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Ok. Here is the question. I am in a 5 year relationship with my A. We have been riding the Alcoholic roller coaster for the last two hellashious years. She is just now starting to get serious. She has a good sponsor and she goes to meeting everyday. She was a year sober, but one day decided to drink again. Since that day, she has drank on every occasion away from me that she can.
Is it unfair of me to want to be told if she is drinking?
I have been told by her that she is accountable to her sponsor and her Saturday AA home meeting. She said that she will not tell me if she has drank unless I ask her.
That to me just makes me feel excluded. Like why am I even here?
Opinions??
Please be honest, direct, and let me know if I am asking for too much.
For me I am not part of my wife's recovery unless she chooses to involve me. There are aspects of the disease that will affect me, financial, emotional etc. so it may seem unfair not to be involved in her recovery. Still it is up to me whether I want to risk the consequences of having a relationship with someone I know to be an alcoholic. I have to accept that at anytime she may go back to drinking and if that happens then I will decide if it is worth continuing the relationship. It sounds kind of cold to put it in such rational terms, but that is the reality. Nothing I do is going to keep my wife in recovery or pull her out of it. That part of it is all on her. I can accept that there is no way for me to ever understand what she is going through, so knowing if she is slipping, (or really needing to be told, because lets face it, we KNOW if they are slipping) really just puts us in a position of judgement, and we aren't qualified for that.
Aloha T...most of the members here at MIP have tons of time in the Al-Anon Family Groups so there is enough Experience Strength and Hope here to choke an enabling elephant much less a newbie to the board. Al-Anon Family Groups for friends, family, associates of alcoholics. Same twelve steps and traditions and more as AA but different in focus. While your spouse is attempting to get alcohol free...mind, body, spirit and emotions you have to learn what?....how to get alcohol(ic) free mind, body, spirit and emotions. I've been where you are at right now and only a little bit of what I was taught in the program was to get out of her way while she was on a trip that ended in pain and to keep my focus on myself. Believe me I had to be taught that by others after I got entirely willing to stop "drinking her". She was my drug of choice. When she drank and used it was none of my business. She didn't have to ask me premission to be in her disease, she didn't have to tell me how it was going and she didn't have to tell me what the end was feeling like.
The only consequence I got from wanting to know and eventually finding out was pain...my own severe emotional and mental and spiritual and physical hangover. I learned that we get the hangover consequence without the anesthesia of alcohol to block out reality...thus we get sicker than they do.
What are you going to gain from knowing? (no fast answers here...take your time) Does her drinking make you less than? (same answer conditions) Do you take her drinking personally? Do you love the sick person less than when she's not sick? These are inventory questions I was taught in recovery...there are bunches more and if you want to learn them you need to contact Al-Anon from the number in the white pages of your local telephone book and find out where and when we meet in your neighborhood. It was the best thing I ever did for myself and after awhile I went even when I didn't know where she was at, who she was with, what she was drinking or using and what might happen afterward whether that would be hospitals, institutions or jail. Unknowingly I even dispatched a CHIP beat officer one night that resulted in her DUI. It happens and doesn't need to take you out.
I felt the need to know...just because. I never was better off for knowing.
My favorite saying I've seen over and over here on this board: "She's doing to drink, what are YOU going to do?" If you haven't already considered checking out an Al-Anon meeting in your area, I would highly recommend you look into doing so. It can change your life, whether she continues to drink or not.
What I've realized as of late is, yes, I want to know, it's my right to know, because if he's drinking then I want out of the relationship. It is my right to know, I have two children. It's my responsibility to keep them safe. If one doesn't have kids, it's their job to keep themselves emotionally safe. Users are liars and manipulators, and crazy-makers.
What am I going to do? Change the locks until he gets help and is ready to be sober again. In my situation, I happen to know that nothing will make him stop using. He will hide it, pick fights, manipulate, lie. My vote is yes, you have the right to protect yourself.
