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May seem a daft question and I know that in some situations the answer may be more to do with personal safety but at what point should someone completely throw the towel in and give up on someone they love.
Is it when the loved one stops trying, is it when they revert to type and the full/empty bottles & lies start reappearing, is it when the number of affected days out numbers the unaffected ones
Should we think/go with our heart or our over analysing head, or just keep plodding on forever hoping that one day they will get it.
What if the bottles were being left/hidden in stupid easily accessible locations where anyone can get them.
Whats other thoughts/experience in these situations
There is no one size fits all answer with this disease Lee8375. Most find answers as they learn more about the disease and recovery. There is only one situation where I've seen a member of Al-Anon strong suggest a detach an that's in the case of an abusive situation.
For my own experience, had I forced myself to make a decision when I was the most 'emotional', it would not have been in my best interest. I know that I was an emotional reactor and often did and said things that made my life/situation harder than if I had just detached to think first.
Get involved with the program and answers will come. I'm sure this isn't too helpful but it's what popped in my head to respond with.
(((Hugs))) - let's see if anybody else has more cents than me!!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
Lee I am a little confused with your questions.
Alanon tool of detachment with love is a principle that enables us to interact in a healthy fashion in the world. We stop smothering other people, begin to take to focus off then and place it where it belongs ---on ourselves.
After doing this, and attending meetings and working the Steps we find we cannot maintain the relationship then it is time to continue to use these important tools and make a decision for our next right action. This is not an easy road so simply remember you are not alone.--HP is walking with you,
I'm fairly certain that I don't have enough cents to make a dollar but on the basis that this is a subject that I struggle with and getting stuff wrong can hold some valuable lessons as well here are my thoughts on detachment.
For me I initially interpreted detachment as physically leaving the situation and I was not ready to do that even though I can now see that it would have been a healthy choice and would have been an honest action on my part, ie. I can't support your behaviour and I am uncomfortable in this situation and it is making me worry in unhealthy ways.
Then I started to wonder if I could detach my emotional vulnerability from my husband's actions and to see myself as autonomous from his choices. This wasn't great for our marriage but it did help me in the short to medium term.
These days I detach from choices that I disagree with and I worry a lot less about whether or not I'm liked as a result of my saying 'no thank you'.
Thanks for the respopnses they did help.
Ive been going to regular meetings for a while and am starting to work the steps but have yet to find a sponsor. I have a very strong belief which has been tested many times and i know my HP is working away on us.
Lots is making sense but the bit im finding hard to deal with is the continued lies. My Partner has had the illness for more than two years but is only just realising it and is still in denial. They do go to thier meets but I get used as chauffer which then places a drain on me. Ive suggested that they ask for lifts but nothng ever comes of it and they appear to go a few days sobber then cave in for the 2-4 day binge. They arent working ther programme although they tells others they are in order to satisfy her guiltyrip. Thier recovery is thier choice and isnt my business I know. I have to focus on me but we also have a young child to consider.
I have detatched with love on numerous occassions and this has helped ease the tension at home but recently i feel they arent trying at all and are more a drain on things than adding any value. I feel there are many manipulations just to keep things going and im fed up of watching our child suffer. Fed up of having to sweep the house of bottles left in dangerous places which a child could get and ive had to make it very clear to the child that they must only drink coke that we give her not any she finds!
Even the childs penny money box has been raided this week to obtain the next fix it was only a small amount but it was hers and she was saving it for somethg they want. Child was devistated and clearly knows were its gone despite me trying to diffuse the situation. I bery nearly said it was me!
When they are sober they are great to be with but it only ever lasts a few days. I think 11 in a row is about the best but they forgot how bad it had been and became over confident.
There is little effort to contibute and i find them asleep or watching tv all day despite money being very tight.
Im doing my bit but the question I suppose Im asking is at what point is all hope lost and detachment is the only way forwards.
Im not saying im giving up but it feels very much a one way situation at present. If was just me then i could probabley put up and just get on with my own life but with the child its slightly more complicated.
To be clear there is no violence involved nor has there been, just lots of cash disappearing and more work for me to do as well as work a full time job.
