update
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update
so today i went to the bin and found it half full of empties. when he demanded money to get diy supplies and i told him no (cos u can bet it wouldn't all go on paintbrushes) he started - despite my best intentions not to control, i told him i knew he was drinking again. he then called me, amongst others 'a selfish bitch who knows nothing'. i am selfish for working my ass off, trying to have quality time with my kids and keep my calm when i want to scream my head off at him for destroying my marriage and ultimately hurting our boys. why the hell can't i just go now?? what is my problem that makes me constantly worry about his future, when my ONLY focus should be me and my little ones. and what if they hate me for taking them away from the dad they love? what if they choose him?? what hurts them more? this distant angry relationship, or having their lives turned upside down. 
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Chicago
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I can only speak from my own experience as the child of an alcoholic mother and a father who wouldn't leave, would enforce no boundaries, and walked on eggshells all the time in failed attempt and failed attempt to make her happy so she wouldn't drink. The resounding effects of growing up in that environment have lasted throughout my entire life.
Living with a parent who chose alcohol over me every single day convinced me that I was not capable of being loved, nor deserving of it. I spent decades trying to find the perfect way to be to keep everyone else in my life from leaving me. I hurt a ton of people because I lived 100% of the time in survival mode. I also learned that it was far better to swallow my feelings than to express them because doing so would get me hurt.
I can't say that's what will happen to your kids, but I wish my father had just once considered that staying was not the only alternative. I wish he'd talked to me about what was really wrong with my mother and assured me that it wasn't my fault. That I hadn't caused it, couldn't control it, and couldn't cure it. I wish he had put my well-being ahead of the fantasy that all was well within our home, because it wasn't and all of us paid a terrible price for that.
But listen -- beating yourself up for not being able to go Right Now is counter-productive. It's keeping you frozen. You don't have to figure out everything right at this moment. You just have to figure out the next right step for YOU.
Progress, not perfection.
Living with a parent who chose alcohol over me every single day convinced me that I was not capable of being loved, nor deserving of it. I spent decades trying to find the perfect way to be to keep everyone else in my life from leaving me. I hurt a ton of people because I lived 100% of the time in survival mode. I also learned that it was far better to swallow my feelings than to express them because doing so would get me hurt.
I can't say that's what will happen to your kids, but I wish my father had just once considered that staying was not the only alternative. I wish he'd talked to me about what was really wrong with my mother and assured me that it wasn't my fault. That I hadn't caused it, couldn't control it, and couldn't cure it. I wish he had put my well-being ahead of the fantasy that all was well within our home, because it wasn't and all of us paid a terrible price for that.
But listen -- beating yourself up for not being able to go Right Now is counter-productive. It's keeping you frozen. You don't have to figure out everything right at this moment. You just have to figure out the next right step for YOU.
Progress, not perfection.
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 326
Originally Posted by majool 
why the hell can't i just go now?? what is my problem that makes me constantly worry about his future, when my ONLY focus should be me and my little ones.
Maybe--and I not saying it is--maybe you fear having to take on the undeserved guilt of your mother, that you will be recreating for yourself the life she had (and not by her own fault). That you will be what she was?
I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just thinking you may sense a familial, multigenerational pattern emerging and that by leaving you will be forced to take part in 50 years of family tragedy as though it's your destiny. If that is so, then of course you would be reluctant to leave. You feel it will play out: you leave, he self destructs like your father and grandmother, you are then forced to assume your poor mother's role, and your children get to live the way you did. Positions, everyone!
But if you stay, and manage to get him to stop drinking, and find a way to live happily ever after with him, the multigenerational tragedy of your family will be broken.
If this is the case, and not saying it is, just one theory among dozens, but if it's the case, counseling would be helpful for you. Because you can break the multigenerational pattern of tragedy in other ways besides staying and fixing him. And you can have happily ever after without him.
Just an idea musing about.
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i'm just so scared of getting it wrong. i don't know if the kids notice - maybe i am being naive, but the youngest is only 3, and my other is 10. There is no violence, and dad acts normal most of the time (except for the lack of patience, occasional disappearing acts), mum is often fed-up and unable to concentrate on them, but they have always had this. The 10 year old has seen his dad drunk a couple of times, but my husband will take himself to bed, and i just tell my boy he isn't well.
When my husband loses his temper (as he did today) he has a way of making me doubt myself - i know from reading other posts that this is common, but this is what makes me afraid i've got it wrong.
Does there have to be violence and shouting for the kids to be affected? or is it all the other stuff that counts more?
Sorry - this feels so selfish just talking about my problems
When my husband loses his temper (as he did today) he has a way of making me doubt myself - i know from reading other posts that this is common, but this is what makes me afraid i've got it wrong.
Does there have to be violence and shouting for the kids to be affected? or is it all the other stuff that counts more?
