Stung

Wedding anniversary is tomorrow, we spent the weekend away with our kids, it was fabulous. So much fun. I haven't enjoyed my husband's company that much in years and it was the best time I've ever had with him and both of our children. No arguing, lots of fun and just relaxing. He also acquired a new sponsor yesterday and he's all excited about it. Double yay.

Tomorrow however is our anniversary and I'm feeling a little butt hurt right now because first off, he was supposed to be here for dinner tonight but he decided to stay another night near his home AA group so he can attend tomorrow morning's meeting (I'm assuming with his new sponsor and whatever initiation stuff that includes) and we usually talk every Wednesday night at 9 and his phone is off. I'm sure it's not personal and I'm not worried that he's drinking but damn, I want him to make me feel better and I'm stuck here wondering if I'm being codependent in wanting his attention or if it's normal that I feel letdown and feel somewhat forgotten. In the grand scheme of things, I realize that this is minuscule but my feelings are hurt and I am feeling a weird codependent thing going on here. Just sucks and I need to whine somewhere and I think you guys are best suited to understand what kind of a freak show I am. I find that whining here prevents me from actually acting on my needy impulses that I'm feeling. Maybe I should go meditate.

suncatcher

Hi Stung. Know that you are in good company here and you found the right place . I understand how you feel and would feel the same way in your circumstances. Just wondering why his sponsor and AA meeting isn't local? I hope all is well. Take time to enjoy some "me" time while he is working his program. I understand your feelings though and hope you have a happy anniversary!

Stung

Oh, because when I kicked him out for real in December our family friend (an alcoholic with 15ish years of sobriety under his belt) took my husband under his wing and he lives in our home town, which is about 2 hours away from here. This family friend is his new sponsor, he's like a life mentor to my husband and a man he really looks up to - alcoholism taken into consideration or not.

I'm trying to prevent myself from thinking about "what-ifs" like what if something bad happened and he's in a hospital somewhere and he only has me in his phone as "First Name Last Name" instead of "Wife First Name Last Name" and the emergency responders called his mom instead. What if he was in a car accident. What if he was kidnapped. What is another good reason to not call your wife on a random Wednesday night when things are the best they have been in a long time. I'm worried that something bad happened to him and he's in some kind of peril. :/

CodeJob

Good morning Stung! Hope your anxiousness settled down last night.

Ah so H got the family friend sponsor. He sounds like a good ally with 15 Y sober! He also know H so he can really call him to task. I so hope this works out for his continued growth and recovery.

Have u been surfing again? Maybe you just need to do something joyful? Just a little mental switch up to stop the Codie thought train? Your recent weekend away sounded wonderful! Hugs!

involved

What if he forgot his phone charger at the hotel and the battery is dead? What if's dont have to be bad..but if it is...all you can do is wait to find out. Worry wont change a thing. Breathe and get busy and know your ok. More will be revealed.

JustAGirl1971

Hi, Stung. Do you think he just really needed the meeting in order to deal with his own anxiety and expectations about the anniversary? Just like stress can be a trigger for us codies (definitely for me), it can be a trigger for alcoholics, too. Even good, happy stress. Hugs, Stung. And, Happy Anniversary I hope it's a great day for the Stung family

MissFixit

You had a great weekend. That is something. No one is perfect and people forget to do things like leave their phones on or charge them or they get left in weird places. That is life and it happens to us all.

Your anxiety centers (I assume) around the fact that your newly sober husband is not adhering to the joint agreed upon schedule...and its your anniversary so you are more emotional than usual. I get it. Continuing in a relationship with an A (a newly sober A) is going to encounter these anxiety filled moments. It s really important to distinguish "moments" of error vs patterns or regular lapses in judgment. You can only control you, so if you are dealing with only a "moment" how can you release that nervous energy and not freak on him when you talk again? Exercise, cooking, intensely focusing on something else are things that help me. Sometimes if I can physically wear myself out that relaxes me enough to chill and the anxiety passes. If nothing else works and it is nighttime, I take a Lunesta. Having interests outside of him (which I know you have) are really important and help to lower the anxiety, enmeshment and codependency. If you have things that do not relate to him, then no matter what he does or doesn't do, you have that consistency in your life.

Please let us know what happens. You are doing really well and have come SOOOO far.

Hugs

Stung

Thanks for the kind words and hugs guys. Turns out he relapsed. He called me last night around 11 and told me through tears that he drank (two vodka drinks ordered from room service.) I lightly chewed him out because holy crap, this is like self sabotage on a whole new level because things seriously have been going great for him on all levels…except that his therapist is on vacation so he hasn't seen her in almost 3 weeks and that his original sponsor dropped him right before his therapist left for vacation.

