FormerDoormat

I no longer measure my happiness on whether or not someone in my life is drinking or not drinking. It was a terrible way to live. Each time my boyfriend would make an attempt to stop drinking (momentarily, for days, or for weeks), I'd get my hopes up only to have them dashed again.

Sometimes he'd pour his alcohol down the drain in a real, but very short-lived, attempt to get his drinking under control, but mostly it was just for effect or to buy himself more time (usually after I came to him in tears of frustration, hurt, and anger), in hopes that in my momentary happiness over his action would buy him more time--more time to drink and more time for me to soften and give him another chance. Other times, it was pure manipulation and while he may have poured his liquor out or stopped buying it or drinking in my presence, the truth was he'd simply hidden bottles around my house instead.

But in my ever-hopeful mind, all it took for me to switch from I'm done mode to I'm happy and hopeful mode was to see him pull one of these stunts on me. It worked every time for 22 years until one day I woke up and saw moves like this as the manipulation they usually were.

Every day I make choices: to eat or not eat, to drink or not drink, to go to work or not to go to work, to be honest or not to be honest, to be responsible or irresponsible, to be nice or not nice. Mostly, I choose do to the right thing and I expect the same of everyone: my friends, family, coworkers, even strangers. Doing the right thing is expected.

PowerWithin

This is by far the best thread I have read through so far.

I'll be honest, I was on the fence with stepping into a relationship with an alcoholic, and in the back of my mind, I was opening this thread in hopes of reading sugar coated stories that would make me decide to go ahead and step into the relationship. My result has been the very opposite. After reading all of these posts, I have decided not to take this step. I will still be his friend, but nothing more. I think that is the smartest decision. Thanks to ALL who posted in this thread!!! You guys are literally a life saver!!!

hbb

I wish I had found this site WAY before my relationship with my xabf. I sugar coated the whole time we were together in hopes it was a "phase", nope. He turned me upside down and i'm ALMOST right side up due to this site, Al Anon, therapy and great friends and family. It's amazing what you can overcome when you have and want to.

Jazzman

My fathers drinking became a problem when I was a teenager. Living in that environment for several years taught me how I do NOT want to live... ever again. Or what kind of Father I want to be to my two sons.

Later in life my second wife started to remind me of my father. She turned out to be a nasty drunk. Because I knew what it was like to live with a nasty drunk I was no way going to expose my children to a nasty drunk step mother.

My earlier life experience saved my children from reliving it. The cycle stopped with me and that's a positive story.

TryingSoHard

Without intruding, I'd just like to say that I sincerely hope that my situation is one that gets chalked up as a "successful marriage in recovery".

I got the impression from the OP that she was looking specifically for stories of marriages that survived alcoholism and recovery... not individuals. I've read each and every one of these posts and there are some truly beautiful (yet heart-wrenching) stories of spouses breaking free from the chains of addiction and misery and learning how to take control of their own lives back. That is truly FANTASTIC and I do not wish to discount that AT ALL. In keeping with what I believe to be the question/intent of the OP, here's my story.

My husband and I have been together for 12 years, married for 9 1/2. We've always enjoyed drinking together, mostly on a strictly social/casual level, but drinking was never a PROBLEM for either one of us. For about the first 8 years of our relationship, anyway. (My point being that we have a fairly long and stable relationship history before alcohol entered the equation.)

About 2 1/2 years ago, my drinking began to get out of control. Then I began hiding my drinking from him - literally. I had a stash. Sure, I'd still drink with him and in front of him... I just made DARN sure that he had NO CLUE exactly how much I was consuming.

This "worked" for about a year or a year and a half, then I started getting sloppy. Oh, not with hiding my booze... that I was very good at. But my drinking increased in both quantity and frequency and I started showing signs of impairment that I didn't realize I was showing. My poor husband... he knew SOMETHING was not right with me, but he didn't know what it was. And apparently when I was drunk I was VERY mean to him - but gushed love and affection to the rest of the world. I started blacking out - and not realizing it until later - and those nights were particularly difficult for him. In my drunken world of denial, I had myself truly, 100% convinced that I wasn't hurting anyone but myself. I was hiding my drinking from him so in my mind he didn't know ANYTHING was going on. Well, he didn't know about the drinking but he certainly knew something was up when I'd fly off the handle at him for 2 hours every night, repeating my tirades about every 20 minutes because I didn't remember that I had just yelled at him.

So it was probably a huge relief to him when I sat down with him one night and handed him my copy of Under the Influence and told him that I had been going to AA meetings for about a week because I had a problem and I could no longer handle it on my own. At least he finally knew what the heck had happened to his wife.

