HealthyLimits

This is the first time I've really acknowledged that I have an alcoholic father whose drinking has caused me damage. This is also the first time I have set limits for myself.

I want to start with I have never had a drop in my life! Never even been tipsy and over the last 18 months I have removed everybody from my life that drinks excessively, smokes weed or anything else along those lines in an effort to become a better and healthier person. I also deal with sexual addiction and I have attacked and faced that head on without going back to any of my old ways. Even with all of that forward progress and growth this is different, this is my father!

The issues that I need help with is the roll my mother plays in this and the INSANE amount of guilt I'm feeling.

I will start with saying I never really looked at his drinking like a problem, he's been a good father, he's never hit me or sexually abused me and he would give me the shirt off his back. He has never been a mean drunk and goes to work and is very functional. The drinking has always been, I figured him drinking 6-20 beers a night was just his way of dealing with life. I didn't notice we don't have a relationship, that I expect nothing from him, that broken promises are normal or that I have to tell him the same story 5 times as well as hear the same damn story from him 5 times. I have just accepted that when my mom is pissed with my dad he wants to be my best friend, when he's tired of her she wants me to be the surrogate husband. I totally lost site that I'm now the father of my dad and he's had nothing to offer me in the roll of a father for many many years.

I have listened to him tell me why he drinks for so long I've started to buy into the reasons and accept them as valid. I have watched him for many years push me and my mother to our limits for him to back off just long enough to get us to accept his drinking again. He's told me flat out that's what he does and he won't ever stop drinking. Well this cycle has all changed with yet another broken promise and me digging my heals in and facing this because I'm no longer willing to feel that level of disappointment and no longer willing to accept a relationship where I expect so little I'm numb to it.

The hard thing is that my mother and him rent the house I have next to me and falling outs are compounded by the closeness.

With them living next store and that not going to work in this situation, with these limits I have told my father that I'm making a choice to not have people in my life that drink and if he wants to choose to drink that I need him to move in 30 days. This of course causes an issue with my mother so I will give you some history on her.

She is the daughter of an alcoholic who thinks she has gotten past her relationship with her father but from what she's said that very clearly isn't true. She has been with my father since she was 13 so they have been together for roughly 40 years. He has been very unsuportive of her in setting limits, having healthy boundaries, business ideas and the list goes on. He has gotten drunk and had sex with hookers without condoms clearly risking her life and in this case causing stds including HPV so she's had to have a hysterectomy. She has tried to set limits like last year trying to get away from his influence going as far as calling the sheriff so he would leave but once things get that far he pushes harder on those limits because he knows what choice she will make so he doesn't give her any space and she folds. He'll clean up his act for a couple weeks. Cut back to 1-2 beers a night, stop spending 2-3 hours a day looking at porn but when he doesn't get his daily prais for being a healthy person he finds a reason to start drinking more again.

In this situation it's the worlds fault, my fault, her fault and everybody else is wrong and she's been with this man so long she just follows. Now she's having to find a place to live while he sits idol and blames me. She went as far as to tell me today that "she's not going to be without a roof over her head because of me". She fails to see I'm making a healthy choice and setting a limit, my fathers making an unhealthy choice and she's making another choice be it healthy or not to follow him. She has totally overlooked his roll in this trying to either overtly or backhandedly place blame on me.

I have told her I'm open to talking this out but I want it to be with a family counselor, all three of us and nobody able to manipulate the situation or place blame/skirt their rolls. She's of course fine with that but my father would never go for it. He's telling her I'm brainwashing her, manipulate her and on and on. I've told her she doesn't have to follow him, she's making a choice to and she belittles me for thinking that way. Saying "did you really think I would choose to stay her over going with dad". And of course I didn't expect that but that isn't the point, the point is she has a choice, he has a choice and I have a choice here and I'm the only one making a healthy choice and setting good limits for myself. Taking the hit I am for that really SUCKS! Taking blame for that really SUCKS!

