is appropriate. But what he is looking for from her is assurance that "everything is now okay" and that's a message she should not send.
Besides, Dom, I wasn't addressing Fran's reaction to her H's actions, my post was addressed to you (which is why I began it with your name) to tell you that normal rules of relating don't apply with active alcoholics. They live in an altered universe.
No one drinks the way alcoholics drink unless they're medicating a tremendous amount of pain-- which is why it is appropriate to show them extreme compassion, but that compassion does NOT include sparing them exposure to their own pain.
I'm always amused (and not in a good way) by alcoholic/addict movies where the last scene of the movie shows the person attending their first AA/NA meeting and checking into rehab... then fade to credits... as though this were the end of the journey. Actually after a person acknowledges that they have a problem and quits using, THAT'S when hell really begins.
Because all the pain is still there, but now there is no anesthesia. Plus, your BODY is screaming for the drink or the drug, too, so you have emotional AND physical pain, too.
ALL of this blots out everything else... the R, the W, the kids, the job... all there is is pain. That's why people go to AA. Because there are people there who truly understand what you are going through in a way that no one else can. (Like no one really understands what childbirth is like who has not gone through it.)
When someone first stops drinking, AA suggests "90 meetings in 90 days," which means an AA meeting EVERY DAY for the first three months. Why? Because you need to be with people who care, who know how much you are suffering, who can talk you through it, listen, hold your hand... whatever.
The more I'm with my bf, the more I am convinced that his 30+ years of heavy drinking and drugging caused brain damage. He seems incapable of "normal" responses to me... and now that I'm with him and his mom most of most days, I see him doing the same thing with her. There's a defensiveness that is so habitual and ingrained that there may be nothing he can do about it...
The role of the partner of a substance abuser is to get out from between him and his substance so that he can experience the full consequences of his actions. That doesn't mean being rude or cruel to him/her. That's why alanon helps the partner. It's a place to get support, to see and hear how others are coping with the IDENTICAL situation that you are in. You can't expect emotional support from your substance abusing partner. S/He is in crisis mode and has no emotional resources available for you.
I remember one time with my bf back when he was drinking (OH WHY OH WHY DIDN'T I RUN FOR THE HILLS? BECAUSE I'M A COMPLETE IDIOT!), and it was late Saturday night and he was low on beer or wine or whatever. He had been drinking steadily all evening (as he did every evening) and had lost track of the time. He looked at the clock and noticed that it was past the time when the convenience stores were allowed to sell beer. (They have to stop selling beer at a certain time on Saturday-- I never knew this.) He went into an absolute panic. He even said, "Oh God, I didn't realize it was so late. I can't go buy any more beer!" Getting very agitated. Finally, his solution was to go in the bedroom and get some pot. He smoked that to get past the anxiety of being without beer! AND I SAT THERE AND WATCHED THAT!
The most difficult thing for me to understand is that I really am getting in H's way by sticking around and picking up the pieces for him. My story about D6 wasn't just about boundary setting it was about her development, she's 6 she can dress herself, not only can she dress herself she can decide for herself that she really ought to be getting ready now if she wants to go to school dressed rather than in pyjamas. By not setting the boundary firmly enough I was hindering her development and leaving her at an infantile stage. Equally My H is 40 he ought to be able to decide for himself that it's time to quit drinking if he wants to lead a fulfilling life and not wake up each morning feeling terrible and letting the work he couldn't complete in the daytime bleed into the evening and weekends. I am hindering that developmental stage by allowing him to continue to behave like a teenager.
This morning I just felt so sorry for him. He had spent time with the kids taking them to the science museum, then he had gone in to his office to get some stuff he needed to do some work. He spent the evening doing that work and then the VPN link went down and he lost what he was doing. All of this could of course have happened whether or not he drinks, but I contend that he could confine his work to the weekdays if he was able to concentrate better on it, then he wouldn't have had to depend on working over the VPN. It tugged my heart strings to see him looking so pitiable this morning at 6.30 when he got up to try and catch up with what he lost last night, and when I know he is struggling to get an invoice submitted in time for this month.
Frankly though his Herculian struggles to keep us fed and housed don't really impress me like they once did. I can't help thinking that he has the few loyal customers he has because of inertia and he won't get any new ones while he goes round looking like a homeless person. I have talked to him about self-care and about how it affects how people see him but he just hears this as me telling him he's ugly. If he has work to catch up with in the evening why does he spend 3 hours on it, opening another beer every half an hour and coming away from his desk to smoke for 10 minutes out of every 30. If he didn't do that he could probably get it sewn up in an hour. Other guys bring a decent income home and still have time to do things like run the under 10's football team, act as school governers, keep themselves healthy and fit, spend quality time with their families etc. The addictions take up a tremendous amount of TIME and they take up a tremendous amount of my time too.
