The material presented
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finally the truth comes out and I am not the bad guy anymore. I have been trying to convince my ex husbands parents that he is an alcoholic and that they needed to help me keep my daughters safe from his disease. They never believed me. But I stopped trying to talk to them about it about 4 months ago because I realized that they needed to see it on their own and today I got a phonecall from them apologizing for not seeing it sooner. They told me they have cut him off...his dad is his employer and he said if there was no rehab then there was no job because he has been drinking on the job. They also have taken the company truck from him and told him he won't be allowed to use his mom's car/carseats to come get the kids which he uses every time he gets them.....................that is the best news I have heard in a while. This means that he has to be responsible for finding transportation to my house 45mins away to pick up the kids and we all know how responsible alcoholics are without their enablers :). I think this may be a huge step for us all in this situation. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders because now I don't have to be the only one in the family who recognizes the alcoholism. I was always the one people blamed for divorce because I was the one who left and now THE TRUTH IS STARTING TO COME OUT! thanks for reading.
I remember being where you are at now. I got a phone call from her mother and she acknowleged that her daughter was alcoholic. The twist was that she asked me to get her daughter to stop drinking and save her life!! I was the only one on both sides of the family, mine and hers that was in recovery and alcoholism runs rampant all over and thru and in my family. Anyhow let me make a suggestion to you? If you haven't yet done it, get to as many face to face Al-Anon meetings as you can in the next 90 days. There should be a hot line phone number in the white pages of your phone book and someone on the other side that can get you the information about where and when. It is really important and you will find out why when you get there. In the meantime keep checking in here and reading as many post as you can absorb and the responses. You are not alone. There are not many places that you can go to on this planet that don't have a meeting close by.
I remember the day I asked his father to come over and talk. It was right before we seperated. The week leading up to it was the worst I had ever seen him drunk. I told his dad how bad it had gotten. That I couldn't handle it another minute, that the kids didn't need to see it another second. Their son's drinking was something that was never talked about. His parents were daily drinkers as well. His dad told me about the other cars he had wrecked and finding him in their garage face down passed out. I remember thinking....wow, this has been going on for a long, long time. I remember that recognition to some degree that his dad saw it too....and maybe even would understand why I was doing the things I did. I was told by my hubby not to tell them I was in Alanon...because they would think it was silly. It came to a point that I didn't care if they did. What they tought of me just didn't matter and what was a protecting the hubby from anyway? My former inlaws don't speak to me today. There is a big form of denial over their son. Mainly with his mom. Ultimately, I did what was best for myself and the children and I would do it all over again. I will go to any length to protect them. I am waiting for the day he comes to pick my daughter up drunk. I am glad your former inlaws saw for themselves what he is doing. I just hope that they remember it and all the enabling stops. Goos luck in your recovery Ziggy
This is something that my inlaws never talked about either - my MIL would tell stories about how her father was the town drunk, but never a word said about her son....
It's good that they acknowledge, it's always nice to have validation, but it is not really important. Your actions must be the same, whether anyone else admits the problem of not. Keep taking care of you.
