Sorry to have left you all hanging as if i hadn't read each word and appreciated it. Heck, y'all have no idea.
Today I told my AW that I wasn't putting up with the nightly screams drama, and escalations to work out her angst. Last night was her B'day and she got pretty tanked, slurring and unable to understand simple sentences and not wanting to. She tried to turn a simple complement on her potato salad into an excuse to start a rage over. She had made several tries earlier. On that one I asked her to please rein herself in, which works occasioanally. It didn't work and I told her to can it as I did not want to have to leave. We finioshed watching the Billboard awards and she calmed herself enough to get through the evening for me fine. Of course she was throwing dark looks etc.
Today I decided was the day to finally breach the subject, and while she was sober to ask her to either stop making every night her vile and poison attacks on me to work out whatever anger issues she can't deal with herself. I asked her to either be happy with our life even though the house wasn't big enough or fancy enough for her, or to leave. Well it was like a switch was thrown. In the iold days she would have apologized realizing she had stepped way over the line. Now she has tramp-led that line so often and been so outrageous that apparently she is no longer able to separate her alcoholic rages and drama from her sober day life.
As soo as I made that request she flew into a rage and turned away while she started talking. THat is significant as now she doesn't care if she destroys our relationship with lies, she will just do anything, even when sober, to try to play her dramas to get her way which is to keep things exactly the same. How is she going to keep things the same? BY threatening to leave me. She immediately said that it is time to cut our losses and that we needed to split everything up and go our separate ways. I tiold her fine, not rising to the bait. I said it is Monday and I agree with you. Because I can't change you, and and you won't change yourself, and say you are miserable yet won't do anything about it I am glad this precipitated your actually making a decision about it.
So please do go see a lawyer and get the ball rolling I will cooperate and make it go smoothly. I did remind her that when she does all will need to know why, and I am one of the ones who does not wish to take the blame for her anymore.
She acted like I was playing her game and I had her read all my posts especially one over in the Over One year club outlining how she not only won't be getting a ridiculously large house when we have a great one inside and out, that she is just not satisfied with, but making sure she has to work a real job. At present she works part time once or twice some weeks, some weeks none, and some few all week. She already said it suited her as she does not want to work daily 9 to five and punch a clock. Because of me she has never "had" to work since she was 18.
In any event she now knows I am not bluffing or playing control issue games at all.
I am pretty tickled. She then said she has to think about things, this one minute after saying that things were not negotiable we were going to split. That before I had her read. Then she tested the waters, with her ultimatum which I accepted and told her to go make her own wishes and decisions happen, contact a lawyer, and took the dogs for a walk.
While I would love to not have to go through all of this and would just like some peace, I always knew and told people that peace is not a gift, and no one can give it to you, you have to take it, take peace. I am taking peace one step at a time. I am looking for an Alanon group here locally first. And second I am starting to read the links and threads here.
Tuffgirl and Sober you both are fine by me.
I am not and never will be a woman hater. I just did not think women would understand the guy side. Sober your post was much appreciated. It taught me that there was hope for her, with me or without me. I do love her after all. But I am beginning to think that perhaps she has all along been co-dependent, and perhaps needs her own freedom. To sink or swim on her own. But it can only stay the same if it changes. She would have to on her own decide to get sober, and save herself. I can support that. But sober or drunk I can't be her whipping post any longer.
It is funny buit the first time we ever had violence in my home was her. I was not raised with violence, quite the opposite. She was. I don't remember what it was but she attacked me with a knife which I took away and sat on her. That was in our second year of marriage. I also had to do that when she tried to attack our teenage son after doing her drinking baiting game.
She has gotten so bad that when she can't use me she tries to verbally abuse the dogs. Not physically, she got bitten once she scared one so badly with her tirade, no I wasn't putting down a dog that has never bitten except when cornered and terrified. I train all the dogs, and did not want any more after we lost our Bogart. She insisted and I said no, I wanted to trravel more and did not want to kennel them or have to vacuum daily to keep the dog hair cleaned up, not to mention the fenced portion of the back yard. She swore that if we got another dog she would clean up after them and vacuum every day if that is what it takes to get them. I told her that if that is what she will do then I can go along with that. That lasted about six months. Now even though the house appears clean there is dog hair everywhere. And no she does not clean up the poop in the yard.
It is like living with a teenager all over again. The problem is that I won't play daddy to her child, and certainly won't play child to her scolding mother.
On my worst day as an alcoholic, I never hurt another, or got mean. I had to make definitions for my subordinates in my career and one of them I wrote was that "Evil is when one derives pleasure from harming another. Be that verbal, emotional, or physical harm." That was back when she just started drinking heavy in the 80's.
This should prove interesting at least. I have asked her to go to counseling numerous times and she refuses. Last time I told her that she would have to leave and now she is playing the sell and divide card. Which is fine with me. Her love for me left more than a decade ago, her contempt I tolerated for the sake of the children. No more. If she drops the ball on this she will be in AA and counseling or trying to sell her stuff as well as she can from a distance.
She isn't that stupid, but then again, I give up predicting. Maybe she will cut off her nose to spite her face. I do know this, I sure would never quit because of another saying I should. I also have only mentioned her drinking too much it when she was at her worst, and it used to work for her to rein herself in, but only mentioned it maybe five times in the last year.
I am not into control issues and drama is distasteful to me. I have never touched her except in self defense. But the days of thinking it unusual for her to be over-the-top-mean-and-threatening are over. The days of her having remorse the next morning are over. She has found another lover, and Scotch is the jealous type. I think I will leave before her lover gets violent.
If I am the cause of her unhappiness because I won't go back to work to get a bigger house, I really want to see how she handles losing it all, and going back to living on the property of another. Most likely she will move in with her parents.
I will read and keep posting. Thanks all for your feedback that there are other guys who were as pig headed as I am. I want her happy, but alcohol will never allow that. Otherwise why would she drink?
I have got to find a local Alanon group.