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.
I’m heading to court today to get my divorce. When I got sober 2 years ago, I thought that the worst was over and of course my marriage would improve and it would never come to this. I really wanted to work things out with my wife, but always placed my sobriety first.
I have so many mixed feelings when I read posts like sq’s “How do we offer support when we just don't believe?” There are so many of us A’s who are struggling for years to get sober and never seem to get it. I feel such a tremendous amount of gratitude that through AA and the help of my higher power I have (so far) been granted a daily reprieve from this awful disease. I’ve done it for myself first so there is little doubt (at least in my mind) I am on the right path. There also seem to be an enormous amount of spouses who would be so grateful if their A’s got sobriety, they would really stick with them to improve their relationships. I get jealous. Why can’t my wife see the major changes in me that everyone else does? (Oh no... here comes a rationalization...) I never did anything nearly as bad as most other A’s did to their spouses, why can’t she see this and work with me on the relationship? (I also need to remember to identify and not compare HA!) It feels an abortion in the ninth month because the mother is tired of being pregnant. I just re-read the divorce papers I was served last year claiming extreme mental cruelty. Whether real, made up, or subject to interpretation, I know I’m not the same person and an no longer capable of the things listed on those papers. Why can’t she see that? What bothers me the most is that we have to put our two beautiful children through this mess.
I have been going to a lot of meetings and talking to a lot of friends about this. I realize that I have to let go because I can’t change another person or change their behavior. I don’t have to like it, I just have to accept it. I know that my sobriety does not depend on having her in or out of my life. It is up to me. Unfortunately, she does not see her recovery the same way and needs me out of her life to recover.
She has said that the divorce is only a piece of paper and, who knows, in a couple of years, when we are both ‘better’ we can always re-marry. I’m sorry but right now I don’t see that ever happening. I feel she called it quits when I was at my lowest and could have really use her support the most. I could see if she needed space between us to work on things, we both needed that. I knew this would take time and was willing to be patient. If I were not working on my recovery and were still distant and emotionally abusive, I could understand. But to take it to the extent of getting divorced? To me that is not the kind of unconditional love I thought I understood when we made our wedding vows. Sorry if I sound bitter, but I love my soon to be ex-wife very much and this is the most painful thing I have ever gone through.
I headed to court for my divorce back in March. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. But with the help of God and my program I got through it.
I so understand everything you are feeling. My ex was the A, as I have told you before, but otherwise things are so similiar. She chose to end our marriage, after I had been going to alanon for 6 months, and she AA for over a year.
And we were both improving so much daily. So what the hell is wrong with her? She told me many of the same things.....dangling the idea that once we were apart and better able to heal outside of each others constant presence, perhaps we could get back together. She wanted me to co-sign a note so she could buy a house, saying that if we get back together it could become a rent house. Etc, Etc. She hadn't been gone for a month when she started dating someone else, and is now in the process of moving 4 hours away from me.
I can get very bitter too Lou. And somedays, I look around the program and see so many spouses that made the choice to stay with their A's, and that their lives now, while by no means are perfect, are so much better, and it makes me feel jealous. It makes me feel cheated. I was doing my part to save our marriage of 10 years, why couldn't she?
You said it yourself, we cant control other people. We cant make them think like we want them to, we can't make them love us. We can't make them stay (legally) if they choose to go.
I am learning not to take it personal. It is NOT about me anymore. She is about her and I am about me.
There are better days ahead for both of us Lou. We are both fixing ourselves and making whole human beings outta of us. We gotta let'em go.
If its God's will that they should come back someday and His will they we will be there for them so it shall be. If not, I'm banking He has something much better in store for us. A fulfilling, wonderful life with a hugh dose of serenity in it. We just have to believe. We just have to trust.
Please know I will be thinking about you today Lou, and praying that your HP sends you extra strenght, to help you through court. We are there with you, and we will be here afterwards.
