Hopeless4now

First off I just want to say I am sure someone is going to take this the wrong way. And I am sorry but I am needing help. sometimes I feel like people on here think I'm an idiot for staying with my alcoholic and maybe I am but I need help and advice and right now I need someone to be positive. I have no one to be completely honest with but these boards. And maybe I am an idiot and maybe I am looking for support and advice that doesnt exist or maybe I am screwed up to and just want someone to enable me in whatever it is I am doing wrong by loving this guy no matter what he does and trying my hardest to be supportive. I fell in love with an amazing man and then found out he was an addict but I couldn't turn my heart off and I couldn't stop the feelings. Isn't there anyone out there who stood by their man or woman and it worked out?

CodeNameGiggles

I don't think of it as "standing by my man." In my case, it vastly oversimplifies my situation

I am still with my husband. He is working through recovery. He is currently only 9 months into his recovery.

When he wound up in detox, I made the decision to allow him the opportunity to work on the marriage WITH me. At the point he wound up in detox, I had already spent 6 months collecting data on his drinking in order to support my desires for child custody and was working towards divorce. Since his drinking was a major issue in our marriage, I told him so long as he would work on his recovery, I would work on our marriage with him. It's a lot of work, and had our situation been even slightly different, I wouldn't have stayed.

Marytherboo

I left my AH a month ago...well, I threw him out after finding him staggering drunk two days after establishing that I would not continue to provide any financial or other support for him as long as he continued drinking.

Do I love him any less? Absolutely not. He touched my heart like no one ever before and I am deeply grateful for the joy we were able to share before he chose not to fight the disease that was destroying our marriage and our life.

In the end, I recognized that I was treating him like an idiot child...coddling, pampering, protecting, excusing, nagging, manipulating, rescuing...instead of an equal and competent partner. I was also demeaning and abusing myself, which is the opposite of love. I chose to honor and respect him as a man by holding him accountable for his actions and to honor and respect myself by refusing to accept addictive behaviors as a substitute for healthy love.

Hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm not out of the woods yet, by a long shot. But I still love my husband, and although I may lose him to this disease, I truly believe I am honoring the love we shared by refusing to settle for less.

Now I'm moving on to new adventures without regrets. My love for AH is part of me, and always will be. It doesn't require him to act a certain way. Living with him, on the other hand, requires a level of mutual commitment that he is incapable of, so I let that go. My HP will bring me what I need next.

feelingalone43

I don't think you're an idiot, or crazy. I also choose to stay with my AH. He has made changes in his drinking (cut back drastically, but still binges sometimes). Like so many of us know, he's a great guy when sober, but an annoying, loud, asshat when drunk. I have set my boundaries, and he respects them.

More importantly, I have made changes. I will not support his drinking in any way. If he gets drunk, I find things to do that do not include him. I continue to make improvements in my health and concentrate on activities that make me feel good about myself. I try to live my life as someone I would like to have as a friend. It feels good to get up every day knowing that I have nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about from yesterday.

I take full responsibility for my actions, so I let others take responsibility for theirs. What others think of me is their business.

My son recently said something about people doing bad stuff because they think if they are accused of it, they may as well do it. I told him that people can't blame someone else's opinion on their own choices. The Choice to do, or not do something lies within ourselves only.

Take care of YOU, and let everyone else do the same.

tbeit

My wife stood by me through the worst time in my life.Things are better now that I'm sober and she never throws it in my face.I have changed alot and owe alot to her undying love.I wanted to change needed to change couldnt live like that anymore but i do owe alot to her.
I was in recovery when we met and have had a few short relaps during our 18 yr marriage. It always when I am not working my program and my depression issues come back.What I'm getting at is no one thing works for every person. In my opinion tough love isnt always the answer and also in my opinion people can be addicted in different degrees. These are only my opinion and I know they aren't popular with everyone here but it works for us

Thumper

It isn't about making a relationship work. None of us can *make* that happen. What you can do is be the best possible 'you' and the rest works out however it was meant to be.

Do you attend al-anon, or see a counselor, or read some of the books that are recommended in the sticky section? Those are the the things you can do that will make a huge difference.

We can't make another person, or a relationship, be what we want. Determination, persistence, tricks, waiting, hoping and wishing has zero impact on others. We can only be the person we want to be, honor our core needs and principles, and go from there.

I have zero tips on how build a personally fulfilling lifee with an alcoholic. I tried for 15 years and never figured it out. Al-anon is the only place that I saw people achieving some level of that while remaining with an alcoholic and honestly - the only thing it showed me is where I did not want to be in 20 years. It worked for them however and they credit the al-anon program they worked - every day - for years. Check out some groups and you'll find people from all walks of life, living in all sorts of situations, and striving for (and attaining) peace, acceptance, and personal growth/fulfillment.