Been a good day today so for that I am greatful to my HP as ive recharged the batteries a bit.
I think the point for me where I said enough was when the emotional pain out weighed the physical payout.
Weird thing was for me it wasn't the drinking although that was starting to def become a factor as legal issues and so on .. it was the whole issue of his affair/s. We have kids involved and unfortunately he's so emotionally checked out on everyone .. I don't know how someone who doesn't know how to love themselves .. loves another person or people. The emotional and mental damage he was inflicting on the kids started to take a toll on me. It still does and he's 800 miles away at this point. It's the broken promises that are the hardest there is no physical scar however there are the emotional scars that take years to see. My goal is to raise kids that don't spend a lifetime trying to "recover" from their childhood.
Everyone has a different answer just as IAM stated. I have no regrets leaving .. well I have one .. why didn't I do this sooner? LOL. When nothing changes nothing changes and my XAH has not changed in the least .. there are things he's doing because he has a new enabler in his life, that's no longer my chosen role in his.
I just encourage you to get better for you because if it's good for you it's good for your kids. Whatever the answer is for you .. it will present itself. I do encourage you to get a sponsor. Is there anything that has been holding you back from finding one? The answer to that might surprise you.
Hugs S :)
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Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do "faith". - Brene Brown
"Whatever truth you own doesn't own you" - Gary John Bishop
Of course we can always have hope, but it also helps to be realistic. When someone is not managing to stay sober, there is a great chance that things will stay that way. Maybe it will change somewhere far down the line. But I think believing that it will change in the near future is probably unrealistic under those circumstances, sadly.
I kept waiting for the switch to be flipped and my A to realize that alcoholism was getting him nowhere. I kept thinking the day was coming, because it was so obvious to me. What I didn't know is that only 15-25% of alcoholics who enter recovery manage to stay sober longterm. So the odds were against it. In fact my A never did achieve sobriety. He is still drinking, many years later. My years of waiting and hoping did not give me the outcome I hoped for. Now some cases are different. But those are the odds, and I mention them because I wish someone had told me. I thought the odds of sobriety were much higher.
What finally caused me to leave my A was when he endangered our child. The fact is that I wish I had not waited so long. Because the fact that our child was not killed was a miracle. I didn't realize the power of the alcohol to warp my A's thinking, so that he could love our child and yet be unaware that he was endangering him. It could have turned out tragically.
I hope you will take good care of your precious little one, and of yourself.
Detachment with love is not something that progresses to what you call detachment. Detachment should really progress to with love part. I suggest you get the leaflet on detachment and find out what its all about. You can get this and much more help at a meeting near you.
Like others here have said, there's no one-size-fits-all answer - my walking buddy had to write his heroin addict daughter out of his life and completely separate from her - no contact at all - I've never pushed him on it, but I suspect that her situation still pains him, but he has had to do his best to remove her from his consciousness so he can get on with his own new path in life, AND retain his own sobriety.
For me, I pray every day for strength to not enable my son again - I believe that me not enabling him for the past year or so now has significantly reduced my anxiety about him, but I don't understand why \ how that's happened. From time to time, I send him an "I love you" text (he has no phone), but that's about it - I hear back from him and from him infrequently.
I am not sure if I could ever eliminate him from my life and consciousness - I have hope, and I pray frequently (LOL, frequently meaning FREQUENTLY) using the 7th Step prayer that God shows him a better path (please show my son Your will for him, and give him the strength to carry it out) - but that's about all I can do - not being God, I certainly have no idea about God's plans for my son - then there's my son's free will, which continues to work against him, as I see it.
I guess if there was any danger of violence, I'd have to distance myself from him completely, but with my son that's never been a consideration.
Pray for guidance - go to more meetings - be open to your HP's guidance.
I recently decided to divorce my AH. I made the decision when I was completely emotional about the latest crisis, but I think I needed that to finally push me to the decision that I have been wavering on for the last year.
I came to realize the financial and legal danger I was putting myself in by staying was imminent. We can no longer pay rent and he was picked up on some outstanding warrants this past weekend. It came down to self protection. I have been taking a lot of steps to better my life in the last year and he truly was the last thing holding me back.
