laughabledog

I am new here. I have been living with my AB for over two years. I fell madly in love with him while he was sober (in jail -- long story) and after many long talks and letters proceeded to jump into a relationship right away. He wanted to start a family with me and I was getting up there in age (he's younger) so I let it happen. We have a daughter now who is 19 months old, we got pregnant right away. Since he got out of jail he started drinking and lying and stealing. Then periods of tryiing to be sober and stopping. More jail and treatment. He always wants to try. I have been hurt in so many ways so many times but part of me felt if I loved him loyally he would change. That he had been "abandoned" by his alcoholic family that I could never abandon him. I felt that I could inspire him to be a better man and if I left the relationship he would fall apart and I would have no say about who he was with and who he brings my daughter around.
He just was sober for a month and half and just fell of the wagon hard after finally getting a job (he hasn't worked in the 2 1/2 years) and meeting new buddies. He always tries to impress these males, and these drinking buddies become more important than us. Anyway he has been binging now for three days and I have had him arrested for DUI with my car ( he found my key in a hiding spot and just got in the car with his buddies and took off), and got a restraining order. Yet now I sit lonely and rejected and sad because he doesn't call or text and probably is with god knows who and I structured my whole life around him and when he does this I have nothing. Feel stuck at home with my daughter and couldn't attend alanon. We just moved to this town for a new job. Even though he was sober, I always felt like he was drinking. so he said to me "if I take another drink it means I don't want to be with you so stop worrying". Well, I am taking him at his word. He is on the street with his new drinking friends and I saw him outside the bar when I was walking my dog. Hasn't called to ask about his beloved daughter once.

Anyway I just feel like junk. Want to call and ex just for the rebound/distraction, but what is the use in that? How do you cope with these long, lonely days and hours of adjustment. How do you give up hope that he could be a good man someday. My worst fear right now is that he will get clean and sober and be a good man, but not for me. For someone else. I guess if I loved him truly, I would want him to find health and happiness no matter what the circumstance. But I am feeling selfish

Anyway any tips or moral support would be appreciated. I feel awful

MsGrace

So sorry you are going through this. You did not create this, cannot control it and cannot cure it. The only real choice you have is what you need to do for yourself, and certainly your child. Is being treated like that how you see a happy future for yourself?

My very best idea for you is to do anything you need to do to get to Al Anon and keep going. It will help you feel better, one day at a time, so you can see a new pathway. In the meantime, take good care of yourself. Big hug

LoveAllGone

A typical "codie" you are...we've all been there and many of us (myself included) are just now seeing things as they truly are.

I'm going through a divorce with my AH of 7 yrs (together for 10) and probably 6 out of 7 yrs of our marriage we made a complete and utter mess of each other's lives. We bargained (called it compromise), we played spite games, I would throw him out and take him back, I'd set a boundary and he'd lay on the charm and make empty promises and I'd let him walk right back into my loving arms. I never stood up for myself--I made good effort but only in the end to believe another lie or let him manipulate or guilt me.

We have a four year old son and I thought the same, it's better to stay than to not know what he's doing with my son when he's with him. When he's out and about with his buddies or his best friend bud light--he never calls to talk to our son. Also, when he realized that I was really "done" with him and this bs...now neither me or our son exist. He would use our son to get to me and when he realized that I was no longer picking up the phone to listen to his pitiful sob stories...he simply wrote us off. ON TO THE NEXT VICTIM!

What do I do to keep busy on lonely nights? I read, I watch tv, I get on here, I go do something with my son, I call a friend and talk, I exercise, I do laundry, I wash dishes, I keep busy.

The ex fix...nah, not worth it. They hold that title for a reason! And if he does get sober down the road and becomes a good man for someone else---great! So what if it didn't happen with you??? Sometimes I think God brings people into our lives to help us learn from, grow, and move on. Why would you want to sit around and wait on this man to become a "good man" as you put it when there are so many more fish in the sea??? He may never become that fantasy man that you dream of and all you've done is waste your time and energy on what??? Absolutely NOTHING---He doesn't seem to have a good track record with the jail time, DUI, and no job for 2 1/2 yrs. Doesn't seem like he has very much to offer, even if he were sober.

Bid him farewell and wish him all the best in the world!

As for you...take care of YOU and YOUR DAUGHTER!

Lilmssunshine

You deserve to be happy. You deserve a self-motivated man. A man who would be a good role model to your little girl. You deserve love, to trust a man, to have someone who wont leave you lonely. Who would rather see you laugh than cry. You can have that. You can chose a man who can give you that. This man will never be that man. You have every right to think about your happiness. I wish you the very best in lifting your self esteem high enough to leave him.

laughabledog

Thank you for telling me what I do know. It's hard to think of anyone else when he was my whole life. I kept believing and hoping for a future. He's angry at me for getting the courts involved when he has a history with the courts and the deck is already stacked against him.

