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Time to remove father from my life...

Old 12-26-2017, 05:44 PM
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Time to remove father from my life...

Hello everyone and I hope you are all having peaceful and joyous holidays.

Thanks to God, I am still sober. Each night I thank the Lord for another day and night of sobriety, and keeping my resolve strong.

I am here in MN visiting my sister and her family along with my parents, too.

My dad is a winemaker and an alcoholic. As children, his drinking led to emotional and verbal abuse, poured on my mother and then myself and my sister. I have tried to take steps to leave the past behind and remember that I don't have to identify with his struggle, by letting the hurt eat away at me and my chance for a happy life. Well, being in this house - all of us - has forced skeletons out of the closest.

My dad's drinking in the evenings is triggering - not my alcoholism, but that small scared child who recognized when the abuse was about to commence. He drinks in the evenings, passes out for an hour, misses out on the time he says he was looking forward to spending with his grandchildren, rinse and repeat. You all know the cycle.

This evening and a few glasses in, he bullied my mom for not pouring my sister a glass of chardonnay when she arrived from her grueling job at the hospital. His tone of voice, his mannerisms and vicious speech, all familiar and triggering, finally caused eruption in me. I told him to stop bullying my mother who tried, as usual, to downplay what was happening. All the trauma, all the hurt and anger came out. Cross words were spoken, him drunk and trying to bat away my accusations by deflecting onto me, me telling him he is bringing the same abuse we grew up with in the house where his grandchildren are. I won't go into every word spoken. What I will say is I feel raw, exposed and livid. And I am decided that my life is better when he is not around me.

So I am resolved right now to stop contact and avoid him. It hurts, despite how angry and resentful I am, but I want to move on and forward, and I cannot do that when he is drinking and bullying still. He will not accept accountability for his behavior and I cannot force him to. So I feel that is my only option and it is the right one to take.

Has anyone else had to create distance from a parent? I don't know if this is permanent for me, but it's certainly a long-term one. I feel bad because he is my dad, and he will tell you he was a wonderful father but my experience tells me otherwise. I am not punishing him for not being the father I would have liked him to be. I am trying to do what's best for my well-being, and what I know for certain is that being around him makes me unhappy and uncomfortable.

I want to go home this very instant. Thankfully, I have one more day here and then I head home on Wednesday.

Thank you for reading and caring, as always.

FF
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Old 12-26-2017, 06:00 PM
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I am a 54 year old man and I have been sober 14 months after 27 years of daily drinking.

My father was a verbally and mentally abusive alcoholic. Today he is 80 years old, hasn't had a drinking in about 25 years, but he is still the same awful person - we call that a dry drunk.

I have panic attacks when I have to visit my parents house and can even become physically ill - they still live in the house I was raised in and even now I still am haunted by my past. Going there sober is tough - for 27 years I was loaded every time I was with my parents in order to cope.

I try to do the bare minimum when it comes to helping and seeing my parents. Some may say I am a rotten son and I do struggle with guilt. My brother flew the coup in 1989 and moved 2,000 miles away - I guess I am still a better son than him.
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Old 12-26-2017, 08:39 PM
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Yup, I had to cut off from my mother and sister for similar reasons. The active alcoholic and even the alcholic in early recovery can be incredibly delusional. They cannot tell the true from the false, they don't know how to relate. This comes across as negative and damaging behaviour towards friends and family and in my particular case, I found it impossible to establish healthy uncle/aunty,niece/nephew grandmother grandchildren relationships. They were just too toxic and I have had nothing to do with them for many years.

On their mother's side the kids have great family ties, and with all my extended family, that part is just brilliant. But the evil duo, my mother and sister sit on the side hating me and all the family (there are over 100 of us) and basically cut themselves out of any form of meaning in their lives.

I don't know if that is the right thing for you to do, but I have never lost a moments sleep over it.
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Old 12-26-2017, 08:47 PM
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I am so sorry, Doug to learn of the abuse you grew up in.

What it comes down to is we have to take responsibility for ourselves and only ourselves. I said some harsh words in a moment of anger; the words may not have been the best choice, but the feelings were and are there, and so that is what I am going to address. For me, that does indeed mean removing myself from him.

The fact that he wants to encourage my sister to drink as soon as she gets off work to take the edge off, screams to me that he is not doing any work inwardly. During the day when he is sober, he isn't asking himself some tough questions or examining his drinking, if he's happy to push the bottle to her (she's a doctor and isn't a habitual drinker). He didn't learn from my own battle with alcoholism; not my DUI, not all that I lost, the struggle, the pain. So he has a long way to go at 67. It's his journey. He has been lucky (or has he?); he hasn't lost anything directly as a result of his drinking. His family stuck around, he still has his career, his house, never suffered public embarrassing moments - save for those reserved for his immediate family, which are frequent and vivid.

I accept his shortcomings as a father; that he just didn't have it in him to be the father I as a child would have loved and adored. But I will be damned if I am going to sit quiet while he verbally abuses my mother with drink in hand, bringing that same abuse I endured as a child into my nieces' upbringing, and stay around through it all.

He may call me ungrateful. I call it self-love and accountability. And I won't apologize for it.
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Old 12-26-2017, 08:52 PM
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Gotta life, you said it right there for me: it's impossible to establish a healthy relationship with him as an active alcoholic.

I want to believe he will start to examine his drinking and stop once he retires and doesn't have to be inundated with it, as a wine maker. But tonight, as I said, I learned he is still far-removed from the notion that his drinking is a problem. That, or it stops there and the drinking persists.

