FireSprite

It IS an insult to your intelligence Stung, and furthermore, an insult to his OWN intelligence as well. But addiction isn't intelligent. It doesn't discriminate that way, and it's not conquerable that way either. He's not respecting himself at all - he's setting himself up with boundaries he knows how to cross & maybe has been from the beginning. I've heard that called 'throwing pillows ahead' or something like that... the act of providing yourself a soft place to land knowing you intend to relapse.

It sounds like he is living IN a relapse right now, i.e. actively drinking again? That would be very difficult for me at THIS stage of my recovery. How long can YOU go on like this? The MIL thing would be a big concern for me - from the sound of it on his own he'd shrink away from custody, but that she'd bully him into it out of personal spite.

Ugh, I wish I had better ES&H to share, but I don't. I have to point out though - as this thread progresses, it seems like you know your answers to the questions you originally posed, don't LIKE the answers & are already examining the reasons why....... effectively challenging your thinking to change. That is the WORK in recovery, IMO.

EmmyG

Don't have much to offer right now, Stung. I just wanted to say that I read all of your posts, and you are a real benefit to this board. I appreciate your honesty and real talk. I admire your strength. I relate to so much of what you say. I haven't been to Alanon. I'm way overdue and I feel ready. I am just afraid there will be no one there like me. I'm sure I'm wrong about that. It's just intimidating.

Stung

Yeah, I think he's been secretly drinking and trying to trick his breathalyzer, but not really tricking it but just manipulating the schedule - which is stupid because his breathalyzer is 100% voluntary. It's his own self created system that he's trying to fool.

I called him out on his meetings earlier this week and now he's been actually going to meetings the past few days. It's frustrating because it puts me in the position of mother/enforcer again. It's like he craves being held accountable but at the same time he really resents it. He wants me to play mommy to him and then he wants to rebel against me. I don't want to play mommy but damn it, I don't want to be lied to either.

I wish he would figure his **** out without my participation. And I wish I could be completely disinterested in his recovery. I'm so mad at myself for feeling so invested in whether he drinks or not. It's just that he's lying about it to my face and I bite my tongue or roll my eyes, I'm not reacting angrily and instead I just ruminate on how this makes me feel - which is so freaking hard for me. I want to lecture and tell him how stupid all of this is.

At the end of the day, this really just doesn't need to be a bigger force in my life than I allow it to be. His alcoholism is his and his recovery is his but so help me, if he insists on telling me lies I'm going to start becoming less available to spend time with him.

Rosalba

Perhaps the time you spend with him, whether emotionally or physically, would be better spent on you, regardless of whether he carries on drinking, lying or not. While I can totally understand why you would want a good outcome from his recovery, it will not come because of any involvement on your part, but because it will be something he desires for himself. 'He wants you to play mommy to him' so he can rebel is absolutely spot on, I suspect. And while you continue to play mommy, enforce and in other ways take on a parental role, he will continue to rebel... and so the merry-go-round continues...

What this actually means is that you are allowing yourself to be controlled by him, to be manoeuvred into taking roles that you don't want to take, and while you're actively participating in his recovery (ha ha!) you are ignoring your own. I'd be worried about feeding my own codependency in that situation.

You have a choice as to whether or not you play mommy to him. At the moment you are justifying this choice by saying you don't want to be lied to. However, he's going to carry on lying, if that's what he wants to do, regardless of what you do or say. You have the choice as to whether you carry on playing mommy to another adult, or turn your quite considerable energies on yourself, on developing your own life and your own self esteem regardless of what he does or doesn't do. Being less available to him seems a sensible choice right now.

I know which I'd do.

Stung

He is WAY into an active relapse. He's here and I think he's struggling because he cannot drink while he's here. He told me last night that I deserve for him to not drink. Then this morning, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I snooped through his phone. He hasn't been to therapy in a few weeks. His therapist left him a voicemail saying that she's going to turn off the service for his sober link if he doesn't call her back soon.

I asked him this morning when the last time he saw his therapist was and why he's not seeing her. He said he's ashamed. He's hiding from her, from his home group, from his sober buddies. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY HE ISN'T GOING!!

Not my monkey, not my circus. Not my pig, not my farm. Not my monkey, not my circus. Not my pig, not my farm.

CodeJob

You know, I get so irked with the monkey phrase. Bc at the end of the day, he is your husband and father of your kids. Those relationship connections have legal ramifications and emotional connections that are a serious undertaking to disconnect. It's not like you can sell him on Craigslist or post him for free to good home!

Stung, you are listening to your gut. You know he's messing with himself. You feel he wants you to mother/enforce him. Maybe you need to just give Him a 90 day break. No contact. Work on each other and get back to therapy. Just see if he picks up his own problems without you. I imagine some of his chosen approach is FOO? Mine likes to bury problems. We have a diamond mine at this juncture under the house.