It's not an easy decision. I have been wavering the last few days. What is so funny is HE is the one telling ME that we are too toxic for each other and we need to do this. I really hate when the alcoholic is wiser than I am.
A very wise friend of mine, who is working the 12 steps told me- What is your bottom line? I spent a lot of time reflecting on that and it came down to the financial stuff. I decided I have too much going for me to spend my life bankrupt and constantly worrying about where our next rent check is coming from.
At what point does detachment with love move to detachment?
At what point does patient denial move to honest common sense?
Forget everyone else and consider what's in the child's best interest. It's easier to stop the wounding from happening now than for her to try to fix it as an adult, or for her to try to undo the life responses being programmed in to her right now. She is absorbing all of this like a sponge into her limbic system. Mother nature has set her up to learn about how to behave and how life works and what the rules of the world are, by absorbtion. It bypasses the conscious mind. It all soaks into her subconscious. It doesn't matter what you say to her, what is forming her personality is what she is observing day after day after day. She has childlike reasoning capacity. She is learning that this is what life is and this is how you live. Do you want that for her when she's 20? 40? 50? That thing with her pennies being stolen? Over in ACoA rooms, that's the kind of thing that we sob about, when we uncover the memory and realize a defining moment like that has become central to who we are and has sabotaged us in multiple areas. Seeing the kind of agony this kind of childhood produces in adults is very very painful and shocking. Children who grow up in homes like this are 4 times more likely to be alcoholic or addicts themselves, or to marry one. If you are learning about the disease of alcoholism, look into the disease of being an adult child of alcoholics. It's a lifelong recovery process and it's that little girl's future, so it should be given the same amount of attention, study and focus that AA and alanon is.
The beliefs that little girl would form around that incident of her savings being stolen, will radically hamper her. These are the realities of this home she is growing up in. Maybe confronting, maybe hard to think about, but true nonetheless. Millions of people live it. No child escapes a home like this without serious trauma. But obviously minimising her exposure to guys who leave alcohol around, watch TV all day, steal from her, lie, pretend they're in recovery, etc, would minimise the damage.
If YOU are finding this difficult, how do you think it is for a child? She has no choice, no power over her situation, no autonomy, and she is trying to make sense of her world. Staying there is giving her clear messages and directives.
So the point when it moves to detachment is the point where you consciously decide. You know what is happening. It is a conscious adult choice of yours now what to do. I wish you all the very best whichever way you choose.
I really enjoyed this regarding detachment the other day:
Detaching With Love
I need to detach with love from those I care about who are still mired in this disease. I will tolerate the pain of watching. When I detach with resentment, it is not detachment, it keeps me preoccupied and connected. When I amputate, it is not detachment, I develop phantom limb. I still hurt where that part of my heart used to be and am haunted be something missing. When I detach by ignoring, shoving or running, it is simply the other side of enmeshment and eventually I get hooked in all over again. Today I will detach with love and I will allow others the dignity of their own path. I am grateful to have found recovery. If I teach, it will be by example. When I see someone I care about locked in this disease, I want to run and help. I want to tell them what to do to get better. But time and again, this hasn t worked. In fact, it usually blows up in my face. Today my emotional sobriety allows me to have perspective and to let someone else recover at their pace not mine. Today I can model recovery quietly and steadily.Other people have their own Higher Power and it s not me
-- Edited by hiraeth on Friday 6th of November 2015 07:45:31 PM
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You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. Plato
Hiraeth Im loving your post and its makes lots of sense.
im very concious that no matter which way I jump my child is affected in some way.
if I walk away then rules and boundaries will need to be put in place to ensure her safety and they will lose one of the things they needs ie a mum. they will also probabley resent me later in life.
if i stick with it then there are still consequences and i have to limit exposure. My partner thankfully doesnt drink in front of either of us so what is seen is already limited thankfully. Im taking posative action to minimise my bad reactions to it.
the difficult part is allowing my partner sufficient slack to recover without controlling the situation. The good days are actually great and you wouldnt think there was a problem!
your comments about ACoC are interesting as I think one of the causes of my partners actions is a parent who is clearly still suffering.