Ok. Here is the question. Is it unfair of me to want to be told if she is drinking? I have been told by her that she is accountable to her sponsor and her Saturday AA home meeting. She said that she will not tell me if she has drank unless I ask her. That to me just makes me feel excluded. Like why am I even here? Opinions?? Please be honest, direct, and let me know if I am asking for too much. ---------------------------------------------------- Hi, I am/was in your shoes totally. I asked the same questions. I felt the same as you. We got married in 1971, so there is a lot of history. He has been in AA for 11 yrs. and I have been in Al-Anon for 11 yrs. I think the answer to your first question is "you will know". You don't have to be told if she has been drinking. It will be obvious. And you will be no better off if you know or don't know. You may be more sad or disappointed with her.
As to the feeling of being excluded, well, I think DadtoCandE answered it very well. The cold, rational terms/reality is that I have a choice if I want to be in a relationship with an alcoholic. Today I do. Tomorrow I may decide I have had enough. Remember, it is alcohol"ism", not alcohol"wasm". It is a disease that they never get over. It is always sitting in the wings waiting to take over again.
My hubby never lets me know if/when he is going to a meeting. He has never shared anything in 11 yrs. with me. I have met his sponser and his sponser's wife. We have even gone on a cruise together. But we never talk the program. He has his and I have mine. And the not acknowledging to me what he feels about that part of his life is a huge wall between us. For now I choose to live with it. That may change tomorrow.
In the meantime, I live my life to be happy....for me. I expect that he is doing the same but I certainly don't feel like I am in charge of that. And I have found that there are other places to go for my needs for friendship and fun. Only you know what you want in a relationship. We can't tell you that. I can only say that her attitude toward you probably won't change, and your feeling of being excluded won't change either. But what will change is what you do about it. The whole situation may not matter so much if you get out there and have your own fun.
I'm glad you have found us. I hope you'll stick around.
The way I see it, there are two parts to this question. One is: do you have a right to know if she's drinking, or put another way, is it advisable to find out she's drinking? In my experience, I had to be clear on whether he was drinking or not drinking, over the long term, so I could make my decisions with full information. So I did all the things Al-Anon advises against: snooping, scheming, figuring out. He was denying he was drinking, and my question to myself was: Am I crazy for thinking he's still drinking? Have I gone paranoid? Or am I onto something?
Once I realized that he was still drinking, and confirmed that repeated times, that was when there was no more need to go snooping or to ask. Because I knew what the answer was. He was an alcoholic not in recovery. Therefore he was drinking. There was no point in asking the question over and over again. Whatever he claimed, the real answer was always Yes.
The other question is: Is it fair to insist that the A admit to it? I think the way this question is, isn't helpful. It might be fair but it isn't realistic. That's because alcoholism causes predictable distortions of thinking, and one of these is denial. They will deny it. They always deny it. I argued with my A till I was blue in the face that if he'd just come clean about it, the problem would be halved. He never would come clean. He could be sitting there in the living room with a half-empty bottle in his hand and he'd say, "Someone came and left me this bottle and I'm holding it for him." Stuff you'd have to be crazy to believe. But they are crazy. They may look sane, but they think like crazy people.
So I think insisting that a drinking alcoholic tells the truth is futile. If they're not drinking, they'll say No. If they are drinking, they'll say No. Meanwhile we drive ourselves crazy trying to make them be honest. That's the truth of it. It hurts not to feel as if you can trust someone you're close to. But ... well, that's the truth of it.
Hi Not been on these boards for a while as usually my meetings are enough to keep me sane (ish!) but I am travelling at the moment and as so often when I am away I feel a bit lonely and helpless - I know I am not but of course acknowledge that the root of these feelings is not knowing if my A is at home drinking. Do I want to know? Well I know I am powerless and his recovery (or not) is none of my business but even after 4 years in Al-Anon I can still lose my focus on myself and start obsessing about my A's drinking.
I think it is a form of defence process, that if I somehow deal with it in my own head whilst I am away that I am prepared to deal with the consequences once I get home - utter rubbish of course but a very clear measure of my own sickness and the paralysis it can cause in my own recovery. The fact is even f I ask him I know he will lie, as has been said lying and denial are at the root of the sickness. There is really little point in asking anyway because I can hear it in the voice on the telephone, in the disjointed thinking and words coming through the earpiece, and I can do nothing about it. I used to wonder if I was somehow 'psychic' even if many miles away I would know with certainty when he had relapsed, but of course it was simply that all the clues were there and dealing with an alcoholic one initially gets caught up in their insane and disjointed thinking - Al-Anon has allowed me to see it for what it is.
