notsofast

My boyfriend is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for about 23 months. We have been together for about 14 months.

A couple months ago he sat down with me and we talked about my best friend, who I have known for 13 years. He told me that if I go out with her again, i will no longer have a boyfriend. I am able to see her and talk to her, but we cannot go out to bars together. In the past year, I have probably only been out with her less than 5 times. It is not a normal occurance. I am 28 years old, and at home most nights, with him or alone.

However, he claims to not mind if I were to go to a bar with a different friend, and he and I have been to bars together many times because he is in a band and plays most of his shows at bar type venues.

He claims that my best friend is out of control (she got divorced about a year ago and does go out about 3 times a week on average) and that he "doesn't want that in his life". Everytime I actually have gone out with her, we have had nothing but uneventful nights. There has been nothing that has happened that would have made him uncomfortable with me spending time with her.

I tried every compromise I could think of, from inviting him along, to offering to drive myself and meet up with her instead of riding with her, to calling him more often if I were to be out so that he would feel more secure- but he refused any compromise.

Like I said, he is in a band on a major label and they tour a lot, and always after shows they hang out at the bar/venue and he is hard for me to get a hold of. I just think that if he is able to go out, even if it is "work related" that i should have the same right, whether he approves of my friend or not. When he is out on tour at bars with his band, I am at home waiting for him to finish up and call me, instead of being out with my friend having fun.

When I talk to him about it he somehow manages to confuse me until I myself am almost convinced that I am wrong.

Can anyone tell me what they think? I am so mixed up I can't tell up from down and I can't tell if he's being controlling or if I am just being ridiculous...

Why could he be doing this? I'm not sure that I believe his reasons.

??

denny57

I don't know what he's thinking - you sound concerned.

It would seem he knows a lot of what goes on with women who hang out in bars.

Good luck!

prodigal

I don't know your bf, so I cannot give you reasons as to why he is doing what he is doing.

He has made it clear he is unwilling to accept any compromises from you.

That leaves you with a choice: keep him and dump your gf, or go out with your gf and if he finds out, he will dump you.

Yes, he is controlling. He is telling you, a grown woman, that you are not allowed to see your gf. He does not approve of her. That is his problem to own; but he is now trying to make it your's.

Since your bf got sober, has he been attending AA meetings? Is he working some sort of program?

notsofast

He does go to meetings. When we first met, he went every day, chaired mtgs., etc. Now he goes maybe once a week, if that. I don't even think he goes while out on tour.

His behavior has recently changed completely. I am wondering if there is a link between his meeting attendance and the way he behaves, because it sure seems like it.

I told him I might try alanon, and he was happy at first but later told me his sponsor hated when his wife went to alanon. Weird.

prodigal

I see red flags waving all over the place here. Why would his sponsor, whom I assume has a lot of sobriety and works a strong program, "hate" his wife going to Al-Anon and working her own program?

It seems to me that your bf is setting boundaries. You are not to see your gf. He probably won't "allow" you to attend Al-Anon. He is gone a lot and you sit at home (I am only assuming he prefers you do this...).

So, is this working for you?

notsofast

Nope. Not working. I feel unequal, I feel like he doesn't trust me or respect me. However, this behavior is fairly new. Before this, he was amazing to me, for a whole year. I guess I could say I'm not quite ready to give up.

So I'm not ready to break it off, but I do need to be trusted and respected. I just don't know how to tell him this and get what I deserve. I'm afraid that by agreeing to his ultimatim about my friend, that I opened up a new world for him and showed him that if he threatens to end the relationship, he can get me to do what he wants.

prodigal

Bingo.

I found that I was respected by people when I stood my ground as to what I would and would not accept from them. I quit having what I considered one-way relationships with people to whom I pandered and compromised myself.

I learned to make my boundaries without getting into arguments. If the person did not respect my boundaries, I cut my losses.

I don't think I could earn the respect of a man who realized his threats to leave me would keep me dancing to his tune.