I don't know if any of you guys have seen the comedian Chris Rock - he's black and he talks about niggahs. He has no time for them and one of his lines goes "Niggahs want your respect for stuff they SUPPOSED to do - right? They say stuff like 'I take care of my kids'. Duh! Your SUPPOSED to take care of your kids."
That's how I feel H is, he wants respect for the stuff he's SUPPOSED to do. I can just hear him in my head "I go out and EARN a living".
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
One thing to bear in mind as a Type 7 is that your H's dependency issues are actually giving you a certain amount of structure in your life. It's like you have a chronically sick child who is constantly ringing an annoying little bell to remind you to do yet another tedious task to care for him. If you guys separate you will experience a wonderful feeling of freedom at first but then you will have to start building up more of your own structure to deal with certain life tasks. For instance, I am thoroughly delighted to never wake up and see a post-it note that says "Clean Me" on my coffee maker but I now need to make my own decisions about how often and how thoroughly to clean the coffee maker. My decision has pretty much been informed by the thought "Any anal retentive (picky-*ss) coffee drinking people who want to be my friend can drink coffee with me elsewhere." Same thing holds true regarding my physical appearance. My 2bx hassled me to lose weight. The guy I'm dating now thinks I would look hotter if I put on 20 lbs. of muscle. I have decided to simply workout on a regular basis and keep my waistline at 29 inches because that makes me feel healthy and dress either like an overgrown cheerful toddler or an overgrown cheerful toddler who scrounged around in the costume box for something to wear to an adult event because that makes me feel cheerful.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Frankly though his Herculian struggles to keep us fed and housed don't really impress me like they once did. I can't help thinking that he has the few loyal customers he has because of inertia and he won't get any new ones while he goes round looking like a homeless person. I have talked to him about self-care and about how it affects how people see him but he just hears this as me telling him he's ugly. If he has work to catch up with in the evening why does he spend 3 hours on it, opening another beer every half an hour and coming away from his desk to smoke for 10 minutes out of every 30. If he didn't do that he could probably get it sewn up in an hour.
Dude's got ADD. Last time we talked you didn't see that many signs of it, but now I figure he just hid it well, and hid from you in part because he's ashamed of it. And I'd guess he took up drinking for the same reason. He doesn't ever stop "looking busy" because he thinks if he does someone will see him "slacking off" and yell at him to get back to work. Mrs. Eddie could have written all that a couple of years ago, except for the bit about the drinking.
And you're right, mothering him in any form is a bad idea.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
Well it could be that for sure or it could be that trying to get stuff done while drunk/hungover is not generally productive. My sister reminded me that workaholism often goes hand in hand with alcoholism. Partly as a way to fund the drinking and partly as an alternative "mind alteration". It's easier to keep your mind off pain/worry/shame etc if you are busy. He's also a big worrier and stress monkey, so if he has a heavy deadline he has to medicate his anxiety, which of course makes it more difficult to meet the deadline.
I have spent 16 years trying to diagnose what's up with him, unless he wakes up and realises that there IS something wrong and that he's not just a hard-working guy with a slut of a wife who's entitled to a few beers to wind down then he's never going to change. There is no point me saying he suffers from ADD, Alcoholism, Anxiety disorder or whatever. The only thing for me to know is that his lifestyle is making us all miserable and there isn't a snowball's chance in he!! that he's going to listen to my opinion about it. The cage must be rattled and rattled good.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
Just popping in to say how sorry I am that you are going through this. Alcoholism is in my family -- my father and his brother are both alcoholics.
Your H may be quite a bit like my father -- type 4, emotional, easily stressed, very much the worrier (actually sounds like me, only without the alcohol). My type 1 mother pretty much took over mothering my father when she married him. I don't know how she has managed all these years. He suffered a stroke about 4 years ago and she is his full time caregiver. She recently told me that she was glad she had stayed married to him because if she hadn't, who would care for him now? She always saw him as someone she had to take care of, and she most definitely enabled him. (And I am not suggesting that you should stay married. I always thought my mother was crazy to put up with it. My aunt divorced my uncle because it was so bad.)
Your H is no doubt suffering from depression, which is only exacerbated by the alcohol. Depression will make him procrastinate so that he can't seem to get anything done. Add ADD to the mix and he's got big problems.
Alcoholics have no idea how bad they look. It was often embarrassing to be seen with my father because his personal hygiene left a lot to be desired. Never mind the embarrassing things that he did and said.
Lil is absolutely correct in everything she has said. (Not that she needed me to say that. ) I agree that Alanon meetings will be enormously helpful for you. I always wished my mother had gone to Alanon, but she never would. ("Why should I, I'm not the one with the problem." )
Hang in there Fran. It sounds like you've got a good handle on things.
mrs.cac
P.S. Lil -- so sorry about all you've been dealing with too.
One thing to bear in mind as a Type 7 is that your H's dependency issues are actually giving you a certain amount of structure in your life. It's like you have a chronically sick child who is constantly ringing an annoying little bell to remind you to do yet another tedious task to care for him.
