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well my a somewhat made it one week but i can see his attitude changing quickly. this week he went to two aa meetings and one addictions counsellor meeting and we covered alot. he even speant some extra time with the old timers. yesterday at his moms he took one toke from a joint. i said im ready to go and told him how i can see he is already slipping and that we cant even go visit family. his mothers is a very high trigger for him as we discussed in counselling so we made a deal to stay away from there for a while and she would have to come here to visit. but of course she still phones saying she needs my a to come do something for her that involves him going there. so once again we went today and all he said is i dont understand why i cant have one toke on the weekends. i reminded him of the counselling session where the counsellor said you have to cut all ties you have to get it all out of your life or you will for surely have a relapse. ten minutes later he said he wants just to have a toke i said i dont even care anymore and just left it at that, he decided not to touch it and we left. tonigth we are supposed to go to a ca meeting and i to co-anon. he is already disagreeing stating he went to two meetings last week and only needs two but then said he would go tonight. something tells me when it gets to 6pm he will change his mind. i can feel those thoughts seeping in that i get before he relapses. sadly i dont think he will make it this week. there is nothing i can do about any of this. but if this disease begins showing its ugly face again i dont think i can do it anymore. that is not the life i wanted and not the life i want. im trying the best i can to live my life how i want to but i think im about to go on another roller coaster ride. we will see what happens.
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stay in the now...dont look forward, dont look back....your life is what you make of it
So hard, I know, but remember, you are not his probation officer, it is not your job to police his recovery - it's an impossible job anyway, so be glad it's not yours ! Focus on your own program, work on keeping your own side of the street clean, and he will either get better or he won't. If you find it makes you crazy watching how he is with his mom, I suggest you not go along next time. I am finding more and more that "what I don't know can't hurt me", an attitude I would have condemned before. When I use it to help me keep my nose out of things that are not my business, though, I find it helps. My A's relationships with and behaviour with other people are between them, none of my affair. The only thing that is mine is how I allow him to treat me, and what I will or will not put up with when he is with me.
... but if this disease begins showing its ugly face again ...
Sorry to be blunt but it sounds like the ugly face of his disease has not gone anywhere yet. Don't set yourself up for dissapointment by getting your expectations up. Anyone in early sobriety who is bargaining that two meetings a week is enough has not shown any signs of being ready for recovery.
Don't give up, at least he is going to meetings and counciling. That's great. But please do not be dissapointed if he 'relapses.' It sounds like he has nothing to relapse from yet. Hopefully he will start to 'get it' if he wants it enough. Don't prevent him from hitting his bottom to get there.
I know how frustrating this is, I went through it myself. Sorry, just calling it the way I see it.
"all he said is i dont understand why i cant have one toke on the weekends"
If he doesn't understand yet then he doesn't understand no matter how much we all think it should be OBVIOUS to them until they see it for themselves I don't think anything anyone says makes a difference.
The family stuff sure is hard, been there so many times it is rotten. After hearing my A say I will quit everything but I just want to get high with my Dad sometimes, I truly gave up. This is the same Dad that when I called to him because I could not listen to my husband his son talk of taking his own life and left, told me "yeah I checked on him, he wasn't drinking so he is ok". I found a noose in the basement the next day when I came home. UGH it is frustrating. The rest of his family is no better, I simply do not have anything to do with any of them anymore. It really sucks, but it is better than how bad it sucks when I have to watch how sick the situation is.
Try to concentrate on yourself, his attitude does not have to wreck your recovery. We're all here for you!
The family stuff has been very very very difficult for me. My boyfriends family is tremendously codependent but also neglectful. I could forgive them maybe for being over involved but they are tremendously under involved and not really caring. I read some time ago his mother's letters to him when he was in jail. She basically never asked him what was going on for him at all. She just sent like 2 lines to someone in prison!!!
So she has always been like that totally uninvolved but I take it totally personally and I am aghast that she does not seem to care at all. I have had a lot of feelings about her that were decidedly nasty for a long long time then I decided I had to detach.
I am also aware that I cannot be my boyfriend's warden. When he is out late (which is the norm) lying that he is working (working at jobs that never seem to pay him) I no longer go out looking but I do think about where he is I have to say. I wait for that phone call about the accident, the dui the whatever and it has not come yet but it is inevitable I know. He already crashed my truck last year and it is still not repaired. He has some issue with the car repair person and when he goes off into a rage about that I don't say anything anymore. I may have to repair the truck myself which is money I don't have at the moment. I realise there is a tremendous price to living with an A.
What do you do to lessen the stress on you. Do you have friends at meetings, do you have a sponsor you check in with. What do you do to stress manage, do you eat right, take care, love yourself.
Yes long long term I think I do not want to sign on for this life. But the exit strategy is difficult to pinpoint what it is how it is. I know much of that is in hp's hands. I know when I left my husband who was also an alcoholic all these things came together for me when I was willing and it was still very very difficult. But it did come together, the people to help me move, the money to move, the energy to move it came together in ways I could not imagine. I put a lot on HP now because I want a life not another term in a prison. I often feel like I am in a prison, dealing with his tantrums, his control issues the more out of control his life is the more he tries to control me from saying leaving the cheese out for two seconds will kill him to more. Now I can say nothing and think humorous thoughts in my head when he goes off about the cheese being out. Yes I put botulism on it specially for you and left it there...or oh yeah it has anthrax on it don't you know and not voice them. I know his control stuff is ridiculous and very very predictable. The less resentment I can have and the more I can label it the disease the better off I am. Of course that isn't always possible but I do monitor closely my resentment levels because they can get toxic pretty quickly and I don't deserve to have that. I have enough challegnes to deal with.
I am so glad that you can come here and talk about what is really going on in your life and be heard. That makes a world of difference for me and I hope it does for you too.
