ItsmeAlice

So I'm not even a week into my decision to seek recovery, and I got fooled again, and it was a delayed reaction this time. It's like laughing at joke then finding out later you were the butt of it. I feel like a complete idiot. I'm hopping mad. Absolutely hopping.

AFB's gone on a moderation kick after a big binge last weekend. It was the "same s***t different day" that was I was expecting. He made it two days before he started increasing his consumption again. Wow, a real streak there.

He kept making comments about cutting back and getting control and things will be different, which I smiled and walked away from, because I am focusing on me, right, and not his song and dance. His spending cash was cut in half this week at his request so he's really had to count his pennies.

Well, this morning he asked me about picking up a carton of cigarettes for him because he really didn't want to go to the store before the weekend out of concern that it would be too tempting to pick up beer when he has a two bottles in the fridge, and he really wants to be good this weekend. Yadda Yadda Yadda. He told me how much it would be, and I really thought about it because I really don't want to get sucked into promoting his drinking.

In the end, I bought the stupid line about him wanting to be good this weekend, and I went and bought the cigs for him. Even though I haven't bought a pack in two years since I quit (tomorrow is my anniversary, in fact), and I new I would be sorely tempted to by a bunch of Snickers bars (my nemesis) and wreck my hard word on my impulse eating this week.

I see him drive by after work, and he stays gone for an hour or so. By the time he gets home, he's his usual snarky self and starts trying to pick a fight so I know, and later confirm when I see the almost empty six pack on the front seat of his truck, I GOT SNOOKERED. He had quite a smirk on his face tonight, and now I know why.

He had money for beer but not enough left for cigarettes. He knew they'd be more than he said they would but that I'd buy them for him anyway. He knew between what I spent and what he got at the start of the week that he'd blow more money than if he'd gotten his usual allowance.

I....am...a....moron.

I cannot be deterred. I cannot be derailed. He's had years of practice at manipulating and slipping s***t past me and making me cry over it. I've been at this a week.

I know you know this feeling. I know you've been there. I am both sorry that it has happened to us over and over and releived that I am not the only one.

- so glad I'm here.

Alice

Kimmieh

:ghug3

Argh, how frustrating! Don't feel like a moron! It's a learning process. I have promised myself to no give ABF money for anything (he makes more than I do!) but not too long ago I bought him food because he was out of food. I was mad at myself, but hey, one step at a time. They can slip in their recovery and we can slip in ours.

I have now decided to not buy him anything. I don't have the money (and I don't!) and that's that. This way he cannot use my money for food and his own for booze.

Are you the sole provider?

ItsmeAlice

Thanks for the encouragement Kimmieh!

It's a long story, but essentially, I used to be the main bread winner for the first eight years we were together. I bailed him out of a lot of financial scrapes along the way. You know I thought I was helping him settle down and get his priorities straight. Ha.

When I lost my job, he pitched in a bit, but I never saw his whole paycheck, and I never realized just how much his beer habit would put us behind every month.

After a few very turbulent years financially, I wised up and now both our paychecks go into accounts in my name, and I handle the finances. He gets a weekly cash allowance. I just started a new career so I'm still not making enough to support myself again, but that will come sooner than later, I'm determined now.

I am usually irritated but sometimes just amused by his schemes to get more funds each week when he runs short. Most times I give in because I want to avoid a fight.

GiveLove

ItsmeAlice,

I'd be mad too -- but not at myself. Well, maybe at myself.

The question is, what will you do differently next time? Do you really want to continue to live with someone this financially helpless, who lies to your face and makes sport of you?

ItsmeAlice

I just knew someone was going to ask me that, GL.
Um...................................
Can I get back you.

A thought came to me today that living with him is like getting an umarked box in the mail every day. In it could be anything from angry vipers to week old kittens. You have to open it and you take you chances every time. How am I supposed to see this stuff coming? *** I'm not asking in an angry way, I'm truly perplexed and feel like the answer is just out of my grasp. ****

Freedom1990

Living that way was killing me, in more ways than one.

I had to take help from several resources, had to swallow my pride, but I had to get out of the marriage to my AH and away from that insanity.

Seriously, a little chunk of me died every day in that life.

It's a subtle process that after a while you don't even realize. It's just the way it is, isn't it?

It's like the waves that beat against a massive rocky pier that juts out into the ocean.

Even the strongest of piers erodes, bit by bit, millimeter by millimeter, till there's eventually nothing left.

No one who sees it every day notices. It's subtle, almost invisible, but it's happening.

There wasn't much left of me in the end.

I am so incredibly grateful that I do not have to live that way anymore.

ICant

Freedom's response is spot on. The other thing I would like to add about the sweet and poison sides of the alcoholic: you'd think if they could just get rid of the alcohol from their lives, you would get the best of them. My AH has been relatively sober for the past 2 months and has been at his worst in terms of emotional and verbal abuse.

freeflower

This is a quote I wrote down and found it to be so true...." After years of living with a drinker/addict, you slowly lower your standards of what is acceptable in a relationship."

Helenlee

If you're going to act like his mother, don't be surprised he acts like a child. His pay should go into HIS bank account & HE manages his own budget & buys his own fags & experiences the consequences of his decisions. There's an elephant with the word "control" written on it in this story.
Sorry if this sounds hard. The really sad part is I see it clearly because I'm still doing the exact same thing ... ! Hang in there honey

Seren

Those of us who are not addicts are sometimes still surprised by the actions and lies of the addicts in our lives. There was a post I read somewhere (but can't find right now) that said something to the effec of: I will not give him money, I will not buy him cigarettes, I will not run his errands for him, I will not do anything for him that he is capable of doing himself.

