jaimemk

Hi All! Just joined SR today, after looking around the internet for help. Lot's of options and wasn't sure where to turn. I have four children from my first marriage of fifteen years. After three years of being single, I remarried a year ago. It's been a year of confusion, and from what I have read here, not uncommon in all of your stories.

A month ago, on our anniversary, AH came home drunk and late. Again. I gently told him I couldn't live this way and we separated. He comes and stays every other weekend so he can see the kids. His 18 year old senior decided to stay with me.

We counseled twice with our pastor and his wife. AH will continue to meet with pastor, I will meet with his wife. He says he is going to get sober, says he has gone to a couple of meetings. I know he is still drinking and lying.

Pastor says I need to ask AH from time to time if he has been drinking. He says I need to be supportive of him if he is to get better. I don't want to ask. I know he will lie to me. I don't know how supportive I can be. These meetings have made me feel uncomfortable. "he has a disease, like cancer. if he was in treatment for that you would be loving and supportive." "My father was an alcoholic (Pastor) and my mother was not supportive of him. Not good."

Sorry so long, I guess I could go on and on. How do I "support" him in a way that is healthy? I'm not dumping the marriage at this point, but I have told him I can't come back until he is sober. I am so confused by my role in his recovery at this point. Thank you for reading all of this!

laurie6781

Welcome to SR. Yu have found a GREAT place!!!!!

I am glad yu are here but sorry for the reasons yu found us.

How do yu support him? By taking care of you. Instead of the 'Pastor's Wife" I would like to suggest you try either an Alcohol and addition counselor that is also versed in Co Dependency and/or AlAnon.

Please read the 'sticky's' at the top of this forum.

You are certainly correct for you that you cannot come back until he is sober, and I would add until HIS ACTIONS show he has changed, not his words.

Unfortunately, alcoholism and addiction must be taken care of by the person themselves, and recovery from same requires a lot of HARD WORK on that person's part. In the beginning, it is very rough, and trust me, no matter what you say, he will probably take it negatively. I know, I was there once a long time ago.

One little thing I hope you can incorporate into the very core of your being, it's called THE THREE C's:

You didn't CAUSE it,

You can't CONTROL it, and

You can't CURE it.

Please continue to post and let us know how YOU are doing we do care very much.

Love and hugs,

prodigal

I am sure your pastor has the best of intentions. He wants to see you and your husband reconciled. However ... we are talking about an alcoholic here. When they're active in their addiction, honesty is not something to expect. What purpose would it serve to ask him if he's drinking or not? Is this supposed to hold him accountable? My former pastor was the child of an alcoholic parent. One of the elders at the church was a recovering alcoholic, with 15 years sober. If I had questions or needed support, I looked to those two men for advice. They both understood alcoholism and had lived with it.

But we are not talking about cancer here; we are talking about addiction. I cannot go into a store and buy a bottle of cancer off the shelf, take it home, consume it, and become intoxicated. Yes, addiction IS a disease, but it is a disease that starts with somebody making a conscious decision to continue in their drinking until the body becomes addicted to the substance.

No, I am not an alcoholic. I have been married to two alcoholics. I have sat in a lot of rooms - AlAnon and open A.A. - for 13 years. And I agree with Laurie 100% - start supporting you. There is a fine line we tread between supporting and enabling when we are married to an A. My AH pursues his addiction. It is his to own. I don't discuss it with him. I don't try to fix him. I can only control my side of the street.

I think you have made a very wise decision to live separately from your AH until he decides to seek sobriety. Just be prepared that he may not seek help. Meanwhile, please consider giving Al-Anon a try.

I'm not sure what your pastor meant when he said his mother was not "supportive" of his alcoholic father. Did he give you any details as to what his idea of support would entail?

sailorjohn

welcome!!!

Ditto what the others have said, will also include, a lot of well meaning people will offer advice which is counter productive. There's a lot of good reading here and elsewhere, and quite a few people that have been down the road you're on. Keep coming back, you'll find a lot of support here.

Barbara52

Your pastor sounds a lot like mine. My pastor did not help in the slightest because he has little to no understanding of alcoholism, enabling and how it affects the spouses (and children) of alcoholics. The comment about it being a disease and ou should be lovign and supporting shows his lack of understanding.

When I left AH, my pastor became xAH's main enabler, providing him with money, allowing his alcoholism to be ignored when it should have disqualifeid xAH from his positions of Elder and Trustee, and generally buying all of xAH's excuses and BS. Pastor thought he was doing the Christian thing, the right thing when all he was doing was preventing the natural consequences of xAH's choices from perhaps changing xAH's behaviors.

In many ways, there is a fundamental conflict with what many pastors see as the "Christian" thing to do and the healthy thing to do for an alcoholic and the spouse of an alcoholic. Christianity teaches to help one another. Many misinterpret this (when it comes to dealing with an alcoholic) until it turns into enabling not helping. Its seems wrong at first to say "no I can't do that for you."

Many have found AlAnon very helpful in understanding what they can do to deal with the alcoholism of a spouse. A book I highly recommend is Boundaries, by Cloud and Townsend. It gives a Biblically based way of setting boundaries and can help you find your way through all you are facing. They also have a book specifically about boundaries in marriage which may be helpful to you.