Can a person working AA also go to Alanon & ACoC As thats whats probabley needed.
Many of my friends in ACoA have come from AA. They frequently say that the healing they receive in ACoA is deeper and more directly relevant to them than AA was. Understanding the trauma syndrome of being a child of alcoholics is very valuable to them. So yes, it is possible for AA members to also attend ACoA or al anon meetings but obviously it would have to be self driven. They have to find their own way there and they have to want it. Otherwise they just sit there with closed ears & everything just bounces off them.
Interesting that you think it is your responsibility to make it easy for the alcoholic to get sober and recover. That if you cut them slack you will somehow improve the odds and the deadly flipside of that sword: that if you upset the alcoholic or make life hard for them they will drink and it will be your fault. It took me 30 YEARS to stop believing that delusion! The stark reality is there is nothing you can do or not do to influence the alcoholic's trajectory. Difficult to accept. Difficult to believe we are that powerless, that years of our genuine, earnest, heart & soul unconditional well-wishing amounts to nothing good. It flies in the face of everything we've been taught about love and positivity. This disease takes love and devotion and twists it manipulatively, exploits it.
You have difficult choices to make. May your path ahead reflect your deepest truth, be grounded in realism and take you to places of genuine joy xxx you deserve the best
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You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. Plato
Hi Lee
I will jump in here too and share my experience. I have struggled with this question too. Should I leave for my daughter's sake? Should I stay for my daughter's sake? I myself decided to give it the 6 months of alanon to decide if I would leave. In the meantime I have been working on detachment. For me I have found a number of things changed. My AH does things that upset my daughter. As hard as it is I try not to interfere with it. My AH can be harsh with her at times about things and make her feel bad. I used to run interference. Try to talk to my AH and talk to my daughter. That just put me right in the middle of things where he would argue with me and blame me for his disagreement with her and she would come to me every time she had a problem with him and not talk to him. More often than not I came out as the bad guy from a situation I had no control over (and my attempt to make it better only made it worse). Now when my AH is harsh with her I tell him what I Think very clearly and briefly "you were very harsh with her when you said...." and then I leave it at that. I don't nag I don't continue to press the issue to force him to apologize etc etc. And when my daughter complains about her dad I listen and reassure her and I tell her she should talk to him about it (and surprisingly she does). Unfortunately or fortunately this is the father she has. Me staying or leaving will not change her experiences with him as he would want to see her as much as he possibly could even if I left. If there was emotional or physical abuse I would leave immediately. but for me it seems to be his moodiness and his anger that comes out in not so great ways. I do detach with a young child in the household.
And what is helpful for me when I detach is it gives me time and mental energy to focus on what is really important. When I detach I feel like I can clearly work the slogan "first things first". When I am so enmeshed with my AH trying to anticipate his needs, help him with any issues he is having at work, sort out problems with him and our daughter, him and his family, him and his friends I had nothing left to give to my daughter. Now that I don't worry about those things as much because I am letting him take responsibility for them I see huge changes. I have time to focus more on enjoying my time with my daughter. Giving her more attention, support with school work, practicing reading or just plain having fun with her. And my daughter is thriving because I was able to detach from my AH. She is still disappointed by him but she has a mother who isn't so stressed out all the time who can be there for her when things get stressful.
I also find the more I detach the more my AH takes responsibility. When I started plainly pointing out when he was harsh and when she started to go to him and tell him he hurt her feelings he changed his behaviour. He's far from perfect but he doesn't get into a funk where everything she does is wrong (like he used to). The upset and disappointment for my daughter is a lot less.
I used to think it was my job as a mother to shield my daughter from anything that could ever make her feel bad. To make things right for her no matter what it takes. But I can't possibly control everything that happens to her (as much as I wish I could). What I can do is be a support to her. Listen to her, care for her and help her to figure out how she will solve her own problems. I detach from my AH while remaining married. I focus on what is important. I don't try to predict how she will turn out because it isn't possible to do that. No one knows for sure. I have faith that even if she struggles in life, even if she falls down she will find the strength to pick herself back up. THat is how I cope with detachment and with my daughter dealing with an AF.