And one more thing.....its been 5 months that I have been divorced now...and Lou...my life is so much better than it has been in so many years. I am learning to like myself, and even more importantly I think....I am learning to respect myself. And I am learning to live free. Free of the constant need to try to control other people.
And they lived happily ever after.... we all want that to be our punchline,don't we? My A has been working the treatment thing for the past 2 years or so with a few slip ups. the thing is that now I am seeing all the stuff that he's been hiding behind bongs and bottles--- and it ain't pretty! I don't know what happened in the course of your marriage and why she left once you were sober. Sometimes its too hard to forgive and forget.... I just know from my personal experience that sometimes when the A quits using and has to face his true self for the first time in many years---the person revealed is not the one I expected to see. at all. U sound like a great guy who has made a lot of growth. Don't go backwards because your life isn't what you expected post A. You are worth all the work you have done!! blessings- Jeanne
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In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.- Daniel L. Reardon
I have been with my "A" for 8 years. We just recently got married, like 2 weeks ago. So I knew full on what I was vowing to do. My "A" first found AA about 6 years ago. Our oldest daughter was 6 weeks old at the time. I was so happy for him, I was so happy for me. I was never prouder of him at that moment. Then I feel off my pink fluffy cloud, reality set in, his sobriety was not what I thought it would be. I was so angry because I grew up watching a pretty successful marriage. My father put my mother, my brother, and myself first. My "A" damn I have never been first with him, and I resented that. I resented that he didn't give me what I thought I needed. I was so used to him never beign around because he was out searching for the next bottle or the next high. Now, now when he finally stopped using, he was never home because of the damn meetings he went to, and the functions, oh how I hated those, more time away from him. His sponsor asked me why I wasn't going to alanon, so I went to a few meetings. I WASN'T READY!!!! So I didn't go, and when I did I got nothing out of it.
I was scared, scared of all the hard work I was going to have to put in. Because I am just as broken as he was, and why should I have to fix myslef, he broke me. (LOL as I am typing this I can really see just how sick I was.) There were things in my head that I did not want to deal with. (I still to this day do not have childhood memories, I have huge blanks.) Working on me would mean letting those things out, dealing with the repressed. I know now that my "A" did not break me, I was already boken, or I would not have stayed with him.
He eventually relapsed, and stayed that way for another two years. In a way I was happy, because (I hate to admit this) I had the control back. Living with an active "A" is not a blast, but I knew how to keep him home. Sobriety is something we all wish for our "A's", but our expectation, often does not match reality.
It sounds like your wife is running, from what and why only she knows that. More than likely she is using the past as an excuse because of the denial.
I wish I could tell you why some of us stay with the "A" and why some of us leave. All I know is that I chose to stay, because I love him, hate the disease, but I love him. I have learned to seperate him from his disease. He and I split up for a year so he could focus on him, and I could focus on me, his decission. After 11 months of missing him and praying for him to come back, I decided if it was meant to be then it would happen. I realized I was going to love him forever, but that did not mean we would be together forever. When I was ready to move on and he saw that, when I wasn't needy, that is when he asked if he can come back.
I feel like I am rambling so I will stop, I hope some of this made sense, but the truth is nothing about this disease and the way it affects us makes sense.
Keep focusing on you. Keep working on you. Lean on your HP, Lean on us.