Boundaries and tough love can be excruciating, can't they?

Hopeworks

If wishes were horses there are millions of women just like you and i and we would all be riding!

There is zero evidence that there is any hope of your frog becoming prince charming. If he actually wanted to change and poured all of his time and energy into recovery the odds are slim that he could even get sober or become employable....

And you could invest years of your life....sacrifice and suffer...and discover that you can wring the alcohol out of an alcoholic and all you have left is a sober asshat!

Focus on you! Stick around here...truth is good medicine for our soul, our future and your little girl. Read, read, read. Find an alanon group, get a good counselor. Make a wish list for you... your dreams and goals...do something everyday to start putting feet to those dreams.

My goal is to figure out why i have such a bad picker and fix it so i quit zoning in on toxic men with laser point precision.

dollydo

If love and fantasy of what could be would change our addicts, there would be no one posting on this forum...it doesn't work that way...fantasy is fantasy...reality is reality.

Get busy living, contact your friends, work on you. You seem to base your happiness on having a man, any man, believe me when I say this: Happiness is an inside job, there is not a man on Gods green earth that can make you happy, feel complete or at peace, these feelings are all generated from within you.

And, get to meetings, if you really want to go you will find away. Many women have children and they still get to meetings, IMHO you are just making an excuse. Until you get healthy, work on your codependency nothing will ever be right, you will jump into another bad relationship, as you do not have the tools to just say No.

Take care of you, you are your childs future, set a good example, make good decisions
for her. She will carry her childhood into adulthood.

EnglishGarden

Yes, it is very lonely to be alone with a very young child, all day and all night, and anyone who has not experienced this will not understand how difficult the isolation is. Some young mothers experience it because of divorce or death of a husband or because the husband is deployed or travels for work. You experience it because you have been abandoned by an alcoholic. I, also, was alone with a baby at 19 months, I remember well how isolated I felt, and I had a car and could get out and about, but still, with a baby, we must stay home more than others and evenings we must always stay home because of the child's bedtime, so it is hard when there's no one to talk to, and no family helping. It is normal you feel lonely in your circumstances.

I'd give anything to live again that time with my son, when he was 19 months old, because he was so beautiful and precious and he was a baby for such a short time. But I remember, back then, feeling sadness when I was alone so much, and I put him to bed and there was no one to share life with and talk to. I couldn't leave the house. I couldn't take a walk. Of course you are lonely.

Your alcoholic partner seems nowhere near recovery right now, unfortunately. Alcohol is still working for him, and as a result, his allegiance is completely to the drink. He cannot be there for you and the child. He is a sick man and you cannot help that. He may get well some day out in the future, but he is not showing any desire for recovery right now. He is deep in the disease, and that puts you and the baby in danger, danger of emotional and verbal abuse, ongoing. This is tragic for you but it is a catastrophe for your baby. You need to provide the child with a safe life away from a dangerous alcoholic.

If you have family or a friend who will take you in, please do the right thing for your baby and call and ask for help. We come to these times in our lives, when we find ourselves with no resources, and in crisis, and we have to ask for help. I pray that your Higher Power will send you an angel of some kind to help you out of your situation.

Can you take the bus to Al-Anon? You can take the baby, with cookies and some toys, people will understand.

But your plan needs to be to separate from your active alcoholic for the good of your baby. The father is dangerous and it is up to you to find the courage to do what is painful for you but necessary for your child. You need to leave.

I'm so sorry for your pain and loneliness. It is so hard when we want so much for someone we love to stop drinking, stop hurting us, and for life to be normal and safe.

But even though it is the hardest thing you've ever had to do, you need to leave him.

Pelican

Welcome to the SR family!

I hope you will continue to share and read as much as needed. We understand, and we are here to support you.

You have gotten some great advice and information already. I want to share something else that helped me take better care of myself: reading self-improvement books.

I do not have the resources for counseling, so I try to find books that can help me to help myself. I found in my relationships a pattern of rescue. I was accepting stories of how life had been hard for my male partners and they had been mis-understood by previous loves. All they really needed was my love, right?! Then the pattern of my rescue would shift to them not appreciating all I was doing to make their life better, and I became a martyr. This filled my days with resentment. I became someone I didn't like.

I finally understood my pattern resembled codependency. I kept repeating the pattern, because I wasn't learning healthy patterns. That is where self-improvement materials have helped me.

One of my favorite resources on codependency is Melody Beatties book "Codependent No More". I continue to go back an re-read sections as I see myself falling back into previous unhealthy behaviors. It's a process, but I feel like I am taking better care of myself with every step.

changeschoices

Laughable, I am really proud of you for having your ex arrested for DUI. You may have saved someone's life that night. I feel terrible because over the past few months, my ex went out driving drunk and I did nothing. I actually didn't know until reading these boards that I could have called the police. Fortunately, he did not kill anyone, and now...it's out of my hands. The final night that caused me to end our relationship a week ago, though, he attempted to get behind the wheel of MY new car drunk. I have two kids and I need that car! I couldn't believe him. So selfish.

