My husband knows I come here and has known since pretty much the beginning. He really hasn't said much about it because he knows I need to vent or at least to speak my mind and express my feelings.
Last night was the first time he spoke up about it. Now, all things considered this IS an anonomous board. None of you know us any more than we know you. No one here passes any judgements and you all always offer support and encouragement. I did make an effort to explain this fact but he expressed VERY strongly that he does not want me referring to him ever again on here as my "AH" or as an alcohlic in general.
We actually started out last evening discussing other things and since we haven't spent much time together in the past few days, there was lots to catch up on. The sad thing is that the conversation took a turn for the worst and I can't really put my finger on exactly why but it did. It kind of turned into a sobor fight about drinking.
I was expressing my feelings about the fact that his friends are his friends and that I CHOOSE not to associate with them because of their lifestyle. I am not a trusting person as it is and there are a couple whom I do talk to and don't mind hanging out with...the rest...no comment. He of course is upset because he says "How can we go anywhere or do anything together, if I am going to act like I do when he drinks or is drinking around his friends?"
I explained to him that we will have to do other things if we are going to spend time together and why does it always have to include his friends and drinking period? I also said that for 10 years, my life has revolved around him, his activities, his friends and his life. I tried to help him to understand that up to this point, I basically had no life, outside of work, him and the children but that I realize now that I was losing any "self" I had and that it was making me miserable. I tried to explain that it's time for ME to find my OWN happiness, interests and life, outside of his plans.
He is less than accepting of this and even made reference to the fact that I took the kids out Sunday to meet my friend and her kids and I didn't even ASK him to go. He did however forget that the night before when he came home at 1am, after working his butt off all day for the club and also drinking all day into the evening, that he had PLANS for Sunday. Not to mention, he had told me he had a football meeting Sunday at noon. He ended up staying home and lying on the sofa watching a football game, until we came home. THEN, he got up and took our son into the city to handle left over business from the party the day before.
He rarely misses an opportunity to hang out with the guys. For years I berrated him and fussed that he was never home on the weekends and that his friends and fun always came first and that the kids and I were "spare time". I complained always that we were what he did, when he had nothing better to do. NOW, I am trying to find things for the kids and I to do so that I am not resentful of his full social calendar, I am actually keeping us occupied while he goes and does what he wants and he doesn't like that either.
I wouldn't accept that. I WON'T accept that. I am NOT going to sit around this house with these kids anymore on the weekends or otherwise, when he is out with his friends, doing stuff for the club or working at a bar or party DJing if I can help it. It's like the past 10 years, that I have faught with him about the partying, the emotional absence and the physical absence never happened. I did my calm and collected best to make it clear that he has done every single solitary thing that HE wanted since day one. Golf, softball, darts, bowling leagues and just plain old bullcrap stories that he'd be home by 9 and rolled in at 3am drunk off his butt and that FINALLY, I was going to do something with myself more than 2 or 3 times a year. I tried to explain that he doesn't have to change or do anything differently to please me but that I am the one needs to change.
I know none of it sank in last night because he continued to try to leave the room and avoid the whole thing but I kept dragging him back because I needed him to hear me for once and for all. Finally, he just fell silent and didn't say another word.
I am handing him his feedom to be who he is and he is still fighting me. I am telling him that my sadness, lonliness and misery are MINE, I created it by not living my own life and totally trying to take it all off of his shoulders but he still can't hear me.
All he kept harping on was that I DIDN'T INVITE HIM TO THE STINKING MALL but that my friend's husband was invited. He drove the car, dropped them off and went his own way in the mall and we didn't even see him again until it was time to leave.
Don't get me wrong, I UNDERSTAND why he kept harping on this issue.
He claims he invites me everywhere he goes and for the most part, he is correct but he KNOWS I'm not going to go because his lifestyle and friends are not mine. He justs insists that "At least" he invites me. My argument was that maybe, just MAYBE I need to have some time for ME with MY friends and what is so wrong with that? Obviously, AWHOLE HELL OF A LOT when it's my turn.
How can you help someone understand that you love them but you're tired of not having a life, unless it's the life they want you to have or an extension of THEIR life?
How do you help them to see that you aren't doing it to hurt them but to help yourself to feel better and not resentful of the fact that they have so much freedom and you have been tied down for years with blaming them for not acting the way you thought they should?
Oh well...I can't turn back now and I won't. I hopefully at least made that part perfectly clear.
