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.
Why do they drink when they know it damages themself and the family? How do they justify drinking behavior--after all, they are suffering too?
Reminder: Trying to analyze why another person persists in destructive behavior cannot help me out of my own difficulties. I can overcome them only by turning my thoughts inward, to face my own mistakes and to learn how to improve myself. The alcoholic is not my problem. My problem is me.
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For years I struggled with the question above: why is my spouse continuing to drink seeing what it is doing to our marriage? Then the next few years I have struggled with, OK, I get alcoholism is a disease, but why doesn't my spouse want help? And perhaps now I am getting it--it is up to me to figure out myself. I can get a divorce or stay, I already live half the week away near my son and his family, I have choices, and if I am unhappy I do really have to look at me. It's taken many years for me to reach this place and stop blaming others. I am responsible for my life and my happiness.
The last week ex-AH and I were together we were trying to talk about the fact that I was packing my belongings to move out. As we were talking he pulled a whiskey bottle out of his pocket,dangled it at me and started chugging it. I assumed he dangled it to show me he was gonna drink it for spite. I asked him to please not drink just to spite me because whiskey makes him so mean. His response was "this has nothing to do with you". Of course that upset me,how could his drinking not have anything to do with me? How could him being mean when he was drunk not have anything to do with me? How could packing up to leave him not have anything to do with me? How could any of it not have anything to do with me?
That still sticks out in my mind,him saying that. I still can feel how shocked and upset I was when I think about it.
But now I realize it really didn't have anything to do with me personally. He's an alcoholic,that's what it was about.
I wish I had realized a long time ago all the things I am realizing in hindsight. I could have saved myself so much hurt, arguing,chaos and drama. I guess it took getting off that crazy train and away from it to even be able to think rationally. I really believed my happiness depended on him and what he was or wasn't doing but I was the one making myself unhappy most of the time.