This is ABSOLUTELY true, and one of the ways that the "he is addicted to alcohol and the partner is addicted to the alcoholic."
Is it any coincidence that my late H had health problems that were the center of our life together. The man I dated before him also had health problems and wound up having a heart transplant. (When my H had the kidney transplant that led a friend to dub me the "Transplant Queen" ) So now I'm with a man who is a recovering alcoholic and who goes from one crisis to another. The latest crisis is that he lost his wallet. It's always something.
This means that my life is always about the other person and not about me. The other person's needs have been so "un-ignorable" that my life has wound up being about making sure he (whoever HE is) is okay.
This is the life of the partner of the alcoholic... spending years trying to figure him out. That's what alanon helps with: showing you how to live YOUR life, whether or not you leave him.
Also the Type 7 is prone to alcoholism. Any type can be an alcoholic, but addiction (gluttony, excess, overdoing) is a particular weakness for the 7.
Thanks Mrs Cac. It's helped me see that I don't want to my your mum in 30 years time (or even 20 the way things are going).
Last night H texted me to say he would be home late "going to be late, kiss the kids, love you" was the message. This was at 5.45 in the afternoon when Tuesday is normally a night he comes home early and does stuff with the kids and puts them to bed.
I was on the phone to my sister when the message came, and she gave me a big pep talk which was helpful. I'd just been reading alot on the internet about PA behaviour. Every word fits him to a tee. Mind you I can see I have traits of it myself.
So I texted back to say "I was hoping to talk to you tonight, but I'll just have to email you instead". Thinking that I would finally just send that email I nearly sent last week. He phoned to ask what I wanted to talk about. The kids were milling around so I couldn't be very explicit. He didn't get it so I finally shut the door and said "I want to talk about whether I want to stay married to you".
He finally came home about 9.00. We had the talk, I told him I felt like our lives were falling apart around us and that we were just getting in each other's way. That we needed to separate just so we could know if we could make it on our own. After a bit of toing and froing he agreed but didn't agree with my idea that we could just live under the same roof for a while to sort out the arrangements and do Christmas as planned. He thought I was crazy to even contemplate it. I told him I felt like we were living as two separate people anyway, and I didn't feel like it would make that much difference. I'm living day in day out with the feeling that I'm not loved and I shouldn't be in this marriage and just getting on with living that lie for the sake of the kids, so why would it make any difference whether that's out in the open or not? It's still the same feeling.
We were very open with each other and didn't even get angry at all once. I didn't tell him to go to AA. Maybe I should have but from what I read you can't tell someone to go. Maybe I'm wrong here? Lil?
His last line of defence against separating was that he wouldn't play ball about Christmas, he would just phone his parents and tell them it's all off. When I said I hoped we could stay as part of an extended family and that I would hope we could visit together and have weekends together from time to time he said "so you don't want me you just want me to be around when it's convenient". I said no that wasn't the reason that it was for the kids that I would want them to have time with their grand-parents and the odd time when all four of us were together.
His solutions just seemed like more of the same, more "lets just try to be nice to each other". So I said I couldn't do that anymore that we need to be much more radical and that the only way I could see to be radical was to separate. He didn't come up with any bright ideas of his own.
We talk a bit about the L word. He feels it's fundamental to his being to feel in love with someone and the cold harsh reality of knowing I don't feel that way about him would just make him too miserable to stay under the same roof with me. I told him that for me love has never been a constant or given thing, it ebbs and flows like the tide. When the tide is out I just say it anyway in the hopes that I can get back to feeling the way I do when the tide is in. It amazes me that he can use a word like "in love" I don't know what he's talking about. I don't feel like I'm around someone who's "in love" with me. And how can he not have felt that I haven't felt that way about him much for a very long time. Maybe he thinks if he can be in love and not really show it then I can too.
We talked about the IUD problem too, about how totally let down and upset I felt that he had put up with this problem for so long all the while making me feeling undesirable and just willingly discarding the best part of our M. He said "second best" then said "first best is being in love". I'm sorry that makes me want to puke. And if that makes me a seriously mixed up chick then I'm a seriously mixed up chick.
I didn't let the L word out of my mouth, I know I don't feel it so why say it, even in that namby pamby "I love you like a brother" way. I know now deep down that I Love You has meant "don't leave me".
We seem to have moved to a different page. We've cut past some of the crap that has been getting in the way of communicating. He actually said "we need to be more emotionally honest with each other" hallelujah! This puppy-dog in love stuff is seriously irritating me though, what's the point of moon-light and roses if you can't come through for someone when they need you? It's just adolescent stuff - still.
I could ramble on I guess forever. The state of play seems to be that Christmas is still on and that we are talking turkey (!) with each other. More turkey needed and less tinsel.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
) I agree that Alanon meetings will be enormously helpful for you. I always wished my mother had gone to Alanon, but she never would. ("Why should I, I'm not the one with the problem." 
)