She of course says she isn't ready to leave or make a stand and she's willing to yet again follow him off another cliff and accept the hit at the bottom. I'm starting to have hard feelings with her now as well because I'm having to accept that I have a father that will choose to drink over having a relationship with his son. She's adding guilt and I'm having a very hard time respecting her choices and the excuses she's using are as weak as his. She looks like a VERY scared and weak woman now and I truly have never seen that before. Until this last situation I was blind to the dysfunction and now there's a huge spotlight on it.

I'm clearly emotional from typing this, don't know that I've said what I wanted to say but you have the general idea. My mother will also read this and could really use some support as I see her trying as if she's on the edge but having a tough time jumping. I have told her we're holding up this mans bottom and now I'm gone so she's taking a lot of that weight and he's never going to hit bottom and decide if he wants to make changes with her down there enabling him.

For me, I'm okay, hurt, frustrated and upset but in a positive frame of mind and proud of myself for sticking to these limits. I accept the guilt is part of this and I have a good support system to keep things in check and balanced for me however I feel like I'm leaving the other victim, my mother, behind. I know she's making this choice but it's still hard for me to accept she's willing to be with a man she knows would choose drinking over a healthy relationship with his son, she knows would choose it over her and she just keeps helping him cause this damage.

I'm typing this to get it off my chest but also because much of what I've read in this forum helped confirm that I'm making a good choice and the closer a story fit mine the more reassuring it was. While I hate to say this I hope my story hits home with somebody else as well and gives them some of the confirmation they need to make changes in their life. I think the main thing for me was overlooking all the issues because I wasn't beaten or physically abused. I just failed the see the huge and unhealthy roll this has played in my life for a very very long time.

Comments to put me in check if needed or support me are both welcome.

guiab

Healthy limits,
Posting, getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper, or a computer screen, helps. That is why we are all here.
Both my mom and dad were alcoholics, and my mom's drinking started because it helped her endure my dad's violent outbursts and absence from his four children. And she silently endured all the excuses and abuse and never made a move to leave. I believe she felt she was doing it for the kids, but there is little question that a divorce/separation would have been far better that watching her destroy herself.
I am only throwing my experience out to emphasize:
1) you cannot control other's behavior, only your own.
2) keep the lines of communication open unless it is actually harming you, preventing you from working through your guilt.
Thanks for posting. I have not heard a story so similar to that of my parents. Both have passed away, but the fearand guilt and anger lingers. I hope and pray that the situation with your parents get resolved while you still have years left to enjoy.

dothi

Of course your parents "can't"/won't acknowledge your healthy choice. From the sounds of it, they don't know what healthy choices are, so how can they understand (let alone support) yours? You're speaking another language to them.

Plus no wonder why you're feeling so guilty - there's a lot of responsibility being forced on you! Your dad refuses to take responsibility for his choices, and though your mom can see this she also refuses to take responsibility for his and her choices, so it all gets pinned on you. Yes, that IS insane. Your overwhelming guilt is "balancing" the overall emotional well-being of your family. Guilt is a very powerful tool in alcoholic families. You must be very strong to set all these new boundaries in spite of all that undeserved guilt.

It sounds like your mom believes she's "doing the right thing" by sticking with your dad. She sounds very loyal to and codependent on your father. Her sense of identity and purpose might all be centered on her role in taking care of him. That's a lot for a person to suddenly let go and just walk away from. Besides, he probably saved her from her dad (from the sounds of it) and isn't abusive so he's not really "that bad". It can be hard to realize that your mom has been making this choice for YEARS and probably came from an environment where this choice was modelled as right. She's lived it a lot longer than you have. You may have opened your eyes, but that doesn't mean she has, or that she's ready to.

I support you 100% in enforcing this healthy limit. You've really got to do this for yourself - for your own sanity, and a healthier future. You weren't born so that you could spend your life trying to change or fix your parent's willing choices. grewinabarn is totally right: you cannot control other's behavior, only your own (as frustrating as that may be to accept).

