situation. he gets arrested, i cry....., for my girls, our loss of income, for what the neighbors saw, for the whole mess, and, i am the quilty one!!!!!!!!!!!! wow, thank the powers that be for alanon. i have been able to straighten out my thinking. his drinking, his consequences. MT TEARS.
I spent a lot of time here venting. I can still vent some. I think venting can be very very healthy. I know the A I live with is very very negligent in the driving area. He does not drink and drive. He drives recklessly all the time. I've expressed concern to him till I am blue in the face. He has to pay a fortune in car repairs. He has two cars out of action at the moment. He hears nothing about it. His thinking is way way off on the issue. I do have consequences around it. I no longer enable him in the issue.
One of the core issues for me was to stop beating myself up for not having been aware of how totally negligent he was for such a long time. I bought his excuses. I no longer do. That doesn't mean I have big live confrontations with him about it. I just don't buy his excuses anymore.
I would expect anyone to have a lot of feelings around their partner getting a DUI. That is pretty serious financially and otherwise. I also presume from the sentence it isn't the first.
I personally have to vent a lot to discharge some of my frustration at the A. I don't do it to the A very often. Most of the time I do not get a good response. However when I can get ot a point of meaning what I say in setting limits I do that. That works but I have to really be clear. The A I live with certainly does not hear my feelings very well at all. That means he hears very little unless it is to his benefit. He reads no cues, never seems to know when he steps over the line and certainly has always been unaware when he went way way over the line.
When the A crashed my truck last year and caused a lot of body damage I cried on and off for a month. I felt tremendously betrayed. I don't actually forgive the A for it and it was a seminal point in our relationship. I actively started on plan b then. There were lines he crossed then that really damaged our relationship beyond repair. I will never view him the same again. He has collected some phone numbers for auto repair, done some research but as of yet he hasn't repaired it. He has said he was sorry but personally I think if he were he might take some more concrete action on the issue.
I try not to let myself be consumed with the A's actions. Detach, detach detach detach is hard to do. I do have to let out those emotions I am just pretty clear what the A can hear and can't hear.
When I learnt the truck was broken (which the A hid from me) I was furious. I did not have the control on my emotions I have now. He took off for 2 days further compounding his total flight from responsibility. Eventually I calmed down but he did nothing but nothing to help the situation with his running off, feeling sorry for himself or abdicating responsibility.
I am not at forgiveness yet. Maybe someday when I do have to actively live with and deal with his actions I may be. I am also not at being mired in reactiveness and I am so grateful for that because that really hurt me deeply.
thank you for bringing up this topic. my AH is in treatment and i have confusion as to how far to go with sharing how i feel with him. it helps to read your post and the responses from everyone else here. in his treatment, family week is coming up and i had to write a letter stating instances where drugs/alcohol interfered. i know he's made a lot of progress so far and we talk much better and often about our feelings on the phone and at length during visitation. so to have to bring up the "craziness" in a letter, it makes me feel sorry for him. but i know that this is part of the process and they wouldn't have me do it otherwise. i prayed that my HP would help me form the words to express myself and i dove into it. i feel that it turned out good. (thank you HP!) i will have to continue to ask HP for help in future dealings of feelings. anger is an easy emotion to get to. i was told that a bad habit is hard to break, but it can be done and once it is, it becomes second-nature. that's what i think about when i'm fighting my urge to burst! take care
Sometimes, I think it is best to get those feelings out some other way than giving them to the A - vent here, or talk to your sponsor, or write a letter that you don't send.... Usually, we have more hurt and anger than is really helpful to express to the A - once we have made it clear how we feel, there's not a lot of point telling the A, over and over. Especially if he is trying to fix it, in some way. However, the feelings are still there, and need to come out.
I know that I had a bit of a breakthrough when I realized that I am never really going to get the apology that, deep inside, I feel that I am owed. It's just not possible - he doesn't even remember doing half this stuff, and truth be told, the details aren't too clear to me on a lot of it, either. 20 years of living with his drinking insanity just built up too much pain to realistically expect amends for. He has apologized, several times. He IS trying to live in a different way. That is all I can realistically expect - it's more than most of us get. The rest of the pain I can just let go, bit by bit. I find that re-examining the past, every now and then, lets me let another piece go. I will have grown and changed a bit since last time, he will have made some more changes, something will have happened to take a lot of the sting out of a memory. Sharing here has helped me lose a lot of it - it hurts the first time I bring it up, but after a few times, the pain is gone, and the lesson learned is all that remains.