FormerDoormat

I think the red flags are waving and the behavior you're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. Often times, controlling behaviors like this are precursors to physical abuse. Following is a list of pre-incident indicators associated with physical abuse (which I posted previously):

• The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk.
• At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage.
• He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence.
• He is verbally abusive.
• He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse.
• He breaks or strikes things in anger.
• He has battered in prior relationships.
• He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects.
• He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct.
• His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses.
• There has been more than one incident of violent behavior.
• He uses money to control the activities, purchases, and behavior of his wife/partner.
• He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship.
• He refuses to accept rejection.
• He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like "together for life," "always," "no matter what."
• He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them.
• He minimizes incidents of abuse.
• He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc.
• He tries to enlist his wife's friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship.
• He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner.
• He believes others are out to get him.
• He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise.
• He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fuction, or history.
• He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed.
• He consistently blames others for problems of his own making.
• He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge.
• Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons.
• He uses "male privilege" as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servent, makes all the big decisions, acts like the "master of the house").
• He experienced or witnessed violence as a child.
• His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for her children).

So what can we tell a woman who thinks she might be injured? Seek and apply strategies that make you unavailable to your pursuer. If you really believe you are at risk, battered women's shelters provide the best way to be safe. Shelter locations are secret, and the professionals there understand what the legal system doesn't; that the issue is safety--not justice....It is unfair that (the abuser) gets away unpunished, but it is more important that you come away unhurt....Shelters are where the safety is, where guidance is, and where wisdom is. Admittedly, going to a shelter is a major and inconvenient undertaking, and it's easy to see why so many victims are lured by the good news that a restraining order will solve the whole problem. But imagine that your doctor said you needed immediate surgery to save your life. Would you ask, "Isn't there a piece of paper I can carry instead?"

Excerpts from "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin DeBecker

FormerDoormat

Also reposting this for you....

"But he has such potential." "When he's not drinking he's the sweetest, kindest, gentlest man I know." These are phrases I hear often on SR and two I used for many years until I was able to chip away my layers of denial and see my situation for what it really was.

In his book, "The Gift of Fear," Gavin DeBecker addressed this issue in a way I thought might be useful to others on this forum, so I'll share it here:

One of the most common errors in selecting a boyfriend or spouse is basing the prediction on potential. This is actually predicting what certain elements might add up to in some different context: He isn't working now, but he could be really successful. He's going to be a great artist--of course he can't paint under present circumstances. He's a little edgy and aggressive these days, but that's just until he gets settled.

Listen to the words: isn't working; can't paint; is aggressive. What a person is doing now is the context for successful predictions, and marrying a man on the basis of potential, or for that matter hiring an employee solely on the basis of potential, is a sure way to interfere with intiution. That's because the focus on potential carries our imagination to how things might be or could be and away from how they are now.

Spousal abuse is comitted by people who are with remarkable frequency described by their victims as having been "the sweetest, the gentlest, the kindest, the most attentive," etc. Indeed, many were all of these things during the selection process and often still are--between violent incidents.

But even though these men are frequently kind and gentle in the beginning, there are always warning signs. Victims, however, may not always choose to detect them. I made these points on a recent television interview, and a young woman called in and said, "You're wrong, there's no way you can tell when a man will turn out to be violent. It just happens out of no where." She went on to describe how her ex-husband, an avid collector of weapons, became possessive immediately after her marriage, made her account for all of her time, didn't allow her to have a car, and frequently displayed jealously.

Could these things be warning signs?

In continuing her description of this awful man, she said, "His first wife died as a result of beatings he gave her."

Could that have been a warning sign? But people don't see the signs, maybe because our process of falling in love is in large measure the process of choosing not to see faults, and that requires some denial. This denial is doubtless necessary in a culture that glorifies the kind of romance that leads young couples to rush to get married in spite of all the reasons they shouldn't, and fifty-year-old men to follow what is euphemistically called their hearts into relationships with their young secretaries and out of relationships with their middle-aged wives. This is, frankly, the kind of romance that leads to more failed relationships than successful ones.

The issue of selection and choice brings to mind the important work of psychologist Nathaniel Branden, author of "Honoring the Self." He tells of the woman who says: "I have the worst luck with men. Over and over again, I find myself in these relationships with men who are abusive. I just have the worst luck." Luck has very little to do with it, because the glaringly common characteristic of each of this woman's relationships is her. My observations about selection are offered to enlighten victims, not to blame them, for I don't believe that violence is a fair penality for bad choices. But I do believe they are choices.

