Confronting/Enabling
I'm brand-new here but confused about how someone who only knows an alcoholic has a role in enabling her behavior. When the drunk is a family member and doesn't live with you, how can you enable their drunkenness? Neither her family or her friends have confronted her, but is that enabling? It's easy to ignore it if you don't live with her. As her sister-in-law and friend, her drinking causes many problems in social situations and I worry about the effect it has on her mother, with whom she lives, but I can go home to my fairly funtional family. That doesn't mean I don't spend many hours afterward worrying about her well-being. Is ignoring the elephant in someone else's living room an act of enabling?
I'm going to Al-anon with another family member soon and hope there are some answers there. I guess my main concern should be my poor mother-in-law who has to live with her. She deserves a better existence. She doesn't complain, but that may be because she doesn't have many other options. My brother, an AA member who's been sober for 1 and 1/2 years, said that mom might just be glad that she can keep an eye on her. I feel really bad for you who have a spouse to deal with. My mom enabled my father until the day he died and it was so difficult to watch. He was a wonderful man and she loved him unconditionally, but at such a price.
I know that having a spouse or significant other with a drinking problem is way more difficult than "just" a sister-in-law, but when you love that person, the pain is there.
Does anyone have any advice for me? Sure would appreciate some dialogue on this. Would confronting her be a bad idea, or if that's what i should do, what is the best way to go about it?
Gracie's Mama