ForeverOptimist

My AH lost his job again. Second time this year and fifth time in last three years. Naturally he is blaming it on everything BUT his drinking (he is very much in denial), yet this keeps happening over and over again. The difference this time is that I feel nothing. No anger or shock or anxiety or sadness. Just nothing. It's as if all of my reserves of wifely support are empty. I feel used up. It's not that I feel nothing at all -- I still have much that I give to my children and family and friends. It's just that I have nothing left for him. Nothing. Is this detachment or am I depressed and don't know it? It is scary to feel absolutely nothing when we are likely in serious financial trouble.

ichabod

I'm sorry.

I'm no expert, but I think true detachment is a conscious choice. I have found that when life gets too overwhelming for me, my brain kind of shuts down until I am capable of dealing. It sounds to me like this is what's happening to you.

Take the feeling, though, and use it. You can't take his issues anymore, so use this forced detachment to help you attain the real thing. His issues are his and all you can do is take care of yourself and your family the best you can.

NWGRITS

I'm not an expert, either, but I do have a question for you: Do you still feel joy when you're doing things for/with your children? Your family? Work/volunteering/whatever else you do? If so, then I'd say it's not depression, per se, but more an enlightenment into your relationship with your AH. I agree that detachment is a conscious choice, but it sounds like you're leaning that way already.

myfreedom

I too have been feeling this way for awhile. Ah not working either. I have nothing left either. I just don't seem to care about anything but my children. I can barely look at him without a feeling of disgust. Does this mean I have had enough?

EnglishGarden

In addiction recovery, the addict hits a point of overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, futility, and defeat as his arrogant ego which thought it was in control realizes it is completely powerless to control his addictive behaviors and to direct his life at all. He hits a bottom from which he, at that moment, thinks he will not ever emerge. This is when in desperation he turns to AA and does exactly as they tell him: don't drink, go to meetings, read the Big Book, work the steps.

Codependents also eventually hit a point of complete despair, when they finally and thoroughly accept that nothing they say or do will coerce the alcoholic/addict into recovery, into sobriety. In the past, the codependent tried to direct, divert, displace the alcoholic/addict in naive hope that she could do what neither he nor anyone on the planet could do: control an addict's mental craving and compulsion to drink or use. But eventually, given enough string of failures to do so, she gives up.

It sounds like you are there.

Lulu39

It's how I feel. I have had enough.

My STBXAH started ANOTHER job earlier this year. He takes at least 1-2 days off every two weeks due to "illness" - he is vewy vewy vewy sick, poor widdle possum. Or else he lies and says one of the kids are sick and he needs to stay home.

I can see he is going to **** up this pretty decent job he currently has and I am NOT GOING to, again, deal with the fallout or, again, pay for his filthy lifestyle when it happens, again. Which it will.

7 - 14 days left to go...

When you are done you are done.

ForeverOptimist

Thank you all for your comments. EnglishGarden, I never thought about that before. I knew I didn't have depression because I still enjoy my life (outside of the AH). But I think you are right -- this is my final acceptance that no matter what I do it doesn't change anything. And as much as I hope he will reach some sort of a "rock bottom", once again this isn't it. So he'll just go through the same cycle again. When I think about it in your context I think this is my step 1 -- I can finally admit I am powerless over alcohol and my life has become unmanagable. I need to hand my AH over to my Higher Power and with my Higher Power's help, I need to start taking care of me and the children. Thank you all so much. I am so glad to have found this forum.

changeschoices

That's the point I got to two weeks before I ended it with my AX. He'd had an all-night binge that ended with him running off in the middle of the night and then calling me at 6 AM the next morning (it was a Sunday morning, my only morning to sleep in because my kids were at their dad's) demanding that I come pick him up in a nearby city because his car had run out of gas. Many other things happened with that binge, which ended up costing him $1,100.

After over two years of devoting endless amounts of energy to coping with his problems and running around in circles to manage his life and trying to keep him from leaving me, my reaction that Sunday morning was, "Why are you calling me at 6 AM when I'm trying to sleep?!"

Needless to say, he was dumbfounded that I no longer gave a poop where he was.

I dumped him two weeks later. I had hit rock bottom in my codependency.