vttodd

Hey gang, just venting. I have been on the message boards alot and gotten lots of help from everyone. I know that i dont need her when she is drinking. short story i still love her very much and i do forgive her for what she did.(she had me arrested for assault then got herself in jail for 4 dui in ten years)i am sorry if i have offended anyone or talked to much. I am very hurt because of what happend. She is a very loving person and very attractive for 40 years old. she was a revovering ah when we met 5 years ago. her last dui was in 2007 and did not drink until this happend .As others have said i am going through the stages of detachment.As other have said to stay away from her,I am hopeing someday we can start over a a couple. We were to get married this month Had everything picked out .But i cant help the way I feel about her. I love her so much. I went out last night on a "date" but i could not go through with it because all I thought of was her and how we were. PLease Please bear with me and give me support with this.I need all the support I can right now

Shellcrusher

No apologies needed here when you're sharing your story.
I love my wife. I hate her alcoholism.

I think your personal recovery has stages to go through and detachment is one of them. Detachment is also a tool and it's also difficult to understand and work on. I try not to be too hard on myself when I'm new to something but that's hard to do. Quite the conundrum.

Here's something good I'm hearing from you and maybe it will help ease your pain. You may not have gone out on that date last night because you were thinking about your AGF. That's okay. What's even better is that you paid attention to you in that situation and that is a stage of recovery. Focusing on you. You were aware of you.

Keep posting and keep reading.

stepsforward

Good Luck to you Lots of HUGS

melloe

do i hear you..i love my exabf...i kicked him out 11 days ago and i want to go back on everything ive said and let him come back home...i want to help,save him...i know i cant tho...i keep thinking that maybe i can help...but i know i cant have him with me and try to live my life....i get you love her..i do...and it feels imposibble to be without her...but its not..i never thought the day would come that i would kick him out...i did it tho...it was the hardest thing ive ever done...but i know i cant live with the drinking,the lying and everything that goes with being with an A...i hope you feel better soon....

vttodd

well we really never broke up, i was in jail when she got the dui and i cant have any contact with her until after court next week.

sandrawg

Many of us have come to the same conclusion. We cannot live with the chaos and problems our loved one's drinking brings to our lives. It's very painful, but the greatest form of love is self-love.

If you don't love yourself, you can't really love anyone else. Alcoholics tend ot be very self-loathing individuals.

I decided I could no longer care more about my boyfriend than he did about himself.

Tuffgirl

Well said, Sandra! I still love my husband very much. But I wouldn't have married him if I had known in advance he was an alcoholic. And I refuse to live with him right now, and probably for a long while, if ever again. But I love the heck out of that guy. I also decided the same thing as Sandra below. Loving someone who doesn't/can't love themselves is exhausting and I got sick of fighting it.

P.S. There is no word limit on this board. Vent all you want here. Everyone understands and sympathizes with you, regardless.

TakingCharge999

You can keep loving her...... from a safe distance.

I also still love the XABF I met, when he was not deep in his alcoholism.

Good for you, for realizing you are not ready to date yet, and for coping with honesty with these feelings. Most people are in evasion mode and never want to feel what is needed to heal.

A book that helped me was "the Grief club" by Melody Beatty. And "The Language of Letting go".

Also reading Zen books has been great, they talk about the temporary nature of.. well, everything, hah.. about how nothing is ever lost..about how all things are alive in us. About peace.

Mourning sucks the first days/weeks/months but you will heal from this I am sure. I have been No contact for 2.5 years and I feel much much better now, I never thought I would. The human psyche is made for survival.

vttodd

I am the same way about her drinking, I could no longer take her leaving me, wondering who she was out with or taking off and never coming home. When she didnt drink,she cooked, cleaned, loved,talked,everything a man/woman does in a relationship.But when she drank,ran off to bars, drank herself to death(a few times i had to go out to the bar and pick her up b/c she did not know where she was and the bartender used her phone to see who had called and to come to pick her up so she did not go to jail) I will allways love her for her but NOT the drunk her. Thats why I miss her so much.she put so much into the relationship when she was not drunk,she treated me like gold. But when she was drunk the B---- came out in her.I just dont understand how someone can go to one extreme to another in a few hours.

TakingCharge999

vtt the Jekyll vs Mr Hyde syndrome comes with the alcoholism.

I never understood either.
We can't pick only the "good them". Its a complete package.

TakingCharge999

From Addiction, Lies and Relationships

As the addictive process claims more of the addict's self and lifeworld his addiction becomes his primary relationship to the detriment of all others. Strange as it sounds to speak of a bottle of alcohol, a drug, a gambling obsession or any other such compulsive behavior as a love object, this is precisely what goes on in advanced addictive illness. This means that in addiction there is always infidelity to other love objects such as spouses and other family - for the very existence of addiction signifies an allegiance that is at best divided and at worst -and more commonly- betrayed. For there comes a stage in every serious addiction at which the paramount attachment of the addict is to the addiction itself. Those unfortunates who attempt to preserve a human relationship to individuals in the throes of progressive addiction almost always sense their own secondary "less than" status in relation to the addiction - and despite the addict's passionate and indignant denials of this reality, they are right: the addict does indeed love his addiction more than he loves them.

TakingCharge999

To me, recovery is about the inner journey.

Entangling with other people is an energy exchange that keeps distracting me from my self, my nature, my center.

I needed to stop using others to feel I was worth something. To validate my existence.

steve11694

Not uncommon what you say. I know someone that got arrested charged with harassment because he refused to give drunk agf car keys at home. Argument escalated, agf called police hoping they'd force bf to give her car keys.

Instead she did not get car keys, bf was arrested cause many jurisdictions have a "zero tolerance" police despite police assessment. Charges later dismissed.

Don't blame yourself, living with an alcoholic is insanity, period.

Linkmeister

Well said, sandra. I second this wholeheartedly.

The pain and anguish of caring for someone who does not care for themselves, someone who does not love themselves is too high a price to pay for your serenity and peace of mind.

I left my EXABF about 6 weeks ago after another drunken tirade. Relapse followed relapse, always before something was about to change in my life. I was starting school, my mom was coming to visit and he couldn't handle me being out of his sphere of control.

Nasty things were said, I went no contact and while it has not been easy, there is peace in my life. There's stability and for the first time in a long time, I am learning to love me for me, which is more than the EX ever did.

One of the last things the EX said to me was that I was a quitter. After reading this thread http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...03-i-quit.html being a quitter is a good thing.

Keep coming back to SR - read, post, vent - we are all here to help each other.