- Gavin DeBecker, "The Gift of Fear"

Powerful stuff and tons of useful information for anyone who's ever made poor relationship choices now or previously. This should be on the top of every woman's reading list.

denny57

But he is, and has given an ultimatum over it.

I also recommend the book "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft.

Good luck.

Spiritual Seeker

Eyes wide open here on an alcoholic not working recovery program and performing in bars. Sounds like a slippery slope for relapse.

That being said, if he truly is recovering maybe he doesn't want a girlfriend who socializes in bars.
If everything else is wonderful, meet your friend at a diner.
There is lots to do with friends besides go to a bar.
I see my friends often without my husband, but we don't go to bars.

Did you meet your bf in a bar?

catlovermi

If I were in the same set of circumstances, I would RUN LIKE H*** at the first sign of this type of toxic controlling, and not look back EVER. Controlling behavior that is under the cloak of denial is just like alcoholism - it's progressive and fatal to a relationship - sometimes to the point of being physically fatal to the controlled party.

If the person who is attempting to control is in denial about being a controller, then they are going to progress into worse and worse types of controlling. The fact that you posted this suggests you are trying to find a way to explain it as something other than it is...

GREAT job identifying something amiss, and asking outside yourself for more perspectives!

JMHO

CLMI

Ago

I don't have any answers, but I have some questions....

I'm just thinking, what if it was him that posted here, and his GF had a BFF that had recently been divorced and he knew something about her that she didn't such as;

She actually tried to seduce him
or
Since he does have "contacts" in that world, knew she was going out and "sleeping around" when she got drunk, she is going out 3x a week and is recently divorced, people do crazy things after a divorce.
or
any of 100 reasons that we don't know about, and he doesn't feel it's his place to tell his GF about

and he decided to "set a boundary" that's it's not OK for his GF to go drinking at bars with this woman

What would the responses look like then?

Would everyone be supportive of him setting a boundary?

Would we have advised him to "set a boundary"?

However, in this thread, we "took his inventory" ie, he's not attending meetings, he plays in bars etc. we set up reasons to "make him the bad guy" and to "minimize him" since he's so obviously "doing it wrong", so if he's "doing it wrong, he's obviously wrong, and sick, and quite possibly dangerous.

I'm not taking sides one way or another, I'm just pointing out in this forum I seem to see a lot of "bandwagon postings" or "bandwagon bashing" (my AH/AW is bad too (s)he's mean too, rather then focusing on solution, what is MY part), or "taking sides" without knowing the whole story.

I see that a lot, where, the format is: here is the decision (s)he made and then here are all the ways (s)he is "doing it wrong" ie (s)he drinks, (s)he doesn't drink and is in AA, but is a "dry drunk" anyway, (s)he is "working the program wrong" etc etc and then there are the posters that seem to latch on to the problems this person seems to display that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand or the question on the table or provide the OP with some specific solution to a specific problem.

I see a lot of threads where the OP is advised to "set a boundary" almost exactly like this one, yet here, when the significant other sets a boundary, he is "toxic" and possibly an abuser or maybe even a murderer if he's allowed to continue this unchecked rampage of horror.

Sometimes I have difficulty seeing where a boundary is "in my yard" or "in your yard" and I have NO opinion on this particular thread, but it just seems I don't have the whole story. It just doesn't seem to add up.

I really am not "taking sides" and quite frankly I have just been involved for the last few years with someone who actually fit the definition of "emotional abuser" and I missed ALL the early warning signs, so I'm by no means an expert, in fact, I'm quite the opposite, so my two questions are:

Why do we seem to just "jump on the bandwagon" here

and

what are the actual, specific signs that this man is a wife batterer/emotional abuser?

I literally don't see where this makes this man a potential abuser/murderer, I just don't, he may be "unskilled" at setting boundaries, and it's possible some therapy could help them come to a compromise, but I just don't see the "red flags" everyone is waving, but that's OK, I couldn't even SEE my last relationship, there were too many red flags in the way to see what was going on, so maybe I'm not the one to be posting here...however......

Redd came here and was learning about "boundaries" and he tried a number of boundaries that occurred in various areas "in her yard" and "his yard" yet we love Redd and wouldn't consider him an "abuser" or "wife batterer" in a thousand years, he's just somebody who's learning how to set boundaries, like the rest of us.

