The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
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For over 1/2 of my life I have loved a man.. We had children and built a life together that some would say looked perfect. Our love obvious to everyone, just one problem.. My husband is an alcoholic... The drinking got worse with every passing year... Christmas parties became a drunk fest as did weddings, picnics and friends partys. With each event my children experiencing their father at his worse.. Now nearly 20 years later we are here... Living apart and I am not sure how to function without him.
Tonight we went to dinner, started okay then we started talking about counseling, making changes and working on our marriage and he says ... I cant be hurt anymore, I just dont know if I can do this again ? Suddenly, my heart dropped... I said that I wont BEG you to work on our marriage... How do they do that ?? Turn things around like that.. ?????
I am in pain, not knowing how to live without him.. Each day I pray to my HP that the LOVE will fade away and I will not have the URGE to call him that I try so hard to fight .. The kids are okay, they seem content that their father is gone.. I wish I could say the same.. I know that I will survive but i wish i could go to sleep and wake up when the pain is gone...
Now I begin to doubt myself, maybe things werent so bad... Maybe I was wrong... I... I ... I.... I am so CO DEPENDENT ..
After so many years of taking care of someone how do you just STOP..?? How can I just STOP ?
I am so sorry for the pain you are in....I totally relate to the co-dependent thing...I was like that for many years.....
I don't have any words of wisdom about your hubs actions, this is what alcholics do they turn it all around.
Sounds like the kids get it, seems like at least they are finding some peace....which is what I wish for you...peace of mind........
Tammy, you can not fix his problem, you can however fix yourself, and please don't think well what the hell is wrong with me ( I know I did). Living on the merry-go-round of addcition is just plain hell, no other words can describe it....
The good thing is, there is a light, when we work on getting off of the merrg-go-round we start to live life again on our terms....and Tammy my friend this is a good thing.
i don't think we can just shut our love off. i know for me it has taken a really long time to turn the focus back to myself. which isn't to say i don't love my ah. i just know that living with him and trying to continue our marriage in the long run would make me miserable. i do love him. we have 3 beautiful kids together. but he is not who i married. and i would have stayed despite that but he just can't stay sober for any length of time now. he has tried very hard in many different ways but for whatever reason he can't do it. so, i have made the decision to divorce and i am ok with that. as much as one can be. for me it has nothing to do with my love for him but all to do with my own serenity and sanity. it took me years to get here and only with the help and support of this program and these people. i left and went back i don't know how many times. as many times as it took for me to make the best decision for me. i used to say i went back for the kids sake but it was really for my sake. and when i finally reached my limit it was because i finally saw the look in my daughter's eyes when her dad didn't show up when he was supposed to. i wish you lots of love and peace. time takes time. you are right where you are supposed to be.( i hate hearing those slogans!!! but they seem so true for me)
Dear one, you just cannot STOP!! It is not possible to turn love off like the kitchen faucet. The idea is to make your decision, and if it is to be apart from the a, then day by day, learn to live with the decision and learn FROM the decision. The time will come when you CAN take care of yourself and live contentedly without this person.
Your question was:
"What is worse livng with an A or living without someone you LOVE ?"
That's an easy one for me. I can sooner live without someone I love than live with an active a. No question about it. But I have always been able to take care of myself, enjoy my own company, and be happy even if I am alone. I don't need someone else to complete me.
I wish you good luck as you go along the path you've chosen, and I will keep you and your family in my prayers. Be easy on yourself, and take it slow and steady. You'll be fine.
Diva
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"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
I know just how you feel, I am going through the same thing. But my man is my boyfriend. He is bitter from his 17 yr marriage breaking up, and can not go on with his life with me. I have to live my life knowing I am in love with a man I will never be able to be with. That is hard.
I fight myself with trying to call him. I told him once, "I would rather sit here and watch hunting, truck & fishing shows with him, than be able to watch what I want alone."
Isn't it amazing how our HP's work? I woke up thinking similar things. I am separated from my recovering AH after 32 years of marriage. This is all my adult life, sharing every major event together, raising 3 sons, death, education, finances, planning our retirement. It doesn't go well when my H and I get together. He has said I don't want to work on our marriage, that counseling didn't work and that I am giving into my disease.
For me this separation has been twofold. I still love my H more than anything. I miss him terribly. I miss our life together. My nights have been very lonely this past year. There is a realization that his disease is the one running the show. The disease will take him and everything else down with it. And the disease doesn't care about love or families or marriage. I have to realize my role in this whole thing as the veil of denial raises from my eyes. Yes we are codependent and forget to take care of ourselves. We focus on the alcoholic and don't take care of ourselves. Some of what we cherish I think is just an illusion.
For myself, I shed alot of tears. I embrace my loneliness and I try to work my program. I know that my HP has something better for me. I know that I get stronger every day inspite of myself. One day at a time. We are truly powerless and this is a hard concept to live with. Hang in there Tammy.
