Thank you

Old 01-31-2012, 11:42 AM
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Thank you

Hello everyone.

This is the longest thank you I have ever written. But I needed to thank you for this wonderful site and for all your experiences and advice. I’ve been around the site for about two years now and at first couldn’t believe how similar other stories were to mine. Your words restored sanity to my life and made me see that I did not cause my XAH’s alcoholism, couldn’t control it, and can’t cure it.

I found SR in February 2010 after 30 years of trying to help my AH to get help with his alcoholism. We’ve been married 36 years and he has been an alcoholic for about 30 of these years.

I have done everything I could over the years to help him. You all know the usual stuff, pouring it down the sink, confronting him about his problem, ignoring his problem, having family meetings with him led by our children (when they were teenagers) to help him see that his problem was affecting not only me but my three wonderful children, etc. etc. I bought him a gym membership and got him involved in fitness classes he enjoyed. I took him for long country walks, tried to get him involved in hobbies, and tried to get him to socialise with my friends.

None of this helped. All he wanted to do was drink.

I got him detoxed in hospital twice when the alcoholism got really bad. It didn’t take long for him to return to alcohol once he was released. He hid it of course, so I was blissfully unaware that he was back to one or two bottles of whisky a day, all the while he was driving to work and at work and driving me and our kids around. Whenever I commented that I thought I smelled alcohol in the car he shouted and swore at me for being so evil as to accuse him of drinking. And as I was always the reason he drank, he said I’d better watch my allegations or else he’d start drinking again. That threat was pointless, as he’d never actually stopped. It never took him long after a detox to start again. Our doctor would prescribe Librium for him so he could detox himself at home, but after too many years of that, the doctor refused to give him any more saying he was just playing at giving up the alcohol. He never had any intention of stopping drinking.

He always hid his drinking. My kids, now adults with family themselves, have seldom seen him drinking alcohol.

It got crazy. Any time I tried to stop him driving when I knew he was drunk, he’d tell the kids I was off my head. As they had never seen him drinking, it must have seemed to them that I was indeed a bit mad to accuse him like that.

He shouted and swore at me constantly for the tiniest thing that would annoy him. It seemed that everything I did annoyed him and I was on edge all the time.

I had no confidence left.

He enjoyed embarrassing me in front of my friends. He swore, knowing my friends and I hated bad language. He told filthy jokes in my friends’ company knowing we would be disgusted and embarrassed by them.

He drove when he was so drunk he could hardly walk. I hid car keys to stop him driving. I boxed his car in using mine and stayed home so he wouldn’t drive whilst drunk. But this gave him more reason to accuse me of being off my head and he wore me down with his horrible accusations and bad language.

I can’t tell you how crazy my life became. It got worse when the kids all left home.

The walk from the train station to home every night was stomach churning. I would never know what condition he’d be in when I got home. Sometimes he was so drunk he was unconscious in bed but with all the doors locked so I couldn’t get in. Other times he’d set an alarm to wake himself up before I got home, so he could be away in some bar when I got home from work. Other times he was just drunk in bed watching porn.

I always thought I would be able to get him off the alcohol and back to living a decent life.

I tried for more than 30 years.

He didn’t want to stop drinking. He would pretend. He would tell me what I needed to hear. He humoured me. And I spent my life getting him help from every agency I could and got all the literature I could to help him stop.

He really wasn’t interested, although he did a good job of convincing me that this time he was going to stop for good and we would live happily ever after.

And each time he said that I believed him.

He was verbally abusive and emotionally abusive. He swore using the most awful bad language to shout at me for the most trivial of reasons. He loved to shout and swear at me. He loved to frighten me. There was real violence in his voice.

That went on for far too long.

I won’t even start to tell you all the verbal/emotional abuse I suffered but I know all of you with long term alcoholic partners will have some idea. There seems to be a pattern of behaviour consistent with alcoholic partners. That’s something I’ve learned from SR.

Needless to say my confidence went, so I wasn’t able to do anything about his behaviour. Apparently it was all my fault anyway, so to seek help was to admit that I’d caused all our problems.

I was trapped.

Then in February 2010 he crossed the line. I knew then that I couldn’t go on the way things were.

That’s when I found SR. I read everything. I stayed up all night reading as much as I could. It was eye opening.

I read Melody Beattie’s Co-dependency books. All of them. I changed my behaviour and learned to detach.

He got worse. The more I detached, the more he got angry and abusive. He hated me not being interested in how much he was dinking.

If it was crazy before, it was absolutely insane now. I was scared before, but now I was terrified. He was unpredictable. One minute very loving and promising a wonderful future together, the next minute he was screaming at me that I was the cause of every problem in his life and he called me the most disgusting names.

It was about then my doctor told me that I would need to leave him for the sake of my health. I was suffering from depression and panic attacks.

I won’t go into too much detail about how the separation happened, but he has been away now for 14 months. The peace was unbelievable. It took me a long time to stop feeling scared and for the panic attacks to ease off.

Now, at a time in my life when I’d expected to be settled and enjoying a secure and happy life together, I am alone. But it’s ok. I feel safe now.

Today, I still read SR as often as I can. I have saved some threads as my favourites because they have been so very helpful. When I can’t sleep during the night, I log on and read.

My kids have been wonderfully supportive and are there for me all the time. They visit and phone to make sure I'm ok.

I sometimes feel guilty because he is still wasting his life and has been seriously ill recently. I did help him when he was ill but the drinking never stopped. So he is still unpredictable and loses his temper easily.

I’ve read so much here that has helped me.

I just wanted to thank you all for opening your hearts and sharing. It has helped me tremendously.


Much love and hugs

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Old 01-31-2012, 12:41 PM
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Much love and hugs back to you, friend.
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Old 01-31-2012, 01:17 PM
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Sendig support your way, we are here for you.
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Old 01-31-2012, 02:27 PM
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just wondering, which threads are your favorites?

and thanks for sharing. so glad you are now on the next phase of your life...free and safe.

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Old 01-31-2012, 02:28 PM
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So proud of you!
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