He has supported me fully since then. After I told him, I drank again one more time, 12 days later. And I can not possibly find the words to express to you the level of shame and guilt I felt about it. That was on September 30, 2008. October 1, 2008 was my first day of sobriety and I hope that date never changes again.

My husband CONSTANTLY expresses his support for me, tells me he's proud of me, tells me how much better things have been for the past 3 1/2 months. He views this as a journey that we will take together, and says that he knows there will be easier paths and more difficult paths, but the paths are manageable as long as we walk them together.

Our 10th wedding anniversary will be in June. I would say the alcohol truly IMPACTED him for the past 15 - 18 months, whether I realized it at the time or not. So the majority of our relationship has NOT been spent dealing with alcoholism. The prospect that it will be "hanging over our heads" for the rest of our lives is kind of daunting to me. I'm still pretty early in recovery so I am still working on accepting some things.

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble so I will end this. I just wanted to say that I truly hope that my marriage winds up falling into the "success" category and that we cross this bridge together and emerge on the other side stronger than we have ever been.

My sincere well wishes to each and every one of you who has suffered because of an alcoholic.

ItsmeAlice

Good for you to get him to sober up, if he relapses then you must accept the credit for that also.

Thanks for that cynical one.

I've taken credit for my ABF's sober times, but not the relapses. I need to step up there as well.

I, for one, need to remember those words.

Alice

MeHandle

A good story:

I am getting a divorce after 21 years of marriage as a faithful wife, a sad thing but a good thing. We have 4 kids and we raised my niece, a good thing. A good thing about my AH is that he was great with kids, really. As a Christian he served in church( of course he was not drunk) with the 2 year old room for 3 years, which was a good thing. ( One of the reasons I believe he stopped was because of guilt and increase of drinking.)
But kids grow up and he isn't good with teenagers and teenage stresses drive him into more isolation to hide away his drinking more. Anyway, my AH went to work everyday, which is good. He was good at keeping up the cars and the yard. And he helped with chores around the house especially laundry, which is good.Sometimes he cleaned more then me, which is good, as I was out driving the kids everywhere and this way he could drink in secret and good to bed early. Being he is a closet Alcoholic he would stay up all night and do laundry....so he could drink and spend his day off sleeping most of the day because he had spent the night up doing "laundry." He has been a faithful husband to our our marital bed, which is a good thing. Sadly it is the only intimacy he knows or understands how to share.

When I asked for a divorce all hell broke lose and that last 12 weeks. At that point I let him know that if he quit drinking AND everything that goes along with it that I would not proceed with divorce, and that relapse was not an option FOR ME to stay. A good thing, for the first time he admitted how much he lied and hid his drinking, apologized for the things he says when he is drunk and went to AA for the second time in his life ( he went once before to one meeting ) and he was clean for 16 day, a good thing. We were doing some remodeling in the house then with our adult and teenage kids, and my mom lives with me and this was over Christmas break so it was a bad thing for a newly recovering AH. So , a good thing, he went back to meeting after 2 days of relapse ( he tried to lie but I caught him hiding the vodka) and i assured him that I wold not turn to divorce because of the situation and stress leave. So a bad thing, he relapsed again not long after that and stopped going to meetings and started isolating himself in the room and was trying to deny to me he was drinking. So then I waited for the weekend to come. When he was OBVIOUSLY drunk and denying it i went up found the vodka bottle and told him i was giving him what he wants and that we are getting a divorce. On the worse day of my life this was a good thing. The death of my marriage as God released me, and good the my AH is still falling so that someday he may finally hit bottom so he has nowhere to look but up. My it will be the day he gets the divorce papers or when he has to move out of the house, or when we are actually legal divorced. Who knows, but bottom will be a good thing for him.

However, he informed me last night that he was going to quit today as we can't afford it ( as I need a job and am not getting call backs- AAAAHH)
and because since he had quit he can now feel the difference and that if he doesn't quit he is going to have a heart attack. This will be a good thing, and if it does i will be on the sidelines getting a divorce either way.
tammy

MeHandle

Sorry , I forgot to clarify: So in my post those are the positive things about living with an alcoholic. If I was living with a recovering one my story would have been much different.

I understand the thread starter might have really meant an RA but the way it was stated granted me the opportunity to answer the way I did.

Also, my apologizes for the misspellings, missing letters and bad sentence structure. ( Like I wrote MY and it was suppose to be Maybe) I was intentionally trying to engage with a simplistic writing style. I see I got a bit to simplistic.

However, missing letters for me are a norm even after I proof read. I am one of those people who sees what I wanted it to say instead of what I actually typed. :day4 SO a heads up, thats just me. It can be really confusing when i meant to write can't and type can instead.

Nice board by the way. I think I may call this one home.

tammy