Prozac

My husband and I had a blow out fight last night. While I take pride on here about my recovery with the addict, I'm a mess with all of the other stuff, classic ACoA. As he raised all of his frustrations I who am reading and re-reading a great deal of ACoA literature found myself thinking "AC, AC, AC... $%#@!" I knew I couldn't voice this, he'd assume I was making excuses.

Today things are going on fine (he has his own issues, he gets pissed and STAYS pissed the entire night, but is never made the next day) and I mention my observations, while being carful not to make excuses. He blew up!

"You are making excuses! You didn't even know about this until a year ago" I practically cried, while holding the "The Complete ACOA Sourcebook" in my hand, "No, every ******** mental health diagnosis I had put on me was because of this and I knew, but I didn't KNOW." I asked him to read it with me as part of my recovery, not as a way for him to make excuses and then just accept my behavior. He's not there yet.

Has anyone else had this problem with non-addict loved ones? My husband is amazing, he jumps through hoops for me with school, etc. But he can be a real jerk at the same time, the king of invalidation. He considers me "boderline" (a former diagnosis) and his training teaches invalidation of all "boderline" behaviors (which I as a person who treats individuals with boderline personality disorder know is totatally wrong, but...).

So tired of fighting this battle. Hiding myself from the person I love most. Who cares for me most.

GingerM

My husband doesn't want to read much about ACoA stuff specifically, but he did pick up a book called "Loving an ACoA".

Perhaps your husband would be more open to reading something that is focused on him as the "victim" of your behavior (he may see himself that way), rather than on you. You may be able to say "this might help you, even if you think I'm making excuses, perhaps this might help you to deal with my excuses."

As for getting other family members involved, I'm afraid I have little to offer. My family members either don't know or think I don't have any problems and can't understand why I continue on with therapy.

tromboneliness

I'm not sure I understand exactly what's happening there, but I do sometimes feel that my wife (the recovering alkie) doesn't understand or "validate" how I feel -- or, more to the point, that she doesn't want to hear it.

I'm out of work right now. That makes me feel pretty worthless. On top of that, I feel as though I've made some really poor life decisions over the past 10 years or so (we've been married almost 12). Moved to another state that didn't work out, moved back to the east coast, can't get my career back on track here either, etc., etc. Sometimes I get into a downward spiral to the point where I'm depressed enough that it wouldn't be a bad idea to hide the knives, if ya know what I'm saying.

But it's hard to sit down and tell my wife how I feel -- she seems not to want to hear bad news. She's doing pretty well in recovery (sober 13 years since she went to treatment), feels that our life is going OK -- which, objectively speaking, it is -- and generally doesn't want to have to pick me up out of a pool of blood on the floor, etc. So she sort of whistles past the graveyard and pretends I'm doing fine, and tells me, "You'll be okay, don't worry," etc.

So to some extent, I'm going it alone, dealing with my own stuff. Our dual-recovery relationship works pretty well -- we have not had one single fight, in the sense of yelling at each other, in the 13 years since she got sober -- and all in all, our life is much better than it was in the "Bad Old Days."

But ya, it would be helpful if I could get more of a hearing on how I feel, and convey the idea that just because I'm feeling lousy about myself doesn't mean you have to hide the knives. I will plod along and get over it, is what I'm trying to say -- but I do get the feeling that she doesn't understand, or want to hear, how I'm really feeling, at times.

Does that relate at all to your situation?

T

Prozac

Yes, it does. My husband, while he didn't come from the same sort of dysfunction that I did, grew up in a whole entire other kind of. His widowed mother with two young teenage kids started dating an out-of-town trucker. She thought it was menopause, but it was my husband... She told her boyfriend and about 7 months into the pregnancy he confessed his wife and six kids who lived 45 minutes away and booked shortly after. My husband was thus raised by his elderly grandmother, mother (who is older than my grandmothers), sister (who is my mom's age), and homosexual brother (who is my dad's age). I mention the homosexual part because my it was a small town and my husband didn't have it easy being related to the "only gay" in town.

He was also the family mascot in this all, he to this day is their sunshine. They just smile, ignore and sweep under the rug. It's all he knows.

We had a good talk, that didn't really lead anywhere, since this post and he just said "You've changed, and I don't like it." I tried to get through to him that part of this change is that things "need to get worse before they get better" i.e. I'm now experiencing emotions I've never felt and don't know how to deal with, hence I've been sometimes horrible to deal with (and admit this). But he doesn't see the sense in all of this. Not feeling is fine with him. And sometimes I wonder too, we were great.