The material presented
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
i was trying to figure out for the most part of today..what or how do you separate the addiction from the person? my ex makes sooo many promises and is all plans about the future but for some reason i cant distinguish what is fact and what is fiction! i want to believe him when he says he wants a better quality of life this time... but he's said it sooo many times now..he's like a broken record.
even though we broke up in early august... and it wasnt pretty... (screaming matches the lot...) he still wants there to be an "US"... which is impossible.. i saw another side to him..which quite honestly scared the living crap outta me. thats not my life! i cant put up with that every day. the lies, the drinking,the gambling, pawning stuff for money etc... unreal situations that just kept escalating out of control. he is in so must debt now he owes over €10,000.
he is in rehab now.. but wants to come out...he's done 2 months of a 3 month programme. i dont think hes had enough time in there but he says... he will go backwards if he listens to any more stuff they tell him. he swears he never cheated in me... I DONT BELIEVE HIM. He swears he still loves me. I DONT BELIEVE HIM. Basically what im trying to say is... how do you know when an addict is lying to you and when he is serious... are there any signs or do they play the game so well they give an oscar winning performance?? im lost as to what to believe from him.
i never had to deal with all this until 3 months ago so i didnt know what to expect. at times i wonder was it all an act and was i just too blind to see it... did he ever love me really...or did he just want some1 to take care of him...and choose me! or was i living a lie for that year and a half i was with him...coz for me they were the best months of my life.
before the storm hit. in the form of the bottle and pills.
im sorry for being soo naive as to ask a question that may not even have an answer but im just lost and confused as to what to believe anymore...
For me, finding that fine line between the addiction and my loving husband was one of the hardest parts of alanon.
I tried for months, years, cried tirelessly, bargained, blamed, doubted, hid, lied, manipulated, and even joined the addict in order to discover where the addict started and left the husband behind.
For me, I had to dissassociate myself from him the best I could. I took a year to myself, only talking to him when the kids were involved, and then, rarely. When I asked him to leave, the loving husband truly dissappeared, and the evil, careless, vindictive, hurtful addict came out full force. NOt that I could blame him, we both are educated on alcoholism/addiction being a disease, but I chose to take all his actions personally.
I had to eat alot of things by taking this position. I could no longer trust him with my children (and thankfully he didn't care to fight me for them) so that meant that I had them full time with no respite. They were 3 and 4, making it quite a challenge! I had to do ALL things alone. I had no help with even the simplest things. I ended up putting my kids in a daycare that I could hardly afford just so that I could work.
But looking back, I see that God helped me through all this. I was awarded a position in my work that made it so that I could work only day shifts after 3 years of fighting for a rotation, I received subsidy for the daycare, and it seemed that whenever I was short, some miracle came forth to help me out.
I was a wreck for the first year. I was so confused. I couldn't understand how the loving husband that I married could just dissappear. How could God let that happen to me, better yet, my children. Every few weeks my husband would show up, just as beautiful as an angel, but not ready to give up his drugs/alcohol... How could this be? He would beg to come back, then go into a rage when I said he couldn't until he was sober. But I had to do what I had to do. It was the only thing I knew. I knew I couldn't stand the way I felt, and was sure that it was a direct result of him and his behaviour. Don't I love him enough? I thought that if you set something free and it was to be yours it would come back???
I have no idea how I survived, or what the exact thing was that led me to finally clearly see the difference between the man and the addict, but I am now living with him again, after 3 years of separation, and no sobriety. One thing that I know now for sure, when I changed, our relationship changed. I don't know if he really changed (and if you read my last post, you will see that he really hasn't), but my perception of what was supposed to be did, along with the strength to accept the things I can not change. I learned that my misery was self inflicted.
Being alone, that is what helped me distinguish the difference between the kind loving husband and the evil addict. I had to remove myself from the situation, and face it with an outside perspective.
This is my experience. Take what you like an leave the rest. My story is compiled of all the things I liked about other sharings when I was going through it. In hind sight, I would probably do things much different, but we only can do what we can do at the time we have to do it.
Keep posting. It feels good to put all that confusion down in a functional order (well, kinda functional...LOL)
Sorry if I rambled so much, but I need the program really bad today, so I am giving away as much as I can.
This is truly a cunning, baffling, powerful disease.
It is one thing to go through a detox, to get the booze and/or drugs out of their system. It is another thing to go through recovery, to face the underlying issues and behaviors, to begin to be able to think clearly again.
People talk about their qualifier being "sober" because he/she hasn't had a drink that day, that week, that month. The effects of their usage can last a long time though, and it is these effects that we often see and then wonder "he/she isn't drinking/using anymore, why is she/he still acting this way?" (I have heard it takes at least a year for the brain to "dry" out.)
I believe my qualifier when he says he wants things to change, to be different, to be better, that he wants to quit drinking. I also know that until he actually begins a program and sticks to it, that this will not happen. This is how I separate the disease from the person. Knowing the facts on this disease. Knowing my husband, the man beneath it all. When he says to me "I'm going to ______ (fill in the blank)" it isn't that he is lying to me, but more that he is lying to himself. I mean that in the same way as when I say "I'm going to quit smoking". I know I need to do so for my own health, and I mean to do it... but I haven't yet. Just as he hasn't yet quit drinking. I want to quit... but obviously since I haven't done so yet, I'm not "ready". And once I do quit, will I stay quit? I quit once before for several years. Here I am smoking again.
I've learned to learn the facts and then make my decisions based on that. Can I live with things the way they are today? Yes. Can I accept things the way they are today? Yes. Do I need to continue to take care of me and live this program in my life? Oh, you bet, yes! Could things change in the future that I might find unacceptable and be unable to live with? Yes...but I don't need to worry about that today, because it hasn't happened yet, who knows what the future may hold and why waste my time worrying and fretting about something not yet here? Of course, I am not in the process of trying to choose whether to marry a man or not, I'm already married to mine, so there is that difference.
Keep coming back. Learn all you can. You'll find your answers. And no question is too naive or silly to ask... keep asking!
Luv, 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."
I don't know him, but I know mine. I often wonder whether or not it's me he wants or someone to take care of him. To find out, I quit taking care of him and started to detach and found out that he wants me anyway...even if I'm not bailing him out.
The other thing I have learned is that he believes everything he says, every promise he makes, every apology he makes and every vow to make his life better and stop living this way. I am sure he temporarily means everything he says when he says them. He also knows what to say to make me feel better.
One thing my husband told me is that he means everything he says and has great intentions, but has lived this life so long and doesn't know anything else so he doesn't know if he can stop. He's afraid of trying and failing so it is easier not to try at all.