Apparently, that is the ONLY way to keep yourself from being taken for a ride...sad.

HG

ItsmeAlice

Helenlee,
Your response is hard, but oh so true, and I appreciate you for saying it, in all sincerity.

I have felt the current situation is justified because prior to it I, and my pets whom I love dealy, were going without basic necessities so he could get drunk, and I relied on him for money. Now that my financial independence is returning, I intend to cut him loose to sink or swim without me.

I am now drawing closer to turning that "intent" becoming an action, and it's maddening when I feel set back by him.

Alice

LaTeeDa

This was a big wake up call for me that although I was certain I was not enabling him, I definitely was. And I believe that the parent/child relationship that I had developed with him over the years is what made it impossible for me to stay married to him. That dynamic was just too difficult to overcome after so many years.

L

Freedom1990

Thank you so much for pointing this out and I hope no one minds me addressing this from the other side of also being a recovering alcoholic myself.

Drinking wasn't my problem. It was my solution for a long time. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that I would have blown my head off had I not had the alcohol to escape with all those years.

I was a binge drinker, and in between periods of drinking, I was restless, irritable, and discontented. I still lied, manipulated, conned, and blamed.

The problem wasn't the alcohol-the problem was staring right back at me in the mirror.

So my recovery had to be threefold-physical, mental, and spiritual.

Even though I left my EXAH back in 1986, I continue to work on my codependency issues because they surfaced time and time again in relationships, and now with two adult ADs, it's a matter of preserving my sanity, my dignity, and living my life to the fullest despite the choices that my ADs make.

GiveLove

Hugs, itsmealice......

The funny thing is this: his actions, by acting like such an child, may in fact be pushing you forward. You're learning (unfortunately) what kind of a man he is, the hard way. There's a great line in Steinbeck's book "Travels With Charley" where he says "My wife married a man, and I saw no reason she should inherit an infant." That has always stuck with me, and when I saw certain love interests turning into infants, I get a little sick to my stomach, and I know it's time to go.

Wishing you luck with whatever you decide to do. We are here for you.

ItsmeAlice

Is it wrong to still hold a tiny bit of hope in my heart that one day he stays sober and we can have a real relationship, or is it better to let that hope go, too?

My pessimistic voice says he will just destroy that someday, and finally break my heart entirely.

GiveLove

I dunno, alice. You've said this:

So.......how many more years are you going to do this, hoping for something different?

And if it never happens, and you find yourself old and widowed by alcoholism, how will you feel then? Will it have been worth it THEN to have treated him like a child for so long, pouring your life into the bottomless vessel of someone else?

IMHO we only get one chance at this Life thing. I personally am no longer willing to gamble my happiness on "what could be" - especially when it's driven by a fear that I'd be better off learning to overcome anyway.

Wishing for you the chance to see what a good life really is.

freya

There's an old saying that I find to be amazingly true when it comes to my interactions with active or "dry"-as-opposed-to-sober alcoholics/addicts: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Basically, that means that anytime I think, feel, say, or write the word "again" (as in "I got tricked again") in regards to my being somehow "hurt" by an A's behavior, the truth is that I'm not a victim; I'm a volunteer and the only person I can rightfully be mad at or blame for my "hurt" is myself.

You know, chance is that if I choose to stand under a flock of pigeons, I'm gonna sh*t upon because pigeons do what pigeons do, and I know it perfectly well. Same thing goes for As -- they do what they do and I know it perfectly well, so if I hang out with the non-recovering A and I get sh*t on -- as I always will -- shame on me.

freya

ItsmeAlice

Thank you so much for your replies.

GL, thanks for putting my words back up for me to see. I really do talk myself in circles.

Is that how it begins? All scattered and disjointed. You think you know what you should do, but you don't yet. Or at least you know the path you should be on, but you're not really walking it yet.

I feel like I'm trying to walk a line I've drawn for myself to lead me out, but every time I look down, I've veered off course. I hop back, veer off, hop back, veer off.

Please say this is how it's supposed to go, and that I really can do this. Or don't say it if that's the case.

-It's all rollercoasters...and I used to like riding rollercoasters.

Alice

stillsearching

Thanks for this post, because this week I also had to experience the bs again, and yes it is my fault for trusting and believing someone who is not trustworthy and honest, once again I feel like I have been slapped in the face, but never again. We had come to a agreement a few weeks ago about some issues in the divorce and I thought it was all taken care of...until this week, when I find out that he is doing the total opposite of what he said he was going to do and then tries to act like once again he did nothing wrong and what is the big deal...I SWEAR if I hear that ONE MORE TIME, I am going to scream!!

So, I told him fine, no more will I do this, he is one his own if anything needs to be worked out it will be done between attorneys, I'm DONE....he then comes back and says I don't understand, why you are doing this...why are you changing your mind!!! He has been (so he says) sober for the last month and half or so but nothing is different, even without the drinking, he is still a dishonest liar!

So, Alice, don't feel like you are the only one that this has happened to, but I have promised myself it won't happen again, he needs to face what he has caused and continues to cause and be held accountable for such!!!!!~AMEN!

embraced2000

i learned not to be surprised at anything my x did or said. his tricks were endless and towards the end of our relationship, he would look at me with tears in his eyes, and say the most sincerest things. i'm sure he truly believed it at the time. he was just too sick with alcoholism to do any of it.

when he was so sincere like this, towards the end, i would just stare at him and think how pitiful he was in his sickness and then i would think quack, quack, quack.

it didn't make me mad, sad, or hurt.......just totally indifferent. and planning my escape in the back of my mind while he was talking.

so, in my case, after many years, nothing surprised me. it became normal.