LaTeeDa

I don't think you're an idiot. I also don't think your situation is as unusual as you believe. In my experience, most everyone I know started out on this board wanting to stay in the relationship with the A. I can tell you the last thing I ever wanted was to divorce my husband of 20 years. I was willing to do whatever it took to "make the relationship work." Until I wasn't. It took a long time and a lot of pain and suffering before I finally had enough. I didn't just casually walk away from my marriage because things weren't going well. I had to hit bottom. I had to get to the point where I just couldn't possibly stay anymore because I was nearly destroyed. I didn't decide to save myself until I was much, much sicker than he was, emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes I regret that I didn't leave sooner, mostly because of the damage that was done to my children. But then I realize that it took everything crashing down around me to wake me up and that was what changed my life.

L

NYCDoglvr

No way you're an idiot! I can only talk about my own experience. It took a while for it to sink in that love didn't make any difference and there was nothing I could do or say that would affect his drinking. And it took time to understand that no matter what he said alcohol was way more important than me or our relationship. What also made a big difference was learning that alcoholism is a progressive disease. It only gets worse.

It's a process, I read books and went to meetings but I had to get there on my own to leave. Please, go to Al-Anon, it can make a huge difference.

Cyranoak

"Isn't there anyone out there who stood by their man or woman and it worked out?"

It doesn't matter. You aren't operating from a rational place. Alanon doesn't save relationships and it doesn't end them, but it allows relationships that can be saved to be saved, and helps people end relationships that can't be saved.

If you are interested at all in finding out what kind of relationship you are in you will begin attending Alanon, you will go more than once a week, you will find a sponsor, you will work the steps, and you will be open minded and patient.

If not then you are just quacking, grasping for straws, and hoping somebody will say their alcoholic stopped drinking so you can use it to justify more bad decisions.

This is as positive as it gets. Alcoholism isn't positive.

Cyranoak

Adventure

No, none of us are idiots, we just aren't quite ready to take that step where we move on with our lives, IMO. We come here to vent but also for advice. Unfortunately, most of the time, we don't like what we hear, because what we hear is the REAL experiences of REAL people who have been where we are now. All they can do is tell us what happened them, and tell us what they would do if they were in our position. It doesn't mean we have to like what they say, but we can't expect them to say "Yes, you are right, you should stick with it" when the vast majority of their experiences can teach us that we shouldn't. We should not take any replies personally and we should not be over-sensitive about replies - people are taking the time to reply to our posts. Surely, if they thought we were idiots, they would read our posts, think "idiots, they haven't a clue" and move on to the next post.

Really? No matter what? I am still with my AH after almost 5 years of mental/verbal abuse. I can honestly say I have zero love left for him - I don't know how anyone could love someone who is so selfish and mentally/verbally cruel, regardless of the fact that it is a disease. So what if he is a lovely person when he's sober? It is irrelevant now. I can't explain why I'm still there, but it is not for romantic reasons or in the hope that some day he will be the man he used to be. I'm just not quite ready yet. I hope you don't always feel that you will love him no matter what....

MTSlideAddict

Every situation is different. If you feel like you should stay than that is what you should do. Don’t stay for him though, stay for yourself. Do you feel that you get some happiness by being there?

My story in a nut shell: I have been with my husband for over eleven years now. I began to notice problematic drinking about four years into the relationship. I didn’t have a clue that this “problematic drinking” would have any sort of classification at that point. Another year or two went by, and it got worse. I threatened to leave and he admitted to having a problem. He said the usual- that he would get help. After one AA meeting he stopped going, and decided to “control” it on his own. It was steady for years as he drank heavy, but wasn’t too terrible to me. I drank with him, but never lost control. I didn’t understand why he would, but then again I did not know that he had been drinking much more from hidden bottles in attempt to conceal the problem. I was still naïve to alcoholism at that point. I stayed. We got married 2009, and it blew up big time. Very abusive mentally and on few occasions physically. I still stayed. I bought him booze because he claimed he needed it to get over a hangover, I took him countless times to the ER to detox, and I cleaned up his messes that he would make in his drunken tirades. I slept alone most nights as he fell asleep on the couch 29 nights out of 30. I was so lonely, but I stayed by him. July 2011 I was about to leave; I wanted out. He attempted suicide the beginning of August. We rushed him to the ER, where he finally decided to accept the help. He went to a psychiatric hospital and followed it with outpatient rehab. He did great and came out with great spirits, and started a career in real estate. Seven months have passed, and I have enjoyed seeing the him that has been lost. This is the man I fell in love with. He still struggles with sobriety, and actually has slipped twice. Both times he got back up.

I know my story is winded, but I wanted to let you know that it is possible to have a positive outcome. There can be positives in the end. There is no guarantee that my situation will not change, but this works for now.

My advice to anyone who wants to stand by their partner who is in active alcoholism is to make sure not to lose yourself along the way. I did not mention me in my story, because it was NEVER about me. It was ALWAYS about him- his sicknesses, his wants, his needs. I completely stopped living life for myself. I quit community college, because I chose to focus on him. I became 120 pounds overweight because I did not take care of me. I am nearly 30 years old and childless, because I knew I could not bring a baby into our situation; I wanted kids like five years ago. I am slowly putting myself back together after so many years. I was so naïve I didn’t even realize I was feeding the addiction with my ways, and I didn’t know that I would lose myself so much. Educate yourself on alcoholism and codependency, and take care of you first and foremost.