changeschoices

I guess this week is my week to feel every emotion known to man. I've been having a lot of feelings about the AX and they are all over the map. For the past two days, I have been feeling extreme guilt about not doing more in the relationship. By doing more, I mean, doing less enabling and more work on myself.

I realize now, after having been on the site a lot and doing lots of online reading about addiction, that I had enabled my A a great deal. At the same time, I was angry and resentful because he wasn't getting help for his drinking. In short, I was being very codependent. And then I ended our relationship very impulsively after he drank again. I packed up all his stuff and called him to tell him to come get it. It's been a month and during this time, I completely refused to talk to him on the phone or discuss our relationship.

So I am beating myself up for being in denial about the seriousness of his addiction during our relationship and the seriousness of its impact on my life, and for not going to AlAnon and detaching. If I had, maybe he would've eventually decided to get help. If I had, I certainly would have been much nicer to him and not been an angry, resentful, and sad codependent. I'm sure my lousy attitude didn't exactly propel him toward sobriety. I wasn't a model of healthy recovery, let's put it that way.

Well, I couldn't have known what I didn't know. I just wish I had gone to AlAnon. I begged him to go to AA but I did not realize that that seemed as hard for him as going to AlAnon seemed to me. I just wanted to pretend that things would magically get better, as did he.

Now I feel that I made a lot of mistakes and impulsively ended things. To be clear, I realize that there is no hope for a relationship with him unless he got help, too. I certainly don't want to be with an active alcoholic.

I sent him an email saying all of what I've said in this post, basically. He may ignore it, but I put it out there and said what I had to say. And now, I have to let go and let God. And I need to work on being that model of recovery that I should have been striving to be all along.

Wascally Wabbit

Anvilhead, you are so right that relationships shouldn't be that much work.

EnglishGarden

That "impulsive" decision you made to end the relationship may have been your Higher Self, which is much wiser than you are, directing you to hold that boundary you set about drunks and relationship with them.

And Al-Anon is really a spiritual program for our own growth, as we do stop growing when in relationship with addicts, and Al-Anon's purpose is to guide us into re-acquainting ourselves with who we really are and by what principles we wish to lead our lives. The only thing Al-Anon offers us about the alcoholic is Step One: We are powerless over alcohol. The message of Al-Anon is not that you will save the alcoholic by attending meetings. It is that by removing yourself from the insane merry-go-round you will save yourself. So try to be gentle with yourself about what you might have fixed or changed, because that can lead to guilt and shame. I expect that the alcoholic already told you how flawed you are, or how disappointing.....so the last thing you need to do is compound that with your own self-talk.

Enabling can help an addict stay comfortable in his addiction. But enabling does not cause him to drink or drug. The disease of addiction is the only reason he drinks or drugs. In my meetings there are people with 20 years in codependency recovery whose addicts are still in active addiction.

Give yourself a compassionate break, dear. You don't deserve any more criticism.

changeschoices

Thank you guys for responding. No, I guess it wasn't an impulsive thing to end our relationship, in hindsight. My feelings of despair had been building for a couple of months. He had seen an addiction counselor last fall a few times and I had recently been considering calling his counselor to talk about an intervention. But I held back because a part of me was still in denial, still saying to myself, "Things aren't THAT bad, I don't need to do something so drastic."

Of course, things were that bad. In fact, my AX was talking about checking into rehab again, so clearly we both knew that he was falling seriously into the grip of his addiction again. But then he'd be okay for a couple of weeks and...I don't know how to describe it. How can things be so unbelievably bad during a binge and then after a week you just sort of...forget about how bad it was and believe that things are going to get better?

saljay

Good question. Great question.
My AH's last binge, he threatened to kill me. (I'm still shocked every time I write that. KILL me.)
He's been sober since then, attending meetings, on his best behavior. I have to be *so careful* not to get too caught up in believing our problems are over. They're only over for this moment ... I am just waiting for bad stuff to happen again. I did make him leave after his binge, and he is still not living here.