My girls are middle school aged now but I know how it feels to be home with a little one (even though I was married at the time they were little, it's still so hard to get time for yourself). There are lots of things you can do at home to keep up your adult life and have "me time"--exercise DVDs, calling friends/family, watch all the movies of your favorite actors, try new recipes, spend time with pets (if you have pets-- I recently got a guinea pig of all things, never had one before, and to me she is the perfect pet--very small and easy to care for but she is so furry and snuggly and loves sitting on my lap making happy noises while I watch TV), do some gardening even if it's just some flower pots by your front door, hobbies (I like to make jewelry and there are tons of free videos on YouTube that teach new techniques).

And you can take your daughter places where it's okay for a little one to run around and be a little noisy. See if you can find family restaurants, coffee shops, parks, a playgroup, etc. Even if you have very little money right now like me, getting out to have a cup of hot chocolate at a coffee shop with my kids is a treat that keeps my mind off the ex.

My ex has the whole criminal record, money problems etc. due to drinking, crazy drinking buddies, sad stories about family life growing up, etc. I was there for him in every way, but he's not getting any better, in fact he's getting worse. And he's in his 40s. So do I think he's going to change? Not anymore. I wanted to. Our love was unbelievable when it wasn't being destroyed by his drinking.

I used to have that same fear, that the ex would meet some fabulous new woman and get sober and marry her and have this wonderful life with her, leaving me behind to feel like a failure. Now I believe that any relationship he gets into as an alcoholic will be a lie and will eventually fail. Or, if by some miracle he gets sober and has a good relationship with someone else, it was meant to be because there is something else out there for ME. Even if my ex totally changed and begged me to take him back, the pain he has caused me has "poisoned the well" as they say, and I couldn't drink from it again.

It's hard to let them go when you are still completely in love even though you can't take their drinking in your life anymore. My mom told me, "You have to hand it over to God now. You have to trust that things are happening exactly as they should be. And then you will know the kind of peace that your ex will never find." She's right. It's hard to do, but it slowly has been working. Even if you aren't religious, you can take comfort in the fact that things happen for a reason--doesn't it always seem that way?

My ex hasn't contacted me, except to pick up his things because I kicked him out. It stings, but I realize that he loves nothing and nobody but the bottle right now. It's not a rejection of me personally.

Take care of yourself. Feed yourself well and stay active. If you can afford it, buy little things to brighten your mood--a $10 necklace at Walmart, a pretty shirt for $3 at Savers, some cute new flipflops at CVS for $8, a bottle of pink polish for my toenails--these things are my inexpensive indulgences. I can't help feeling better when I look better. If these things don't interest you, focus on what does and find a way to make these little happiness be a part of your life.

I know you feel awful right now. You probably don't feel like doing anything but sitting around being sad. But if you can force yourself to get out or get into something enjoyable at home, I promise you, you WILL feel better.

changeschoices

P.S. I qualify for a very reduced-price membership to my local Y. They have all kinds of things to do--open swim time I can take my girls to, and yoga classes for me. I love yoga but could no longer afford to go to my old studio. So now, next week, I can go to yoga to my heart's content at the Y and will take the girls for open swim.

Also, my library has tons of story times for little ones. Maybe you could find something like that? They actually have things at night, too, like story time where you can bring your toddler in pajamas. Being out with other families, even if they're total strangers, can make you feel a family experience. So go out there and get happy!!

laughabledog

Thank you all for your tough and honest words, especially changes choices for your compassion. I do love this man and our love was wonderful during those times of calm during brief sobriety, or even in the mornings of a binge when he wasn't so drunk . . . but you are all right, logically he was never a good choice and my daughter doesn't need the chaos. I went to my old friends for the weekend and mostly kept my phone off. He has been texting and I haven't responded. All love love love and then he's leaving the state. The worst is that he gives me advice on how to get over him "the pain will heal and won't hurt forever" that's when I want to throttle him.

My daugther refuses to sleep so exhausts me and makes me bitter. He was a help when he wasn't a on a full binge. But I can't take the alcohol jobless life with him because it becomes me fueling the drinking which takes a piece of my soul every time he talks me out of money.. He will convice me its for something necessary, but end up drinking it up. I can't live the police life with him.

I feel so depressed. And those nights when my daughter sleeps, that is the lonliest. I did like the times of joint parenting. I am a martyr, even before this. Not in relationships before, I have never before been with an alcoholic, but in my jobs, or causes or everything.

But thank you. I will stay here and soak up the good advice.