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-   -   What was the final straw? (https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/friends-family-alcoholics/264799-what-final-straw.html)

winnie1202 08-08-2012 03:46 PM

What was the final straw?
 
I met and read about so many AlAnon and SR folks that finally made the decision to divorce their spouses. I know that everyone has their own breaking point but I was wondering what some of those stories are?

battlescars 08-08-2012 04:04 PM

I put up with late nights, lying, drunken arguments, and a lack of respect and empathy for way too long. But the final straw was when he started blaming me for the drinking. I knew that that circuit of logic would break me because I slowly started to believe him. Good luck with the thread.

owathu 08-08-2012 04:10 PM

Walking down the street with the other woman in front of me. A woman he had met less than 7 days ago at a bar across the street from our house. It was too much and asked for a divorce.

And also like battlescars, his drinking was becoming my fault.

Sungrl 08-08-2012 04:32 PM

Watching the bank account hit ZERO. Oh, one more thing, I can only take being called a miserable bitch for so long. Good riddance.

Chris1000101 08-08-2012 04:33 PM

I have had NC with my X for almost two years now so I only know what my son shares. I never say anything about her but I do occasionally ask how she is doing and just listen to what he has to say. When we were together though, I suspect she is a late bloomer in the early stages of alcoholism. Even if she is not ALL the damn isms are there. My final straw was the affair. Learning that made sense of the lies and financial inconsistencies I was finding.

fourmaggie 08-08-2012 04:34 PM

finding 4 empty 40oz bottles put back where he found them...EMPTY and him denying that HE drank it all:react....*shakes head*

XXXXXXXXXX 08-08-2012 04:51 PM

When after begging him to go to work and do his best, he was fired. He pretty much had no reason not to drink all day every day after he had no job.

When he would drink, I would take the kids on "staycations" to the beach, or to hotels in our own city. We went to alot of movies, anywhere to get out of the house.

One morning I woke up at a country inns and suites, he had been drunk for 4 days. I called my sister and asked her to come and bring a truck. He was passed out the day I left, I packed an entire house out to the lawn before he woke up.

LifeRecovery 08-08-2012 05:01 PM

Mine was an affair. It gave me something to push back against in a way I could not figure out how to do with alcohol.

The alcohol and the affair both made me nuts, but the affair was the last straw.

Either way I am glad I got out. Sad about many things, but glad I started learning how to take care of myself (even if the wake up call was a little drastic).

jamaicamecrazy 08-08-2012 06:09 PM

After the emotional affair was my fault, and the verbal abuse started, and he said in counseling that he did not want to stay married to someone who made him feel like dirt, when we started talking separation he said that he would drink less and not have to take meds because I was the reason he drank and had high blood pressure. Up until then I thought that there might be some truth to what he said, but when he said that I knew he had a very warped sense of reality and that if I stuck around I might start to believe that. I knew it wasn't healthy for me to stay and It was beginning to feel unsafe. I left the home, later returned and he moved out. We are still not divorced. That step has been hard for both of us.
He has since been drinking more and has had several medical problems which have been complicated by his drinking.

ZiggyB 08-08-2012 06:33 PM


Originally Posted by Sungrl (Post 3525020)
Watching the bank account hit ZERO. Oh, one more thing, I can only take being called a miserable bitch for so long. Good riddance.

Lucky you, I got called a stupid bitch... good riddance indeed.

Eight Ball 08-08-2012 08:07 PM

Divorce never entered my head but I knew that I couldnt live with an active alcoholic anymore, not after 23yrs of the same.

After several months of therapy and a few things that my therapist said that seemed to sink in, one important one being, when we were discussing about what upsets me the most, is when my AH is putting down our daughters and she said 'of course, thats because they are very important to you, but you are important too'. I thought about that for a quite a while after and started to see myself as an important person - his wife, the mother of his children and ME! and I wasnt being treated as such.

Around this time too, I went to see the doctor, who spelled it out, that my health was suffering. I was overweight, with high colestorol, daily stress symptons and anxiety. I cried on the way home, thinking my husbands active alcoholism could end up killing me! I seriously thought I could end up suffering a stroke or heart attack at an early age. By the time I got home, I told him that I was leaving him and a few weeks later, I did. The best descision I have ever made.

lillamy 08-08-2012 09:40 PM

Death threat. To me and our children. That sort of did it.

android1 08-08-2012 11:00 PM

I haven't divorced yet, but unless I am in temporary denial, I know it is coming soon.

The straw for me was also an affair, but a very weird one. She wanted me to be ok with the affair, and thought that I should be. The affair is forgivable, but not if it is not seen as doing something wrong. She told me yesterday that no matter what happens, her will still be her best friend. I am the person who pushes down inside my anger, I was just speechless. But it hit me hard with the realization that she isn't any where near ready for recovery.

Eight Ball 08-09-2012 01:43 AM

The night before i was due to move out, my ah, who had spent a few nights being pleasant to me said " you know we will always be friends" instantly i looked him straight in the face and said "we wont, why should i be friends with someone who has treated me like you have. if they did, then they wouldnt be friends for very long". He looked visibly shocked. i think it was the first time he really knew how i felt and that i meant what i had said. i went nc as soon as i left.

MamaKit 08-09-2012 05:58 AM

I decided in my head when I discovered he was fired from his latest job but didn't tell me for a month. I took real action (about a month later) when he threatened to kill me and himself.

m1k3 08-09-2012 06:06 AM

My case was a 5 day black out binge of Ambien and booze. I had to call my daughter and tell her that her mother wouldn't be babysitting because she was so messed up she didn't know what day it was. Something snapped, all the magical thinking died and I knew it was over. I was out of the apartment 3 weeks later and now am in the process of divorce.

When you find yourself laying in bed thinking how great it will be when your dead and you don't have to deal with this anymore it's a good sign that something is really wrong.

Your friend,

JenT1968 08-09-2012 07:08 AM

we were seperated, the agreement had been that we were to live seperately and either he agreed to give up drinking and demonstrate sobriety for 3-6 months before we could look at whether our marriage could be saved or I would proceed immediately to divorce. He agreed, he did not give up drinking for a single day - it was always going to happen in his own time. I postponed a decision, building my own life, for 9 months, he was filled with rage and paranoia directed at me.

he had a fairly big-deal operation, when he came out he told me he had discharged himself early and as part of an "amusing story" about a friend coming round boasted that he had been drinking spirits either the day he discharged himself or the very next, thinking that I, who had been waiting for him to quit, would think that was funny.

It was like all the tenuous rods that had been holding up my hope just crumpled, and turned to dust. I saw that no matter what he said, and whether or not he believed it when he said it, in reality he had no intention of giving up drinking, not even for a day, and I was wasting my life making plans based on a hope that he would.

BlueSkies1 08-09-2012 08:04 AM

I wanted to stay, I wanted to be there, but I can't with the alcoholism and the new collection of guns. One or the other I could have handled--not both, scared me too much.


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