Sorry - this feels so selfish just talking about my problems
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oh sadheart - that made me cry!! not ure fault (i do it a lot right now!) but because it seems so real - i have never looked at it like that, and it's really struck a chord. Maybe this is part of the problem - and perhaps, as you say, i should indulge myself and get some counselling. I think i have battled too long, and i can't change the past, but the future is scary. Maybe i need something other than my befuddled mind to make sense of it all.
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Chicago
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This place is for talking about your problems. When I was just beginning to understand the scope of my mom's addiction and its long-term effects on me and my siblings, I didn't even think to look for a place like this. I wish I had -- I don't know that I would have been open to a lot of things said here, but I might have opened myself to those ideas sooner if I had.
As kids, we understand relationships by watching the relationships of those closest to us. Namely, our parents. They pattern their own behavior on that model. Kids with parents who have healthy relationships tend to form healthy relationships themselves. Kids with parents who fight or are distant with each or not affectionate tend to grow up to have relationships that mirror those.
I didn't know until I was 19 that my mother was an alcoholic. I had to be told. I just thought that was how parents behaved. I thought everyone lived in fear of screwing up and making their parents angry. I thought everyone squashed down what they really felt in service to keeping up appearances. Yes, my mother yelled a lot but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the core belief of not being worthy of love. From my own mother! If SHE couldn't love me unconditionally, who could??
I have spent the last several years consciously trying to change my understanding of relationships and emotional availability. That work has paid off, but it sure feels a long time coming.
Neither you nor I can predict what happens with your kids. But I can say that having at least one role model who shows them how to stand up for themselves with honesty and courage, who understands that loving oneself makes one more capable of loving others, and who lets go of the things they cannot possibly control would have been a really really amazing thing for me and my brother and sister.
But again, this is just my experience. I believe you have to focus on what YOU can do, separate from the alcoholic and whatever it is that he is doing. I believe that wanting a better life is not selfish, and that happiness is something we don't get from other people, just ourselves. I believe that everyone is worthy of being loved.
As kids, we understand relationships by watching the relationships of those closest to us. Namely, our parents. They pattern their own behavior on that model. Kids with parents who have healthy relationships tend to form healthy relationships themselves. Kids with parents who fight or are distant with each or not affectionate tend to grow up to have relationships that mirror those.
I didn't know until I was 19 that my mother was an alcoholic. I had to be told. I just thought that was how parents behaved. I thought everyone lived in fear of screwing up and making their parents angry. I thought everyone squashed down what they really felt in service to keeping up appearances. Yes, my mother yelled a lot but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the core belief of not being worthy of love. From my own mother! If SHE couldn't love me unconditionally, who could??
I have spent the last several years consciously trying to change my understanding of relationships and emotional availability. That work has paid off, but it sure feels a long time coming.
Neither you nor I can predict what happens with your kids. But I can say that having at least one role model who shows them how to stand up for themselves with honesty and courage, who understands that loving oneself makes one more capable of loving others, and who lets go of the things they cannot possibly control would have been a really really amazing thing for me and my brother and sister.
But again, this is just my experience. I believe you have to focus on what YOU can do, separate from the alcoholic and whatever it is that he is doing. I believe that wanting a better life is not selfish, and that happiness is something we don't get from other people, just ourselves. I believe that everyone is worthy of being loved.
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Sparkle, thank you for sharing your story with me - it really helps to see things from the point of view of the child in all this - it's something i am struggling with - i guess i'm so wrapped up in my own emotions that its easier to think they are ok, when from your experience, there is so much more to this - especially as you say with their own future relationships. Just because his drinking is hidden, doesn't mean they don't feel it. I am so pleased that counselling has helped bring you some peace of mind xx
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 1,452
"Sorry - this feels so selfish just talking about my problems...
and perhaps, as you say, i should indulge myself and get some counselling"
Majool, nothing is selfish about working through your problems; nothing is indulgent about getting help through counseling or any other means.
I left my STBXAH four months ago after a 20 year marriage that ended in alcoholism, porn, narcissism, and terrible damage to my self esteem, even my capacity to think for myself.
I saw myself, I saw my AH, I saw my world through my husband's distorted lens. I saw the world as he wanted me to see it. And he wanted me to see a world in which he was right because he needed me to continue to enable him, and that was worth everything to him, even the destruction of me.
He thought he was right, truly thought he was more intelligent, more gifted, more aware than me, than anyone else. To question him was to endure more pain. English Garden and others on this forum feared for my safety, for my ability to see who he was clearly, and for my wavering ability to find my own soul again.
They were right.