If reading is the sort of thing to help you process, pick up a copy of the Adult Children of Alcoholics Sourcebook (usually can find at the library). It tackles the effects of alcoholism in a broad sense, but you'll definitely find pieces of you and your parents in there. Also try googling "toxic guilt" (in addition to reading the sticky note on handling guilt). This isn't an easy step to take, so getting validation for your feelings and choices is crucial from keeping that guilt from undermining you. Post here as much as you like.

GiveLove

healthy,

So many of us have these situations in our lives, where we are so pulled into someone else's drama (through geography, emotion, guilt, triggering, etc.)

You will probably not want to hear a third person telling you this, but it's true: Your parents are adults. They have a right to make their own mistakes, take their own journeys (as screwed up as YOU perceive them to be), get help on their own timetable, or never. This is a great quote posted over on the Friends & Family board:

You don't know what life has in store for your mom. It might be, like me, a situation where your father eventually dies and your mom goes on to have a great epiphany about what she's supposed to be doing in her life. Who knows. It's not for you to control.

What isn't fair is them dragging you into their drama, and if I were a person trying to make healthy choices, and if this incessant guilt were keeping me from doing that, I'd cut off contact with them until a time when they are willing and able to respect your boundaries.

I don't know if you can force them to move (I suppose you could if you own the house they rent). If not, for your own sanity, I'd explore moving myself. They will never leave you alone as long as you live next door.

Think of it: They are both blaming you for their choices, and refusing to honor yours. Alcoholics and codependents are often willing to damage others in order to maintain the status quo.

That stinks, and imho you need to take steps to protect yourself, even heroic and inconvenient steps. You can't force them to change; all you can do is detach—physically and emotionally—and let them live their sad lives until they are ready to change.

Anything short of that and you will drive yourself insane.

I wish you strength and peace of mind.

HealthyLimits

Let me start with a HUGE thank you to everybody that has taken the time to read my story and respond to it. This is long, the fact that you've read it all means a lot to me and I'm not expecting you to read all of this too but it feels good to put it out there for the world. I'm in a very healthy place in my life both emotionally and mentally, the only thing I've been in need of is outside affirmation. Most of my friends come from good backgrounds and are very educated, well spoken and live very healthy lives. My mother is very backhanded with her wording and it goes over most peoples heads. I however am very quick so I hear the little things she says to get off her chest yet tries to hide in some twisted compliment. She kept commenting about how she's happy for me that I have a healthy support system but she doesn't yet she makes no attempt to find it. She got me VERY emotional and on the edge of not thinking clearly yesterday when she wanted to talk with one of the friends I use as a check and balance. She was very belittling about the healthy stand I'm taking saying things along the lines of "somebody that thinks that doesn't know very much" in our conversation. Fortunately my friend has been through this and pointed out that even if they talked with her my mother has to make up excuses to cope and will have plenty for why my friend is wrong, I'm wrong and everybody else is wrong. My mother has excuse after excuse after excuse about why she can't make a stand or just have a little self respect and say enough. She's working too much, not emotionally ready, scared, still melts when she hears my father voice, loves him, he's a nice man, he's drinking less and the list never ends. So the advice on understanding her is a big help, I will accept that she may follow in her mothers footsteps willingly just because she doesn't know how healthy life can be. I will deal with the fact that she will not only support this man but totally 100% enable him to loose a relationship with his son instead of fixing his alcoholism. I will do my very best to hide my hard feelings or at least let them speak for me but this is so utterly sick to me that I will loose all respect for her because this isn't love, this isn't family and this isn't what is right. I now recognize the codependency as an addiction and sickness just as the alcoholism is.

