lizatola

Many of us in Al Anon have seen the acronym JADE, which stands for Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain. I know my sponsor has many times told me that I don't have to explain why I did something or defend myself against false accusations, etc. I know the truth and it doesn't matter that the other person doesn't know it, in most circumstances.

So, how do you handle this in your life? Not just with alcoholics or addicts, but with everyone?

Here's an example from my life where I literally feel like I'm going to blow every time my AH brings it up. His mom had just passed away and he was saying goodbye to me at my rental car because I was leaving before him to fly back to AZ. He asked me for a hug which I willingly gave him and then he started shoving his tongue down my throat, etc. I got flustered and angry because he asked for a hug and he went beyond that. I pushed him off of me gently and pulled away, said goodbye, and left. To this DAY (and I'm talking just last week he brought this incident up) he sees it as a total rejection of him and how awful I was because his mother had died and I wasn't willing to comfort him.

The real truth? All I heard was his mother's voice in my head. I was probably the last person to talk to her before she died. She was found dead on the floor decomposing in the house, due to a sudden heart attack, so no one knows how long she was really dead. I had spoken to her 7 days before she was found.

In our conversation she expressed concern over talks she had with my AH the prior month. She did not know about the drinking or the DUI as I had not told her, unless my AH had told her and to this day I do not know this. Anyway, she was worried about our son and AH's attitude about their relationship, in general. The conversation led to me telling her a bit about our marriage counseling and how poorly it was going. At the end of the conversation she told me to kick AH out. She told me that she never had the guts to leave her husband and that she didn't want me to end up like her, she lived in fear and anger and she didn't want me to do the same. Her very last words to me were, "Liz( I can still hear how she sighed my name every time she said it), he's never going to change."

As I write this, it brings tears to my eyes because I can still hear this dead woman's words in my head. So, when AH was shoving his tongue down my throat after we just went through her funeral, what do you all think was going through my head? And, to this day, I just want to get up and yell at him and tell him all of this and defend myself and my actions. Out of respect for his relationship with his mother and out of respect for his feelings, I have chosen not to. I shut my mouth, keep it tightlipped, and just nod in agreement when he accuses me of being a cold b*tch who turned her husband away. At first, I did try to defend myself without saying all of this by just telling him that I was hurting, too, because I loved his mother and I also knew I was running late getting to the airport. No words I spoke ever made a difference so now I just shut up. Sigh....I still miss my mother in law.