It's going to hurt, but maybe that's ultimately what needs to happen. Some hurt and loss to make him wake up.
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Old 12-26-2017, 09:22 PM
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Originally Posted by ForestFrenzy View Post
It's going to hurt, but maybe that's ultimately what needs to happen. Some hurt and loss to make him wake up.
The trouble with alcholism is that alcohol is not the problem. Dougs father stopped drinking but that didn't fix the problem. It could even have made it worse.

My mother went downhill rapidly when I got sober. At the time I knew all these cool sponsors, and we had free access to treatment programs. I wheeled in all the big guns, she went through two different treatment programs to no avail. Each time I took her to a meeting she was more drunk. Eventually I gave up. She doesn't want it and there is nothing I can do about it.

I can even see how the delsuion works with her. She was a pretty good nurse at one time and anything to do with treatment is medical so she immediately takes the high ground and becomes everyones confidant and advisor. She truly could not see that there is anything much wrong with her. So she would try and sort out everyone else and not look at herself at all. Completely deluded or as the big book said, their alcoholic life is the only normal one. Now she is just a seething ball of resentment, nothing remaining of the original human being.

But miracles happen too. Last year back in New Zealand I was at a meeting in my favourite town, and they were having a birthday celebration for an elderly woman - 20 plus years. There were two other women with her, her daughter, and grand daughter both long term recovered. This was something to see. Three generations all recovered. It was incredible.

Maybe an important thing here is your own recovery. The obvious answer may not always be the best. My sponsor used to advise prayer in such situations, to seek out some guidance. It always worked.

When I asked "God, what is your will for me here?" I would soon have a strong feeling about what I needed to do.

God bless
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Old 12-26-2017, 10:28 PM
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The drinking might not be the problem, lots of people try blaming alcohol on being the problem with people but like Gottalife said "The trouble with alcoholism is that alcohol is not the problem." I can relate to this 100% because although quitting alcohol reduced the severity of some of my downfalls and problems it definitely didn't fix them or "change" them so to speak. I still live with the same issues that I was masking with alcohol and probably always will. I literally discovered that alcohol was not what was causing my issues although I did want to believe that out of desperation.

Honestly there is a cycle that needs to be broken with most people, and it's not possible to teach an old dog new tricks always.

Do you ever try talking to your father in a reciprocal way? For example you can discuss some opinions, he can give criticism on them and then state his own opinions back until you guys can agree on something? I lived with extremely disfunctional family members and still do. I learned with time that drugs, alcohol do make people worse, cause inhibitions and etc.. etc... but the main thing that fixed my problems was talking, without anger, and without aggression.

Perhaps you need to voice some of your feelings towards your father to his face and tell him how you really feel so you can at least try to have a normal relationship with him. Not live with him of course if you're uncomfortable being around active alcoholics but he is your father and although it can be hard maybe just talk it out, it could help in your path of sobriety and release some tension off your shoulders?

That's just my two cents, been there. My father left when I was 4 and came back around when I was 18-20 to visit, we are able to spend time when he's in the state but I had to let go all my resentments and tell him how I feel about him before I could start building any form of enjoyable relationship.
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Old 12-27-2017, 04:37 AM
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Originally Posted by Gottalife View Post
The trouble with alcholism is that alcohol is not the problem. Dougs father stopped drinking but that didn't fix the problem. It could even have made it worse.
True.

I have learned at AA that stopping the drinking is a small part of the program of recovery - changing your thinking and way of life is the true key to sobriety.
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Old 12-27-2017, 08:28 AM
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I have distanced myself from a couple of family members but we're still on civil terms. Writing off a parent or sibling can bring about emotional baggage which I don't need.

What works for me to stay on speaking terms and to set up boundaries.
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Old 12-27-2017, 09:47 AM
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The CoDa book was a real eye opener to me and supported my recovery work in sobriety. If you haven't read it I'd really recommend that you do.
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Old 12-27-2017, 10:07 AM
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Hey FF, sorry to read your story. I relate very strongly. For similar reasons you mention, I went No Contact with my mother.

At first I was sick with worry over it, but it gradually became an enormous relief. A big weight lifted off me.

I was no contact for many years. Eventually I had a call that she was in hospital dying so, more to support my brother than for her sake, I went along to see her.

Spent twenty minutes with her shouting abuse!

No change there then! She died next day. At peace.
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Old 12-27-2017, 11:26 AM
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Thank you everyone for sharing your own painful experiences with this.

They say give it a day and if you still feel the same, then you're probably on the right path. Not only do I feel the same but even more convinced of this decision. I wasn't expecting that, once the heat of the moment passed, but there you have it.

I opened a wound within that needed opening, I think. I am starting to have epiphanies left and right, and using them as part of my journey to free myself from the pain and shame he shrouded me and my sister in.

He will never have the strength and wisdom to look at where he is wrong - alcohol just being symptomatic of it. So he will never make any changes, which means there it little chance of true reconciliation and healing between us.

I am moving on and leaving it behind. It's a good point that cutting ties can lead to unnecessary baggage. I don't think this is finite but as I said before, it is a long-term decision and boundaries will be enforced and feelings towards him will never be the same.

For me, the next step is to accept. Accept that I have a father who is weak, entitled and flawed, yes, but more importantly, accept that he will not change. We are all flawed, after all. Accept I had an emotionally and verbally abusive father, growing up. Once I accept it, then I can forgive it, and truly be free.
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Old 12-27-2017, 11:29 AM
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Calvin, thank you for the suggestion.

Yes, I have tried talking to him many times in that capacity. It never lasts and usually leads to defensiveness and gas-lighting, from his end. He doesn't listen to respond, he listens to react. I can think of moments as a young teen, sitting him down and being the mature one, trying to put my own hurt aside in the hopes of achieving some understanding. He's patronizing at his best.
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