And WOW!! When the lights go on do they ever! I have had a flood of emotional, realizations and understanding pouring into me. I was reading about the money mentality of families with alcoholics and it's amazing! When I was young I remember taking rides in our old beat up cars. We would see a nice house and my parents would talk about how all they do is take care of the yard all weekend long and they never have any time because they spend all of it working to pay for or taking care of their house. They would talk about how they had to eat hot dogs because they couldn't afford anything else with their huge house payment. God how messed up! I would get back to the apartment we were living in because we always lived in an apartment and I would be like yes! My dad is smart, no hot dogs for us tonight and we get to enjoy our weekend (drinking of course) instead of working on the house. That's programming that is damaging to a child and takes time to overcome, for many it would never be overcome and my mother knew no better either. I remember even last year though it's always been this way. I had a friend who owns a local insurance company. My dad and I went to pick him up one day (I would let pops tag along a lot because he has no friends) and my friend lives in a big house. My dad kept commenting about how it must be nice to grow up with rich parents. The poor guy came from a broke family and worked his ass off to buy the franchise. I could hear the contempt in his voice and I recalled him always saying that about people who owned a business. Same with another friend who owned a huge company and was very very well off. My dad would always say "well yeah but he got that company from his dad". While this was true the man got the company while it was $200,000 in debt and had shown a net loss 4 years in a row. He built it back up from the ground and got it out of debt just to keep the company/family name but my father never saw that. This is topped off with the black sheep of the family being the one person that has been successful and has a very different view of his childhood than my father or his other brother (both alcoholics). I don't think anybody has stopped to think about what issues he may have in life or what he's dealing with or went through, he's the only one that didn't drink the problems away.

I think about my past relationship, I was with my wife 10 years and we have 3 children together. I did learn by example, I honestly in my heart based on my parents thought that love meant suffering. I accepted soooo much pain and abuse because I was modeling my relationship after my parents. I saw my mother take so much and still stand by him and I was sick enough to think it was noble, that it was love when it was everything but.

As for my mother. Up until this last week I'd thought she was a strong woman, she would say things like "I just don't expecting anything from him" and "I do my own thing", I thought of that lack of expectations from your partner as forward growth, while her statements aren't true or for that matter healthy she would offer it to me as if I should jump on board and settle for what he gives me and deal with the disappointment by never expecting anything from my father either. Now the curtain has been pulled off this mess by the one functional adult left in this family. And I will say it makes me mad and it's sad and upsetting to be the parent of your parents! I see my father as the manipulative, insecure man he is, I see my mother as a scared little 13 year old girl in the corner unwilling to make any choice (even to protect her child) for fear of it being the wrong one and I want to get myself as far away from the whole mess as I can.

SO thank you for the support and kind words and I will keep you all updated on how things go.... This forum is an amazing tool and I'm thankful to have found it.

GiveLove

I'm glad you're enjoying the "lightbulb moments", h.c. It's a great forum.

Here's a bit of my story. I find it pretty frustrating when someone doesn't evolve the way we want & need them to evolve.

I think it might help your healing if you can find a way to detach from your mom's flaws & weaknesses. I know I couldn't do it until I put some space between me & mine. But it was a huge relief the day I woke up and for the first time felt tenderness toward my alcoholic loved ones' enablers. I had wasted so much energy trying to get THEM to see the light, to get THEM to detach, that I couldn't see that I was guilty of the same. They wouldn't let go of their addiction to the alcohol/alcoholic. I wouldn't let go of my need to be right, and to have my pain acknowledged by them.

And how did I want them to acknowledge my pain, the injustice done to me? By leaving the alcoholic, of course. Until they did that, nothing they said or did was worthy of my compassion. All I felt was contempt. My need was that great.

I am happy to be on the other side of that need now. I wish my mother wouldn't enable. But I've found a place where I can know that while her choices are not the ones I wish she'd make, I still feel compassion for her, detached from any particular outcome.

GL

p.s. I used to have similar conversations with my mother about "not having a support system" etc. And I'd get equally frustrated because I was doing the hard work of building one and she wasn't. I got angry instead of seeing that she just couldn't visualize how she'd ever start. When I could feel compassion again, I printed off a ton of resources for her, from Al-Anon groups to church groups to voice lessons (!!) because she isn't internet-savvy. Of course, she did precisely nothing with it (this was a year ago). I said, "Figures. I knew that would happen."