I left when the Fraud Squad called because he had charged over $500, actually $1700 in total on my personal credit for on-line porn. It took that profound level of dysfunction, after an ER visit in which he blood alcohol content was over 325, near coma and death. I thought I was the "loyal wife", taking care of a spouse with serious medical problems. Yet, as I see now more and more, so many of those medical problems were related to alcoholism. By taking care of him, I enabled him to get deeper into alcoholism, and I almost lost myself in the process.
It does not get better unless the alcoholic chooses to stop drinking completely and to embark on the treacherous difficult journey of spiritual recovery.
Please don't ever think that you are being frivolous, or self-indulgent, or misguided when you doubt the world as he sees it.
For me, this was a journey toward survival. It is only as day after day puts more distance between us that I begin to understand what happened to me. My self-awareness is at times elusive, and I fall back under his spell when I hear from him, but I do not go back. I come here.
My self-righting mechanism is starting to function again. It might help you to google "gaslighting" and "narcissism and Sam Vaknin" for more information about what might be happening to you.
From my experience, the only way I got out was suspending my belief in my AH's supremity, (even though I couldn't see what was happening at the beginning) and believing in what this wise caring people here on SR told me I needed to do to save myself.
It is a journey toward survival, first, and then toward thriving and growth and joy. And it is one you must make for yourself and for your children.
Come here often, post as much as you need, this is a caring, compassionate group with great wisdom.
ShootingStar1
and perhaps, as you say, i should indulge myself and get some counselling"
Majool, nothing is selfish about working through your problems; nothing is indulgent about getting help through counseling or any other means.
I left my STBXAH four months ago after a 20 year marriage that ended in alcoholism, porn, narcissism, and terrible damage to my self esteem, even my capacity to think for myself.
I saw myself, I saw my AH, I saw my world through my husband's distorted lens. I saw the world as he wanted me to see it. And he wanted me to see a world in which he was right because he needed me to continue to enable him, and that was worth everything to him, even the destruction of me.
He thought he was right, truly thought he was more intelligent, more gifted, more aware than me, than anyone else. To question him was to endure more pain. English Garden and others on this forum feared for my safety, for my ability to see who he was clearly, and for my wavering ability to find my own soul again.
They were right.
I left when the Fraud Squad called because he had charged over $500, actually $1700 in total on my personal credit for on-line porn. It took that profound level of dysfunction, after an ER visit in which he blood alcohol content was over 325, near coma and death. I thought I was the "loyal wife", taking care of a spouse with serious medical problems. Yet, as I see now more and more, so many of those medical problems were related to alcoholism. By taking care of him, I enabled him to get deeper into alcoholism, and I almost lost myself in the process.
It does not get better unless the alcoholic chooses to stop drinking completely and to embark on the treacherous difficult journey of spiritual recovery.
Please don't ever think that you are being frivolous, or self-indulgent, or misguided when you doubt the world as he sees it.
For me, this was a journey toward survival. It is only as day after day puts more distance between us that I begin to understand what happened to me. My self-awareness is at times elusive, and I fall back under his spell when I hear from him, but I do not go back. I come here.
My self-righting mechanism is starting to function again. It might help you to google "gaslighting" and "narcissism and Sam Vaknin" for more information about what might be happening to you.
From my experience, the only way I got out was suspending my belief in my AH's supremity, (even though I couldn't see what was happening at the beginning) and believing in what this wise caring people here on SR told me I needed to do to save myself.
It is a journey toward survival, first, and then toward thriving and growth and joy. And it is one you must make for yourself and for your children.
Come here often, post as much as you need, this is a caring, compassionate group with great wisdom.
ShootingStar1
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 37
shooting star - i am so glad that you have reached a better way of living - i am sure you must have dark days, but i guess not as many as you used to? you speak of the 'supremity' - i too have adored him, and worshipped his every word, believing he was the most worldy wise man, and the only one who was truly looking out for me. What i have come to realise is that so many of the things he was 'protecting' me from, were his doing. He too has had health problems - i have stood by and believed in him when he said he would change his lifestyle for the sake of his health. When my youngest was a couple of weeks old, he walked into the house in the afternoon and collapsed on the floor - i thought he was having a heart attack. I went to phone the ambulance, but he came to and claimed it was heatstroke - he had been drinking all the previous day, and from that morning. Many of my illusions have been shattered in the last couple of years - in some ways i have learnt from them, and become less 'gullible' to the lies and spin, but here i still am.
Much love and respect to you - i hope a wonderful future awaits you x
Much love and respect to you - i hope a wonderful future awaits you x
I'm no angel!
Join Date: May 2005
Location: tampa, fl
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All I can say is that your children are being affected by his alcoholism and the toxic enviornment. If you do not think so you are only fooling yourself, they hear and see everything, although they internalize their fears. They have already inherited the gene that predisposes them to addiction, they have a 50% chance of becoming addicts themselves or ending up like you, married to one, not a pretty story, do what you can to protect them, to get them out of this mess.
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