Take care if you. I also agree it does not sound like he does much in the family life/parenting dept....

Stung

CJ, I agree with the phrase in terms of his problems. He is not my problem and he is only a fixture in my mind as much as I allow him to be. I'm giving his problems a LOT more power than they actually have.

He told me a little while ago that he's going to move back to our hometown and try to replicate what he was doing in Jan - May. Now he's reading to our girls and I'm trying to just stay away. He is here for THEM not for me. He's planning on moving away today. I'll be missing my meeting today, which blows but it's my responsibility to make arrangements so that I can get myself to meetings. I need to find a solid babysitter soon.

Stung

Regarding steps… I met with my sponsor yesterday and we had a nice long chat. She said I need to work on step 0 which is the serenity prayer. I specifically need to pay attention to the 'accept the things that I cannot change' portion. She told me that the first time she heard it she thought to herself "what tiny list of things would that be?" LOL

Then, as if some kind of higher power was trying to tell me something, my baby went into anaphylactic shock last night after dinner, resulting in the use of Epi Pens and calling 911. I am powerless. And after last night, I could give a flying flip about AH and his problems. I'm going to focus on my own problems and pray to my daughter's higher power and meditate on the goodness that are my children. I am beyond powerless and I just want what I have. The quick brush of having what matters to me the most being taken away from me was my reality check. I would be a wreck, a hallow shell, without one of my babies.

And to really drive this point home, I kept finding a similar message of acceptance throughout all of the books and movies we watched today. In Pinkalicious, she accepts that it's actually better to be her regular color instead of pink (she's perfect just as she is.) In Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit realizes that bouncing is actually kind of fun and the more that he tries to control Tigger that the more stressful his life becomes and Tigger just kept doing what he was doing regardless of all of the energy that Rabbit was pointlessly exerting. In This Moose Belongs to Me, Wilfred learns that Marcel is going to do whatever Marcel wants to do. He can choose to enjoy Marcel as he is or not but he cannot make Marcel follow his rules. It goes on and on and on. So now the question is, why is it that this is a pretty basic lesson that I'm inadvertently teaching to my own children but I resist grasping the principle without being met with consequences first? Here I am reading self help books and the answers are in children's books. Accept yourself. Accept others. Accept that you're in control of very little in life and the universe is laughing at your rules.

honeypig

What a great, great post, Stung! Thanks so much for all that you've shared in this thread.

readerbaby71

Stung, so sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope she's doing better today. Kids' books really are brilliant for teaching life lessons in a subtle way. At bedtime I've been making up stories for the children I babysit lately and I feel like I need to refine my blunt, bashing them-over-the-head "moral" of the story. LOL, I'm always a critic.

CodeJob

Stung,

Hugs. I hope all is OK this morning with you and your daughter!

Well, I was absolutely addicted to this song when it came out! It has the Serenity Prayer at the open... So I guess I nailed my step 0 long before I came to Al Anon.

SINÉAD O'CONNOR ::: FEEL SO DIFFERENT - YouTube

Florence

Stung, I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. Food allergy? I hope she's okay.

I love this.

True story. I was really coming to understand addiction and what it was going to mean to me and my marriage when I was pregnant, and then when my DD3 was born, someone introduced me to this Elizabeth Mitchell song, a cover of "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. I'm not a huge Marley fun, but my DD loved it, so we listened to it all the time. For some reason every time I heard it I was reduced to a messy puddle of tears for MONTHS. There was something about the little child's voice in that song singing not to worry, that everything was going to be okay, living that simple, happy moment with the birds on a doorstep in the morning. It reminded me that all the insanity I was living with was temporary one way or another, and to be grateful for easy pleasures. Anyway, it might be trite and crazy, but yeah, those children's lessons are a great reminder of the genesis of our Al-Anon work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBeNx5qiTL8

Thumper

Oh no - how scary! My son and I took a life flight helicopter ride to closest PICU earlier this year so I understand how something like that can immediately shift our perspectives.

I loved your children's story shares. So True!! Dr Seuss is chucked full of little nuggets of wisdom too.

Rosalba

And A A Milne!

Stung

Oh I forgot to add that baby DD is fine. Her face is still a little swollen and she's still a little itchy but she's eating and drinking fine now. We're meeting with her allergist next week to figure out what's going on. She has had other pasta sauces before and not had a reaction, so I'm stumped. I think I'm going to try making homemade pasta sauce moving forward. I feel like I should start my own line of allergy free foods.

Hammer

Yep. Some fancier talkers say it something like this . . . (but I like your version just fine) . . . .

And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.…"