Still Dating

[labug]

I've been reading several threads in Newcomers where alcohol is a player in the marriage. It is like having a third person involved because the person you once new is different, but does show up sometimes.

Anyway, it's brought up a lot of stuff for me so I thought I'd journal about it here, it might be helpful to others.

I had a problem with my H's drinking. It started with a beer or 2 some nights after work. I drank to, sometimes wine, sometimes beer. Then he got to drinking every night and not just one or two. He drank every night until he fell asleep/passed out. The weekends he drank more and at times he tried to hide how much he was drinking. I found empty bottles in all kinds of unusual places. He always smelled like stale beer, wasn't there for the kids or me, was uncommunicative, morose, boring.

I watched the man I loved and respected who was a wonderful, caring, involved father, disintegrate before my eyes.

I kept quiet for a long time thinking, he'll get his act together, he'll slow down.

He didn't.

Then I got resentful and p/a, my misguided thinking and faulty defense mechanisms only making the situation worse. But at the time I thought my actions might help him see the light without me directly saying anything (somehow you feel there's defeat in saying it aloud or if I don't name it, it's not really there)

I also had a bit of self-delusion/denial going on, thinking "He works every day so maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing"

A bit of my love and respect for my H died every time I heard another cap come off another bottle of beer (I can still feel the cringe)or awoke in the middle of the night to his snoring and the smell of stale alcohol.

But after a while the sons (early teens then) and I were miserable and they talked to me about how unhappy they were due to Dad's drinking. Time to let go of the denial and get real.

So, scared to death (of what?) I confronted my husband with as much love and compassion as I could muster and told him if he didn't get help to stop drinking, he needed to find another place to live. The boys and I were worried about him, we loved him but we could no longer stand by and watch this.

So I guess I was the WAS at that time.

This was before I found AlAnon, years before actually. H did get help. It was a rocky road because he didn't initially address the whys of the drinking and I continued to be the W of a problem drinker, angry, resentful, controlling, P/A...it wasn't until H walked away that I started going to AlAnon. At my first Newcomer's meeting I read a pamphlet and sobbed because it described me to a T.

So I got the help I needed. Even tho H had stopped drinking, we were still trapped in the same dysfunctional R.

AlAnon was instrumental in getting me healthy, along with lots of other resources. I'm an introvert and not a "joiner" so taking the step to go to mtgs was huge for me but the support of real live people was/is powerful. Also attended CoDA for a while.

I made it my goal to do as much as I could to become who I was meant to be. No matter what happened in my marriage, I was destined to repeat the same mistakes if I didn't fix me. I went to 3 mtgs/week for a while, I volunteered, I have my wonderful IC, I found DB and these boards and lots of other helpful books.

I started my days with this on my bathroom mirror: We admitted we were powerless over others—that our lives had become unmanageable.

It's been a long journey and it's not over yet but I'm a content person and I believe H and I now have the tools we both need to create a healthy R.