Much Love,
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"Today's problems can not be solved if we still think the way we did when we created them" -Albert Einstein
Reading your post and the replies....and thinking of my own situation, of why I have stayed and how it is working for us....in our case, I know there are many things my hubby honestly does not remember doing or saying. Those "wide awake black out" times. He will never fully know or remember all the pain our family has suffered. It is a blank to him. I also know he is truly horrified by the few things I have in the past told him he has said or done. He does not want to believe it, but he knows I have no reason to lie about it. Which I don't. I can forgive these things now only because I have truly sought to understand this disease and how it affects us all. He was raised in an alcoholic family - I can now understand how much that affects him, and how much (how many "issues") he has inside to deal with and work through. I was raised in a semi-normal household (I say semi-normal because we did have our own little dysfunctions going) and so with my own background, as I get healthier in Al-Anon I am able to remember healthy things I was taught growing up and this perhaps helps me in changing my own behavior back to what it once was and improving on it. I think it must be so much harder to change when you have never known any kind of healthy behavior/life. When all you have been surrounded with is the insanity of the disease. My grandmother once said to me "a healthy relationship is two wholes coming together to work in partnership, not two halves depending on each other to make a whole." There was a time I was a "half", I felt I needed to be with him to be "whole". I feel now I am back to being a "whole" (or at least close to it). I love him, but I do not need him to complete me anymore. I choose to stay for the love of him, for the vow I took, for the fact that he sincerely is also trying. (It could very easily have been a different story if he did not care and had broken his vows.) I do not expect life to magically change when he finds sobriety. I have heard of the "stark raving sober" and the "dry drunk" periods. I know the issues he has buried inside him need to be addressed and resolved also. I know just taking the alcohol out of the picture does not resolve all those issues. I am better prepared perhaps in knowing this. As I work my own program, I get stronger, healthier. When I slip, when I "forget" all that I know and have/am learning - well that only makes my life/our life more difficult. I choose (over and over again, every day, one day at a time) to continue with my own program, to make it a way of life. I have seen how it makes everything so much better to live this way. It often is not easy, but it is worth it. I have a twofold benefit going in working the program. The first being, it helps me. The second being, it is helping my marriage because we both are working on that together now. Yes, maybe I am pulling more weight than he is at the moment, but I can handle that for now. I honestly don't know what tomorrow will bring, but today is all that matters. Just for Today - it is working. Just for Today I will try to keep a positive outlook and attitude. Just for Today I will do what I can to make it a good day. Just for Today I will have compassion for myself and for others. Just for Today I will try to be fair in all my dealings. Just for Today I will be thankful for the 12 step program and all its members who are searching for serenity as I am.
Much love, Kis
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Let your light shine in the darkness. "I can't just bring my mind to meetings...I must also bring my heart."
UncleLou wrote: To sq, Dealing with which issue? Getting the program and the joys of sobriety? Or getting dumped?
Well, I certainly hope that he gets to experience the joys of sobriety again in his life (he was sober 10 yrs before a continual 4 yr relapse). What had me teared up is how hard it must be to be the A. and lose things precious in your life even after sobriety.
I'm at a crossroads right now in my situation. I have worked the program for many many years, so did he. We married w/the Programs as our foundation for life. I knew the risk going in that relapse can be a part of recovery. After many years of me continuing my Program and encouraging him to work his (and his adamanent stance against it), it is a gamble that I don't know if I am willing to take again. Thank God today I don't have to make a decision.
Alcoholism robs so many of us. Takes away parents, children, spouses, friends. I don't need to tell any of you how alcoholism goes way beyond the bottle. It causes emotional, mental and sometimes physical damage. Sometimes those bruises run pretty deep and why some do manage to work their Programs, stick together and "live happily ever after", there are always some that just don't make it.
I know in my case, if I leave him it has absolutely nothing to do w/not loving him. I will always love him. Doesn't make it any easier though.
I don't know.....it was good food for thought for me to hear it from the other side. And for that, I thank you.
It seems to me, Lou, that you are looking for a happy marriage as your 'reward' for sobering up. She is not just your wife, though, she is also her own self, with her own issues, and her own path. Maybe she is at a place in her life where she needs to be with an A, as part of her own disease. (We all need to remember, an alcoholic marriage is not the 'sick' A, and the 'healthy' spouse, but rather two sick people feeding each other's disease.) Maybe, just maybe, this divorce IS your reward. A chance to face some of the pain of being human, taking it straight this time, without the booze. A chance to really grow, and learn, and become a person who is ready to have a real marriage, a healthy one, with someone you may not even have met yet. Take it one day at a time - the story is not over yet.
) if they choose to go. 