Imagine my surprise this past week when she told me she was starting to practice with a local singing group, had read "Codependent No More," and was learning tai chi. Making friends. Building a support group.

I nearly fell down right on my butt.

In a good way.

Everlong

Hey dude,
same boat as you, the oxymoron of an alcoholic: a functional one. sorta. You know, I didn't start acknowlaging my dad until later in life, now I just tend to be angry with him. Except I don't like to show my emotions so, I save it to explode in a rant. I guess, its just nice to know I'm not alone. Because there are days when you feel very alone, and nothing anyone says really makes a difference. And I give you credit for being able to say everything that you've said. Cause, I certainly couldn't. But stay strong, a new days going to come.





:bounce...he makes me laugh...

HealthyLimits

Everlong, if you need to talk to somebody let me know man. One very hard thing to get over is feeling is alright. Being a man we tend to pretend things are fine when they aren't we try to hide feelings and pretend to not hurt. That's something that needs to be worked on for us all. It makes a relationship with a woman better, makes you a healthier person and it makes life easier. The trouble is making sure you don't let a dog in the fine china shop. Meaning only let people in on that side of you when you know you can trust them.

I have gotten past being mad, I have a hard time with it sometimes but life has taught me that the past needs to be left there if you want to look forward to the future. I'm not mad at my mother or father. I'm disappointed and I know my father has a sickness that's so bad he's willing to give up his loved ones for it. It's amazing to me that with all the love my mother has for the man she is blind to the roll she plays and doesn't use that love to help him resolve these issues. She will take no stand whatsoever or hold him accountable for his actions. Just like my grandmother who would clean up all the smashed jars in the kitchen she keeps keeping him on task and cleans up all the issues in his life.

So angry I'm not. I love my ex wife and would do anything for her, she paid the price as did I with loosing our dreams and marriage. I love my mother, she will have a son that doesn't respect her choices, keeps his distance and doesn't believe or trust what she says. My father will loose a good son that has kept him grounded for now. And I will loose the cover that's been on this mess as well as the illusion of the healthy family I thought I had.

The struggle for me is I accept that my father is sick and he can fix that but how do you ever regain any respect for a woman that will follow in her mothers shoes and totally support a man and enable him to behave this way. I can't for the life of me imagine a weaker human being. I struggle to wrap my head around them being one and the same because she just endlessly supports his behavior with her actions. It truly is disgusting!

Thank you again to EVERYBODY!!! It's amazing how much talking about this helps and all I can say to anybody feeling like there could be a problem is to talk to EVERYBODY you can about it. I'm a well educated, smart man and it has taken me 34 years to wrap my head around something that was very clear all along! It has only been through friends and this forum that the reality has become so clear.

I just read this over again and my hurt is pretty clear to me. So while I guess I'm not angry I'm clearly dealing with some hurt.

dothi

Hey HealthyLimits, it's been my experience that anger is just the flipside of hurt. Don't be ashamed of it. It's all part of working through the hurt. In fact you might even argue that it's healthier than the alternative: depression.

In spite of your residual frustrations with your parents, your last post sounds very relieved. I'm really happy for you - you deserve to be happy having faith in your decisions

guiab

H.L.
Damn, it does take a long time to swallow the truth of alcoholism and alcoholics, and our own powerlessness. It always seemed that we could figure it out, solve it, if we just brooded on it obsessively just a little longer.
Guys brood on it alone. We just really enjoy walking in circles.
The relief comes when we realize that we will not figure them out, we will not understand their choices, and a resolution may not happen in this lifetime.
I am still trying to get there. It is really hard to become aware of all the negative thoughts that passed for normal thinking.
I am really cheered that you have seen some freedom. Your parents will always be your parents, but their problems do not always have to be your problems.