You don't have a role in his recovery. His recovery is his and his alone. You cannot do it for him. You cannot stop it from happening either if he truly wants it.

From what you have said, you AH has not stopped drinking. So he isn't serious about sobriety. Until he is, no one can help him, not even God.

prodigal

You are getting some excellent suggestions and advice here. Let me attempt to put this in, what I hope, is a Christian perspective. Jesus did not go running up to people forcing himself on them and saying, "Let me support you," or "Let me help you." Quite the contrary. He would ask people, "Would you like help?" or "Would you like to get better?" If they didn't want his help, he respected their wishes and left them alone.

Support does not mean living with somebody who has basically checked out of their marriage relationship and abandoned their family in order to pursue an addiction. I don't condone or condemn divorce; that is a personal matter. But I see nothing wrong with moving out and living apart from addict.

Allowing your AH to find his bottom, if he has one, is giving him the respect to live his life and exercise his free will as he desires.

jaimemk

Thank you, prodigal. I can tell I have found a good place and I appreciate all your words of wisdom. I did ask the pastor to clarify what he meant by supportive and he used the cancer illustration again. He told me to call and ask AH how he was doing, if he had been drinking. If he told me he had, to say, and I quote, "Ok, this is what I want you to do (!) call your sponsor, keep going to your meetings" I told him I was uncomfortable with that. That I want to focus on the kids and my life and allow him to do the same; that I'm not judging him, I just want to release him. He told me that wasn't good. I think I just need to follow my gut here. And I have done Al Anon in the past (apparently, not for long enough ) I think it is the things I learned there that are causing me to struggle with the counsel I am hearing from my pastor. I do know I am going to go back to Al Anon, now. I live quite a ways away but, Oh Well. I think this site is going to be helpful, as well.

Thank you, All!

prodigal

I think you have a good grip on your situation. Follow your gut instincts. Your pastor means well, but he IS just human and if you ask ten people for their opinions, you will get ten different responses. Your pastor is not an addictions counselor. It is not your responsibility to tell a grown man, with a free will who can make his own decisions what to do. That's not support for an adult. It sounds more like telling a child how to behave.

Seriously consider going back to Al-Anon and finding a counselor whose specialty is addictions and codependency.

Bernadette

Hi jaimiemk--
Maybe you could invite your pastor to an AlAnon meeting - he's operating from an outdated and uninformed view of addiction! Calling to check in on your AH's drinking??? Immediately sets up a dynamic as if his recovery is your responsibility--and a dynamic for AH that all he has to do is answer to/or lie to you!! He's only going to get sober when he chooses to and when he gets REAL with himself and NO ONE can force that on him - he must find his way for himself.

I think the cancer analogy only works if you play the tape all the way through: a person has cancer and is offered treatment. They refuse treatment and keep smoking/laying in the sun/exposing themselves to harsh chemicals, whatever it is that makes their cancer more aggressive.

As the spouse you can get into a fine power struggle trying to force the cancer patient to follow treatment - but if they refuse and they continue to make the choice to damage their own health (and if we're going to go all the way with this analogy let's add that their refusal to accept treatment and change their ways means they are exposing their family to risky behavior, heartache, lies, and scenes that are very damaging as role-models for children).

So what would the spouse of this type of cancer patient do to be supportive? He/she would find they HAVE TO accept that it is up to the sick person to seek and accept treatment. It is up to the sick person to follow directions and make an effort to get well. It is up to the sick person to ask for specific help. Not some vague notion of "support" that sounds like you have to bend over to help me when I won't even help myself!!

They cannot be forced by anyone to do anything!! Even if it is in their best interest. Believe it. Whether it is cancer or alcoholism the only person who has the right to decide how to handle it is the sick person.

In the same way, you have the right to trust your gut on this - to focus on yourself and the kids and as far as your AH is concerned : "Let go and Let God."

It isn't mean or unsupportive. We can detach with love - basically saying "I trust you to do what is best, and I am choosing to do what is best for me and my children."

I'm sorry things are turning out this way...but you sound like you are doing the right thing in separating to maintain your own mental health and show the children what is and is not acceptable in a relationship. Keep working on you and things will get better and better!

peace
b

jaimemk

Thank you, Bernadette. I felt clear and strong before we met with the pastor. It's funny how I was intimidated by his position and began to question myself. The interesting thing, also, is that the day we separated AH told me he knew I would make that choice when he continued to drink. He was kind and respectful, although in turmoil. It wasn't until he heard the pastor continue to coach me in calling him and holding him accountable that he started to become angry with me. Especially after the example of how unsupportive his mother had been of his AF. I could feel it happening as it was happening. It took a few days for me to get clear again and reading these responses definitely helped. And it was the same ol' self talk that caused a huge sigh in my soul. "You can't do this for him, Jaime. You are only responsible for you. And you can't allow anyone, pastor or otherwise, to force you to do something that you know is unhealthy. (((sigh))) Ok... "Hey, check out that beautiful sunrise!"