Age 58 here and believe me, it's no different from being in your 40's.
Re my bf's reaction: here are the details. (Hijack ahead.) About 7-8 weeks ago, my bf said a former work colleague had called him up about something and in passing, bf had mentioned that he had stopped drinking. This guy told him about an AA meeting on Tuesdays in town that is very good. (All are NOT created equal.) So bf got really excited and happy and said he had been looking for a good AA meeting and was planning to go to this one and his friend J who is also a recovering A had been looking for one, too, and they were going to go together. I was also very happy, because I know a good AA/alanon meeting is a very worthwhile thing.
So I didn't say any more at the time. But when next Tuesday rolled around, he didn't go. Then the next Tuesday rolled around and I asked him if he was planning on going, reminding him of how excited he was when he found out about it. He bit my head off in the usual way that he does several times a day and said "NO! I wasn't planning on it!"
A month or so goes by and he doesn't go. Meanwhile he skips a couple of C sessions, spending the day instead in his shorts surfing the web (NO he's not looking at other women-- I'm positive of that.) As I see him personally deteriorating, my anxiety level goes up. Where I normally take a xanax two or three times a year for panic attacks, lately I've been taking them every three days or so. I'm also thinking of killing myself more than I have in recent years. Of course, I'm not going to do it, but thinking about it can't be a good sign.
Finally two weeks ago at the C session that we go to together, I asked him in front of the C to commit to going to the meeting at least once just to see if he liked it. He got very huffy, and asked me "what will YOU get out of it?" I said that when his life is better, MY life is better. Also that it concerns me that the only people he has regular interaction with is me, his mom, and the C, and that's not enough of a cross-section of humanity to maintain his balance. (I said it better than that.) Now that the girls are away at college, the rhythm of seeing them every other week that balanced our life and pulled us back to reality is missing. Very grudgingly he agreed to go.
The next Tuesday came and he didn't go. I didn't say anything.
This past Tuesday came, and I said, "I know you hate for me to bring this up, but were you planning on going to that meeting?"
He was Mr. Cheerful-Thanks-for-Reminding-Me, called his friend, and they went. HE LOVED IT! It'a an all-male meeting. He said the guys there are SO solid and so supportive. It was one of the most uplifting and positive experiences he has had and his friend J loved it, too.
I was very happy about this. I didn't ask him a lot about the meeting. I want him to have positive spiritual and personal experiences that have nothing to do with me and that I'm not part of. Since he's not working (he's doing a bunch of computer stuff for his mom at the bar), it's SOOOO important to have contact with other people. And having found this solid group of men in recovery for him to be around and learn from -- and the fact that he was receptive to it and liked it-- well, I felt very happy.
Yesterday we went to the C, and bf brought up the meeting. The C was familiar with the meeting and said he had taken several men to it. The regulars there (about 20-30 men) are in solid recovery. BF said one guy came in who had been in the group a long time ago, and had gone back to drinking, but now was back on the wagon and back at the group. The C asked how the group received him, and bf said, "They embraced him and loved him! They were so welcoming-- it was fantastic."
Listening to this, I felt so happy, warm and fuzzy happy-- happy that he had found this group, gone to it, liked it, found men to admire and look up to. Then I chimed in with something along the lines of, "It means so much to me that you can have this positive thing going on that's just for YOU-- it's not for me, not for your mom, not for the kids, not for the house-- it's not a chore-- it's purely for your own spiritual good! And the fact that J wants to go with you-- you can mutually support each other. PLUS the fact that, even though they pass the hat, it's basically FREE! By that I mean, if some day you don't have any cash on you, you can still go!"
At some point, he just shut me up. "Okay, okay, I WENT to the damn meeting! Geez..." And he didn't say it in an exasperated-affectionate way. He said it in that very typical sarcastic put-down get off my back way.
I turned to the C and said, "What did I just do to get that reaction?"
The C said, "Well, you were feeling happy and celebratory and your bf didn't react well to that."
I said, "Yes, I was so happy. Happy for him. Happy that he had a positive experience. And I was expressing that happiness and noting other positive things. And he just shut me down."
The C said something like, "Well, it's not all black and white." Then me made a little face at me like the kind of face you make at a child who is being difficult. "Now, you'll get over it. It wasn't that bad." No, that one reaction wasn't that bad, but that is TYPICAL of the way bf treats me! This is why I request kindness and civility from him; because he cannot seem to be kind and civil. I didn't say this, because I was too hurt and mad at the time by the C's dismissal of my feelings.
Then the C turned to bf, and said, "SO, what else has been going on?"
I said, "I've had about enough of this," got up and walked out.
So my happiness, as cobra incorrectly inferred, was not over something happy that happened to me while bf is down; it was about something happy that he did for himself that I figure will make his life better and so will make my life better through the trickle-down effect.
But instead my happiness and my expression of that was discounted by bf AND by the C. I was given that "oh she's so emotional, one of those woman-things" bullsh!t reaction.
And by God, it hurt! It hurt to be dissed that way. What really hurt was for the C to see exactly what happened, namely, that I was celebrating, and that my bf did not react in a kind and civil way, and then for the C to diss me!
I want my bf to treat me with kindness and civility. He seems incapable of that. The C told him last time that since he's been sober ~ three years, that right now he's at the emotional level of a three-year old.