He cried and told me that he's a failure and that he sucks at life and kept apologizing over and over for being such a failure and then I just told him that he's human, people fall down and then they get back up. Time to get back up. Over the next month he has two events where he'll be entertaining people from his corporate office and he feels like a freak that he won't be drinking with them. His AV rationalized that because things are going so good, maybe he'll be able to drink now and he can entertain his peers and drink with them. He knows what a stupid ass thought that is. I told him that if he ever tried to rationalize that nonsense with me that we're through.

I told him that in my mind he is 2 things. A man and an alcoholic. He cannot change either of those things. So from that standpoint, if he wants to be with me he cannot 1. CANNOT have sex with other women and 2. CANNOT drink alcohol. He told me that he never thought of it on that level but it makes sense. I don't feel like he cheated and I understand that he made a mistake but this is not ongoing acceptable behavior that I will tolerate from a spouse. His sobriety toolbox is LOADED with ways to cope with anxiety and alcohol isn't in that toolbox, he just needs to use those tools regularly and on an ongoing basis so he isn't in this position again.

Big deal that he can't drink. It boggles my mind that he's so sensitive about it and makes me so sad that he sees not drinking as weird, as if a person's normality revolves around their ability to booze it up. Get over yourself dude. There are SOOOO many people in this world who choose to not drink for a variety of reasons or who stop drinking for a variety of reasons and he's never stopped to wonder about any of them because it simply just does not matter. He's a successful man with a young family and he's been working hard to lose weight and get in shape, he is a perfect example of a man who should NOT be drinking simply because he's too freaking busy and focused on all of the other stuff he has going on. He isn't here half of the week and I could drink wine a few nights a week if I wanted to but honestly, I just don't have the time to and it definitely does not make me weird (there is a lot of other stuff that does make me weird, LOL!)

Anyway, back to sobriety day one. I told him in jest that he's a attention wh0re for making our wedding anniversary his new sobriety anniversary too but I look forward to him hitting a year on our next anniversary.

MissFixit

I am sorry. Everything you wrote reminded me of my exA and the conversations we had. My rationality, his emotional reaction and seemingly "oh that is what you meant. everybody else drinks. what's the big deal." Every time. The cycle never stopped. I hope for you and your girls, your cycle stops. There will always be a reason. Life is too good. Life is too bad. We have money. We have no money. Its sunny. Its rainy. No one likes me. Everyone likes me. on and on....

I support you and hope you make choices in your life that build you up.

Hugs

Florence

Ouch, that had to be a little painful. You sound extremely optimistic!

My STBXAH, for whatever reason, always relapsed around holidays and special days (unless it was *his* day, which finally told me what I needed to know about him). I usually "celebrated" alone, or went without gifts or acknowledgements that it was a special day for me -- Mother's day, anniversary, birthdays, even Christmas. He also relapsed around the kids' birthdays, which was a special treat when dad disappeared every time it was time for DS14 to celebrate something. I tried rolling with the punches, but eventually it was like getting the rug ripped out from underneath me.

A couple of years ago we went camping for our fifth anniversary -- he was purportedly in recovery coming up on a year and we were "working on our marriage" -- and that night he disappeared from our tent for a couple of hours without any explanation. I knew then that it was over and I was done. It was very bittersweet. Within a couple of days, I found his new stash (chromed coffee mug I'd never seen before kept in his chef bag, I happened upon him while he was refilling at home) and he confirmed his relapse, lied about its severity, and he was out for good. Up to that moment on this trip, we'd had a beautiful time together, and it was the first really good time we'd had in a long time. That kind of up-and-down was no longer tenable for me.

I think what I'm learning is that I don't have to continue accepting crumbs instead of birthday cake, you know? My narcissistic mother was a jerk about holidays, so I learned to expect less, but nevertheless felt empty and alone whenever a new holiday passed. People would invite me to do things and I would pass, "Oh, I'm all right," but I wasn't all right. I'd look forward to next time, do something next time, tell him next time, tell mom next time, but the next time was never any better or different.

Once my sister, upon finding out my AH didn't get me anything for something, maybe my birthday or Mother's Day, flipped out. She looked at me like I was nuts -- "THAT IS NOT OKAY, FLORENCE. If my husband did that to me we would be on a therapist's couch to figure out why he disrespects me so much." But I felt numb about it. I'd learned that nobody would celebrate me -- so why expect it.

Today I celebrate me, and I don't keep people in my life that can't cheerlead my happiness. He's a mess? Okay. Sorry about him. You deserve happy days too. You don't have to roll with any punches if you don't want to.