Hurtbeyonwords, this crazy train was killing the happy go lucky me as well, if I let it it will. I am sitting in the sun this morning and working my program - re -reading the steps to remind me that the only person I can be responsible for is me, that I can love my A, empathise with the pain but I cannot let their disease push me further into mine and knowing for sure that as soon as I get back home on Tuesday I need to get to a meeting.
Ah the need to know i remember it well , accomplished nothing but I kept snooping , for me it was going thru the garbage to see how much he had drank the nite before , ugh .. one day I was up to my elbows in garbage and it hit me what in hell am I doing ? knowing changed nothing for me except to keep me in a state of turmoil , your wife has given you the option of asking if she has been drinking so ask .. just dont react if you get the answer you dont want to hear . I was told long ago to treat everyone one I meet as IF - * they were alcoholic * which made no sence to me at the time , now it means to use my program in all of my realtionships , there is nothing I can do about choices other people make . I no longer feel the need to KNOW . Louise
Something I have discovered in my own journey which you have already gotten fantastic ESH, .. I know now what? I have found over the past month that when I need to know something and it's something really important my higher power is going to provide me with the information that I need. I've gotten smacked in the forehead by that information and I got it exactly when I needed to and I am soooooo grateful it has come about the way it did. It was to early for me to know.
So it really comes down to I can fret, look, snoop or I can trust that HP is going to provide me with the information that I need when I need it. I can then make informed choices on what I want to do with the information. Usually it's a good stand by if you think she's been drinking .. she probably has. No one is going to admit they have committed a crime when caught .. it's deny, deflect and move along nothing to see here kind of thing. The lying becomes automatic .. I really stand by this statement I don't think an addict of any kind knows where their lies stop and the truth begins, it's a story they have to sell themselves in order to live with their choices. To really sell the story they need their loved one's to believe as well. Or as my first husband would say it's not a good lie if the person you tell it to doesn't believe you and you don't believe it yourself.
Hugs P :)
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Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
It seems you got the suggestions I would mostly have offered. Being in AA, I would not be so guarded from my partner about my program. I told him that if I drank, I want him to dump me. I also know my pattern though and if I ever got that sick again and relapsed, I would probably try to hide it anyhow. Hence, your wanting to be told is a moot point. IF she relapses, it is instinctual to the disease of alcoholism to try and hide it from others we care about most of the time when we know they would be hurt, worried, or judging. Hence, the "wanting to be told" is just a waste of your energy and time and it is putting focus on the sick part of her instead of the healthy part that you may either choose to love or choose not to.
If the ride in your relationship is hellish....you gotta do what you can to change it or move on. I personally would not choose to say "I'm not going to tell you if I relapse" because I like that my partner accepts and shows interest in what I learn through my AA program. On the other hand, we do not have a history of him dealing with me as a drunk since I met him when I was already sober a while....Hence, I don't have that "butt out" instinct because he was never the one that "caught me" in my alcoholic lies and BS.
I do recommend alanon just like everyone else here has stated, but also coming from AA, I wanted to add a little perspective as to what your partner might be going through. She is used to lying and conning you so those behaviors are only going to change over time and after she does some serious stepwork. She is going to change in recovery and some ways will be better and maybe some wont in terms of how you two relate. You can only work on you and pray to deal with whatever comes with humility, grace, and acceptance.
As I grew in Al-Anon, I realized it didn't really matter whether the alcoholic was drinking or not.
The drinking is but a symptom of the disease.
Unless the A is working an honest recovery program, they're going to behave the same whether they're drinking or not.
What will knowing do for you? Have you come to any personal understandings about how you feel about her drinking or not? Have you been getting to any Al-Anon meetings to gain a better understanding of the disease of alcoholism? Have you perhaps even attended any open AA meetings to hear what the disease is like for those who suffer from it?
It's been my own personal understanding that I am powerless over alcohol and a loved one's decisions to drink or not.
That to me just makes me feel excluded. Like why am I even here?
Opinions??
Please be honest, direct, and let me know if I am asking for too much.
