Hopeworks

It has been 3 months since my XA picked up a drink and I enforced my no alcohol boundary swiftly and threw him out and went NC. He flew to Vegas in a blackout and has been drinking and gambling ever since. In years past I would have rescued him and dried him out but this time was different ... I had been in recovery for the past year and half and my resolve was more the texture of steel than noodles and tears of the past.

For the past three months I have been coming to this website and reading, reading, reading and it kept me strong.

I read a thread tonight from a poster who shared how she didn't visit much because she felt posters were too harsh and even judgemental and I remembered when I first came here... a newbie. I thought some of the women on here were absolutely awful...so MEAN sometimes!

But I kept coming back and reading, reading, reading and my perspective started to change because it wasn't solely influenced by the addictive thinking of my A and my own warped codependant thinking. Those "meanies" on SR would hold up a mirror to bizarre behavior I normally would have accepted and minimalized and would ask the tough questions. Now... it wasn't me because I always read more than posted but I would see my situations over and over and over... our stories are so very similar.

So I kept coming back and reading and the days unfolded... and more was revealed. If you go back and read my posts I was giddy with delight because my A was in real recovery... and he was for brief periods. He was abstinent other times or he was in relapse and sometimes he was even in jail or rehab. But where ever he was I helicoptering right above him trying to run interference or put out fires or run his recovery.

In the past 4 years we tried everything. Christ centered rehabs, Secular rehabs, psychologists, psychiatrists, pastoral counseling, healing prayer, baclofen, topamax, naltrexone, campral, hypnotism. At one point he did 300 AA meetings in 5 months (he was in rehab and it got him out of the building).

So now he is in LA and is going to get sober and I am sure he is going to turn back into the sweet and loving man I used to love and he will try to woo me back into his web of alcoholism. But this time it is different... I no longer am under the spell of my codependency and fantasies.

He is going to rehab because the penthouses and platinum cards ran out and he ended up sleeping in a doorway. Everyone he knows went no contact. He has nowhwere else to go. He is sober because his body started rejecting the alcohol severely and he started throwing up violently (this is what happened last time he quit drinking).

Last time this happened I thought the inability to drink was a miracle. I thought the "psychic change" and experience with God was the sign that the alcoholic nightmare was over!

This time I am more like the "meanies" on here ... I am now cynical myself instead of a Pollyanna and giddy with delight that he is back in rehab.

Talk is cheap. He has shown me who he is and I believe him. It is his job to change himself if he wants to or not.

I will continue to pray for him and his precious children that he neglected while binging in Vegas but I am off the alcoholic crazy train for good. Glad he lived but we are just going to the next chapter in his life story... again... more will be revealed.

I am writing this so those of you who are new hear from someone who fanatically believed her A was going to be one of those who make it and because I smothered him with my help and interference I crippled him more than helped him.

Unacceptable behavior is unacceptable. Had I set that standard 4 years ago I might be living on the beach instead of playing golf tomorrow. (He wanted to move to a golf community because he is a golf fanatic and I wanted to live on the coast because I am beach/boat fanatic... we moved to a golf community and he relapses 2 weeks later! I didn't play golf but I do NOW... lemonade out of lemons).

My ESH...Listen to all of the voices even the ones that seem a bit harsh and then seek out your Higher Power... ask for the truth to be revealed and for you to have the strength to do what is best for YOU and for A... even if it hurts. Determine your boundaries and then stick to them.

And to all of you posters out there who have a rep for being tough love and known for straight talk... don't stop doing what you do.

Thanks... you all helped me so very much... and say a prayer for my XnowapparentlyRA... he needs it.