It seems to me that if they have been together for a year, she would have a years worth of abuse/manipulation to "report", I know in my case, I did.

Anyway, these are just questions that I have, not judgments, I hope to learn from the responses, and I'm asking because I truly don't know and want to learn.

denny57

"We" did no such thing.

Here are two statements from the OP:

And here's another:

In my opinion, the first two are controlling demands. The third is an attempt at compromise, something I could never do with xAH. A boundary is not an ultimatum. I lived with an abusive man for years. Rational, healthy people discuss relationship issues. This is the OP's BEST FRIEND. xAH succeeded in isolating me from my best friend of 35 years and she and I are still repairing our relationship. This is what controlling, abusive (alcoholic or not) people do - isolate significant others from possibly one of their best support systems. It isn't difficult to figure out why.

As mentioned before, an excellent book on this is "Why Does He Do That," written by a man who has worked with abusive, controlling men for over 20 years. He does not take a man-bashing stance, and believes some controlling men can change.

Ago

Thank you for your response, I do find it helpful

yet:

It doesn't seem he is trying to isolate her, however this may be "the thin edge of the wedge" and I do know about that phenomenon. I truly don't know enough to make an informed decision, that's what I'm stating, I only know one side of the story.

I agree rational people discuss, but sometimes in a relationship, at least I am not entirely rational, which is why I seek "outside help" such as a therapist, sponsor, someone from the outside looking in.

However, when I set my boundaries, If you_____ I will______ they are inflexible, my boundaries are non negotiable, yet I'm here to learn about boundaries, and I don't always know where to set them, that doesn't make me an abuser, it makes me someone learning about where to set boundaries.

I was recently in a relationship, she "crossed my boundary" and I left, that doesn't make me an abuser.

I'm not saying he set the boundary very well, or handled it perfectly by any means, but I have seen any number of posters from here on SR do the exact same sort of thing, yet we don't label them "possible murderers".

Yes "we" did in my opinion

denny57

I don't want to HJ the thread - there have been other threads on this topic; in the end, I suppose I look at this as a forum that supports the friends and family of the alcoholic, not the alcoholic. I share my ES&H from that perspective.

How are you doing today, notsofast?

Ago

I thought solution was support and I was asking what I felt were pertinent questions to this issue since I just ended a relationship with what I felt was an abusive alcoholic and I was wondering what the actual warning signs displayed were since I missed the early warnings from my relationship, sorry, my bad, carry on.

prodigal

Ago, take what you need and leave the rest. You have the opportunity to block posts, ignore posts, or report them to the mods.

Kimmieh

I will admit that I was on alert when I read about the ultimatum "her or me" and became very suspicious as I always do when witness a person telling another what to do in a relationship (in other words, when someone is controlling). Ago, your post made me think and I can only speak for myself when I see the difference here:

When my ABF comes home wasted, I am immediately affected and my life is more difficult than when he comes home sober. I will not tell him to not go out (I have never done that), but I can tell him to please stay overnight somewhere else if he is drunk as not to make me miserable. At the same time he can ask me to please meet friends at their home or elsewhere because he does not feel like being around people in his sanctuary (home). So we both ask each other to be considerate and not make each other feel bad. To me, this is being considerate and the reason we respect each other's wish is because we care about each other and are looking for a compromise.

But there is a difference between being considerate and walking on eggshells. Notsofast said: "He claims that my best friend is out of control (she got divorced about a year ago and does go out about 3 times a week on average) and that he "doesn't want that in his life." So he does not want someone in his life who is partying and possibly sleeping around? But he doesn't have this person in his life, his GF does. To me the only reason why he would make such a demand is that he does not trust her and is afraid that she will do the same as her GF and that is a different issue than boundaries.

I have the utmost respect for recovering addicts, but it's their recovery and not their partners'. I will do anything to be supportive should my ABF chose to go into recovery, but I will not allow him to ask me to alter my life-style to be in recovery with him besides consuming alcohol or drugs in his presence (that to me is being considerate). He cannot demand that I don't drink or go out with people he doesn't like.

Notsofast, what exactly is it that bothers him so much?

Ago

thank you so much, these distinctions are exactly what I was looking for, thank you