Florence

And it's taken me a long time to realize just how disrespectful and callous it is, and that I did and do have the justification to be mad and disappointed and disgusted by it. I didn't have to explain it away or accept his completely invented crisis situation as a reason why I should accept less.

CodeJob

Get a sitter and go surfing.

This might be telling you what to do, but you might as just switch things up to your own advantage Stung. It is your day now.

I am impressed with how you handled it. You were pretty kind when you could have rightfully been an Evil B. You cannot love him well.

Hugs beautiful lady!

SoloMio

I've also had situations in which other people have said to me, "That's not acceptable behavior" with regard to AH doing something that I just accepted. I remember thinking, "Oh, it's not?" It's almost like we folk who learn coping mechanisms to deal with alcoholic behavior wind up in a different country where a different language entirely is spoken.. a language of "oh, well," and "it sucks but that's the way it is" and even, "it's probably my fault anyway."

OTOH, I often rely on an author from yet another planet to get me through the landmines of expectations, and that's Byron Katie. She completely dismantles the idea of expectations in her book Loving What Is. And she doesn't say you have to tolerate bad behavior or any other behavior--you just have to stop expecting anything because those expectations fight with reality. And so your own life becomes a fight with your expectations and thus, reality--and reality usually wins.

I remember first reading her interpretation of "shoulds": when you say, "he shouldn't treat me like that," her response is, he "should" because he "is." That didn't make sense to me for the LONGEST time, until I realized she was simply restating a version of "if it quacks like a duck..." You can't say "a duck shouldn't quack that loud," because it's a duck. So you just accept it's a duck, and you just deal with it on that level, not on the level of "should" because that makes you want to change reality. Anway, I'm just babbling, but that's what comes to mind on this topic.

Stung

I don't know, I guess I'm optimistic. I guess that I don't feel like very much if any of this is about me. I think it's selfish that he chose to drink again, I think it's selfish that he chose this timing but that doesn't really surprise me either, I think alcoholism is a selfish disease at it's root anyway the inability to see outside of your own thoughts.

I totally agree that I deserve happy days and I do have those. I don't look to him to make me happy, I do look to him to follow through on commitments and I need to consider if I'll ever tolerate him breaking another big commitment with me. Therapy talking point for next week. I also deserve special days and he kind of ruined that for today to a degree…but I dunno maybe I'm being a brat because we did have a special weekend.

This sounds awesome but I don't know why…it feels selfish. I'm going to try to talk myself into doing this today though. It'll be mid 70s at the beach today, not windy, perfect surfing day… I could drop my kids off for 4 hours to be watched today. This is like playing hooky from work and man it totally induces some guilt.

CodeJob

Stung, It is your day. Might as well do what YOU love. Guilt be Dam--ed.

HopefulinFLA

Wow Stung, I'm sorry this happened. Not the anniversary gift you were expecting I'm sure. You sound very calm and rational about it though, that's a good place to be.

And what is it about special days with As? Mine relapsed the say before my bday this year, and I can't tell you how many bdays and anniversaries he opted to go on a binge. I've had many Christmases without even a single gift.

Hugs to you Stung. Stay strong and treat yourself well today.

FireSprite

Gosh, why does the timing always work out that way so that you always have these "bad" moments/memories tied to holidays & other days of importance? Or a blight on an otherwise great experience (like your great weekend away)? After that happening enough times it started to feel like the price that had to be paid in order to have the good times at all.... and that's not ok either. Ugh. I'm sorry Stung, these are the moments that I find test my recovery as much as his.

Stung

Are you guys ready for this? I'm about to reveal more. I forgot that the day before our wedding anniversary is his deceased brother's birthday. Apparently his FOO was blowing up his phone yesterday to remind him. And what better way to honor your brother that literally drank himself to death than to drink? The day he died is the same day as my birthday too. But his FOO cares not about our happy days (our wedding anniversary and my birthday) but only their sad days (deceased BIL's birthday and death anniversary).

dandylion

Stung---he is not drinking AT you--or to hurt you or to be just mean o r insensitive.

He is an alcoholic---that is what they do. They drink to cope with what is going on inside of THEM..not you.

EddieBuckle said something a couple of days ago---it stopped me in my tracks, because it sums everything up so well in one sentence. the alcoholic sees alcohol as the solution......not the problem.

Right now you are seeing alcohol as a big problem....your husband is seeing it as the solution.......the solution to the tornado that is going on inside of his head.

dandylion

involved

Simetimes a slip can be an opportunity to grow...

Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a stren*uous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in our* selves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.


Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

Alcohol is cunning and baffeling..and you already know sabotaging. Take care of you and dont take his self centered disease personally...i really think you do get it though...and I do know that it just hurts sometimes. And is so gol dang frustrating. So here is some ((((hugs))) for ya