I'm sorry your in this much pain. For me, I tried living with an active A. I couldn't do it. It doesn't mean that I stopped loving my husband. I never have and never will. In time you will learn the difference between being alone and being lonely. It takes time, but it does come.
However, my life had become chaos. I couldn't do it anymore. There were several times I put him out of the house. We made a decision last year to separate for a while so that we could each work on recoveries. However he relapsed, and it was up and down. You know, the usual chaos of living with this disease. This last time, I put my foot down and said no more. HP stepped in and has given him a last chance to live the sober life.
I decided that mainly for medical reasons he could come back here to live. He now has 33 days sobriety and is working his program. The doctors have said that if he drinks, he dies, not in a year but within a week. He has choosen life, so far. I hope that he keeps that up. But I know that if he choose to be active again, I would not live with him.
I will give my life for my husband. I will give him a kidney, liver, any organ. I would jump in front of a moving car. But I will not die for his disease.I will not live in this chaos of active drinking. That's taking back my life.
Live strong,
Karilynn
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It's your life. Take no prisoners. You will have it your way.
For me I dont regret my decission of getting out of the relationship.Do sometimes I think it could of been different or even have the fantasy it was different.Sometimes the most loveing thing you can do is leave.
I remember 3 years ago as I was packing and takeing out all my stuff I cried every step.i knew he never get help if I was there he did hit bottom and got help in AA and met someone in AA and is still with her.
Do I regret leaveing nope cause he is sober and in recovery.Do i still love him yeppers.
Thanks for asking this question. I had not thought to seperate the two ideas and after thinking about it I found I am doing both at the moment. We are sharing a house til I am ready to move and I do not know this person I am living with at all. The person I loved is now there anymore. At this point I am not even sure if I would love that person, after all these years and all the relapses I would not trust him to stick around for long. Each time his crisises get larger and more anger is directed towards me. My heart goes out to all of us living in either situation.
How do they do that ?? Turn things around like that.. ?????
Oh don't ya love it? I know, I always say ok wait a minute I did not do anything. I never tried to hurt you.
It is the same old thing they like self protect themselves like something outside of themselves caused the whole problem, usually us.
For me that longing missing them love. started to calm down, then it just found a comfortable place and sorta filled in a space in my heart and stuck there. Just became a part of me and does not bug me a lot anymore.
For me it can never go away completely I remember feeling like you and saying the same things, and others have to. It is amazing to me after all these years here, how we all go thru the same process.
If we take care of us, find our interests and pursue them, rest, eat well, give and get hugs, come here and share, support, things will get better. You will heal.
For me, I always miss the good stuff of course. I forget about the irritating complaining all the time,the being sick and how it is not from drinking but he has the flu or a cold, the crappy attitude, the always being negative, always thinking of himself, never asks me questions, never thinks to ask what I need, shall I go on....
I kept a journal and I tell ya, if I ever question my decision I just drag it out and read it. Then all the horrible feelings come back.
I don't like living with a monster and that is what my A becomes. It is awful.
I am having trouble with this exact same question. For me, at this point in my life I cannot live without someone I love. I have found out my A was having an affair. We decided to go our seperate ways but when he came by to get some things we started talking and now we are trying to work things out. I guess the answer can be different for different people. For now I have made the decision to try to work this through. Whether this will work out......I don't know. I am trying to hand this over to my higher power to work through this with me. I know exactly what you are feeling and it is the worst feeling in the world. I will keep you in my prayers and I am so sorry for your pain.
I think they are ingenius the way they turn stuff around. The issue is that I am no longer willing to do more than 50% that's it. I am ready to go.
I may have to go in various different ways. For starters I need a life outside of him. He wants my life to be devoted to him. I am not, not anymore. He has pulled the rug out from under me too many times.
I no longer listen or play in when he turns the tables. I am not that uncertain anymore. I know my behavior has been much much much better. He cannot fault me on it.
i can so identify with you. truthfully i don't know whats worse,see i felt the pain everytime my AH got drunk and upset me or the family and then promised it would stop. it never did until he got sober and even now he's been sober for eight months and the behaviours are still there and everytime he's an asshole and he cant see beyond himself it tears me apart.
i have this last week come very close to asking him to leave and moving on with my life for myself and our children, i didn't because i went to the dr and got put on anti depressant pills. the dr told me not to make any major changes but i guess my thoughts were would i be happier without him and although i couldn't honestly answer that what i was sure of was that i couldn't be more unhappy without him than i already was and if he wasn't here maybe i would have more peace and serenity and less stress.
so tammy you have to do whats right for you and no one can tell you if its better with him, i just know that for me the pain is always there and it saddens me that there are lots of us feeling pain alot of the time.
i do hope you feel better soon and you find some peace in your heart.