I'm planning on just waiting and watching, and as I've read here and heard in Alanon, more will be revealed. He'll either keep working on bettering himself or get nasty and scary again ... either way, I'll know soon enough ...

I don't know if this is funny or just sad. He asked me why I'm still going to Alanon, since he's not drinking anymore. As if all my/our problems are over with 6-8 weeks of not drinking.

NCB44

Changes Choices* Thanks for starting this thread, I am new to the forums and I found some parallels between your thoughts and mine... And I got a lot out of reading the responses to your situation. I felt awful about spontaneously moving out of my ABF's apartment a few days ago when he got violent during a blackout. But also came to realize things had been building up I just wasn't willing to act on things then. I hope you are feeling better and wish you well.

EmglishGarden* I love your comment about a "higher self" helping us make right decisions!

And last but not least Saljay*... I can't imagine having to come to terms with using the words "kill me" in a sentence... I had to tell my mother that I needed to move home because my BF tried to "hit me" and that was horrendous enough. I'm afraid to stick by my BF and support him through recovery just in case he ever tried something worse than taking a swing at me... and I am not even sure he will go to real counseling he is also of the believe that a few weeks of not drinking will cure everything :-(

saljay

NCB, you did the absolute right thing in leaving when he hit you. And ... and this is a big "and" ... it will only get worse. He will get worse before he gets better. IF he gets better. And that's a big "IF."

Hugs to you. Watching someone we love change and deteriorate is so incredibly difficult, it sometimes feels too hard to bear.

Katiekate

We do what we have to do in chaos.

Stepping away has so many pitfalls, but the important thing is to step away, that is really when the self probing begins, and it is painful, and all these emotions and feelings you are experiencing are out of the chaos you left, and so they will feel chaotic.

Enlightment in painful, very painful. But there are no mistakes, only things to make us grow.

And you are growing, ouch!!!!

xo

NYCDoglvr

Here's a mantra I learned: feelings aren't facts. Just because you feel something doesn't mean it's true.

tabatha

Bravo to you for seeing things so quickly. It doesn't sound impulsive at all to me. Sounds like you were pretty determined that you did not want to live with an active alcoholic. What gets a lot of us stuck is when we start feeling we should be nicer, we should be more empathetic to the disease, we should be more non enabling. Once a lot of that creeps in we 'forget' to leave a bad situation because we start feeling sorry for them and years later think "Why did I stay and not leave sooner?" As you can probably tell I'm not a fan of living with an active alcoholic- alanon or no alanon. Been there twice and will never do it again no matter what.

changeschoices

Yes, I definitely could not truly see a life for me with an active alcoholic, even if I was going to AlAnon and practicing detachment. What it boils down to is, why would I willingly live that way? It's too depressing. The healthy part of me suddenly rose up and said "NO MORE!" and that was that.

However, ending my relationship with my AX has been excruciating, because I didn't end it because I didn't love him, I ended it because I simply couldn't live another day with his drinking. So...this makes it hard. It's not like I fell out of love with him and my feelings had faded. I was and still am very much in love with him. This is why moving on is hard.

I keep turning it over to God when it hurts too much, and that helps. I truly believe that I did the most loving thing I could do by leaving my A.

suki44883

I'm sure you've noticed that there are many parents here who have had to let go of their own offspring when alcohol or drugs took over. That is the hardest thing in the world to do. Many people live without having someone they love as a part of their lives. It will hurt for a while, but it's just something that has to be done.

You did all you could, so stop beating yourself up. This is just one of those really sucky parts of life that we have to deal with. It will get better with time.

changeschoices

I have thought about this. As a parent, it would be unbelievably painful for me to have to detach from one of my children. I don't know if I could do it. So, I guess I'm lucky that the A in my life was my fiance and fiances are, after all, replaceable. Not so with children.