Dear Booksanddolls,
I admire you for your strength. I have spent 22 years with my husband and he is the one that left. I have been attending Al-anon and private counseling. It has helped me to see that though I may not want a divorce, I need a divorce, so that's where we are now. I understand being married to the fun guy. My husband is very charming and usually is the center of attention, however, as his disease of Alcohol progressed it seemed that everyone else got that person and he decided that if he was going to be angry at anything, he was going to take it out on me. Now, mind you, he never physically abused me, but he verbally abused me. He was cruel and when he wasn't cruel he was neglectful. After he got his 3rd DUI (I was not aware that he had two others which he did not disclose before we got married) he "promised" he would only drink on weekends and would never drink & drive again. He also smoked pot and in my oversight, I forgot to "negotiate" that in the deal. This is when his Alcoholism started to make me just as sick as him. This is why they call it a family disease. It affects us all and causes us to react, blowing up easily, and to control, and then there's the moment that we try to get everyone who cares about him to help and they just stare at us like it isn't our problem. These are the truths I have come to know: 1) No negotiation in the world is going to work with an alcoholic; 2) I am not responsible for the happiness of the alocholic, he is; 3) The man that I married no longer lives in the body of the man I am divorcing; he is dead; and 4) The more I worry about the care and feeding of myself, the more I begin to feel like myself and content with myself.
Again, I admire you for taking this step and not wasting your life. I wish I would have had the courage to free myself from the slavery chains of alcoholism a long time ago because maybe it wouldn't be hurting as much now and I would have more self-esteem. Good luck,
TinaDub