A very long update & another trigger found, ugh.
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Florida
Posts: 6,780
A very long update & another trigger found, ugh.
Sorry this got so long - I didn't expect it to all come tumbling out like this, lol.
A little update first - things are going as well as can be expected with RAH. We're communicating more effectively each day the longer he sticks to recovery which is top priority for me to stay sane. We are a living, breathing example of "progress not perfection".
We're still muddling through this unbelievable pit of debt that his excessive spending & lack of income (for 4 years) created. He has met with an attorney to discuss filing bankruptcy for his business & we are working on gathering their long list of required info. He's also in a situation where he can't physically do the same exact type of work he's done in the past & the things he can do aren't great options for long-term career choices & thankfully he finally sees this.
He managed to find work for about 6 months but there were so many problems within the company that he ended up quitting at my request. They owed him mega backpay, every employee was having a hard time getting paid & there was a lot of shady stuff going on.... plus they had forced him to change to an overnight schedule so DD & I literally almost never saw him. We would have managed this if he was at least getting PAID! They also promised it was a 30-day change & that he would be back on days... that never happened.
As it is, he left a month ago & is STILL fighting with them over getting his last 2 months of wages. The whole thing is like a bad soap opera. Worse, he had considered the owners friends until he started working for them & saw how they take advantage of their employees so he's a bit devastated at losing the personal relationship as well. They had a meeting yesterday & he said it got SO bad that he ended up threatening to file complaints with the Dept of Labor & talk with the local news channel that pursues employers/situations like this if he isn't paid by Friday. It's a tough situation & I couldn't be bothered to get involved (yay, recovery!) but I DO care about the missing income since we need it so badly.
So in the interim he realized his dream job has always been in law enforcement. Duh, I coulda told him that years ago, but his Billy-Bada$$ Ego has to go the long, hard road around everything. When he started lamenting that it was too late, I basically told him to stop playing the victim & look into it before assuming it to be an impossible situation. I told him that he has more people willing to help him than anyone I know & it's his own fault if he doesn't pursue it. Lo & behold..... one of his buddies is a cop & was happy to ease the way for him to start an internship with the local PD while he works out the details of becoming an officer. So he's been interning 6 nights a week at the PD & really getting a sense of what that entails & got a call this morning to start FT work at another company right away. He'll reduce the internship to PT so that he can continue that long-term goal, but will have income in the meantime. Yay!
Last fall, we managed to swing a family vacation to a theme park in our state by using credit card rewards, rolled change & the proceeds from a small garage sale. I think 6 days ended up costing us $100 out of pocket, I had been saving these rewards for 5 yrs & they were set to expire by early 2013. The best part was that it ended up being cheaper for us to buy annual passes for the park than to buy tix for just the trip so we can go back throughout the year if we get the chance. It's a couple hrs in the car each way, a pretty close getaway.
I've been itching to get away again just for a weekend, DD & spend a lot of time alone & it gets so mundane..... I'm miserable at my job, just waiting for him to be on a more even keel before I look into making any big changes. It's frustrating. I work & work & there's little to no reward. I got sick just before Christmas & it stuck with me for a more than a month. I've been dealing with FOO/ACoA issues for about 3-4 months that are making me just wanna
. DD & I literally do nothing every weekend, saving every $ possible. Plus, with him on nights it's a struggle for him to sleep on the weekends while we're home & likewise for DD to stay quiet while dad's sleeping. Taking her to the beach, McDonald's & a movie would seriously cost about the same as an overnight trip for us at this point.
It'd be awesome if we could all get away together, but he can't take a weekend off for who knows how long & I'm tired of waiting around for him alllllll the time. Waiting for him to get his crap together, waiting while he works through sobriety, waiting through the financial fallout, waiting for his job situation to improve so I can make a move professionally, waiting to get some 'me' time, waiting, waiting, waiting, WAITING.......! Some days I feel like all I do is work on my patience.
So I made up my mind that afford it or not, DD & I (& maybe my niece who also has her own park pass) ARE going to take this trip with or without him. That my sanity is valuable & worth dipping into the small cash savings I've managed to hide for emergencies. My sis would happily cover any expense for my niece so no issue there.
But for 2 solid weeks now I have talked myself right back out of this. I keep coming back to finances, the irresponsibility of running away since it logically won't fix anything, better off waiting til my health improves, etc. When it's come up with RAH he says he'd feel better knowing we were enjoying ourselves sometimes instead of just sitting around at home... which makes sense because I hear him talk often about how his biggest regret is affecting our quality of life with his selfishness.
When he asked me last week if I had decided to go I snapped back, "trying to get rid of me??" And then it hit me - this isn't about anything other than my own codieness.
Every time this has come up I needle him in subtle ways trying to force him to give me a reason not to go. When he was actively drinking, leaving him alone for the weekend set my teeth on edge & I would never do it except for business (& even then, grudgingly). I spent every minute away worrying about what I was coming back to.
NOTHING in his words OR actions shows me that this is still a valid feeling. It's more like a leftover habit, my codie desire to control not because I WANT to, but because I've gotten so USED to doing so. I keep waiting for those little tingles in my gut telling me I'm right to be on guard, but it isn't happening. I have NO reason to distrust him right now AND I've taken this trip alone before with DD when she was 3, so it's not like a totally new experience.
So now I feel like I HAVE to go to prove to myself that I CAN. Is that crazy?
A little update first - things are going as well as can be expected with RAH. We're communicating more effectively each day the longer he sticks to recovery which is top priority for me to stay sane. We are a living, breathing example of "progress not perfection".
We're still muddling through this unbelievable pit of debt that his excessive spending & lack of income (for 4 years) created. He has met with an attorney to discuss filing bankruptcy for his business & we are working on gathering their long list of required info. He's also in a situation where he can't physically do the same exact type of work he's done in the past & the things he can do aren't great options for long-term career choices & thankfully he finally sees this.
He managed to find work for about 6 months but there were so many problems within the company that he ended up quitting at my request. They owed him mega backpay, every employee was having a hard time getting paid & there was a lot of shady stuff going on.... plus they had forced him to change to an overnight schedule so DD & I literally almost never saw him. We would have managed this if he was at least getting PAID! They also promised it was a 30-day change & that he would be back on days... that never happened.
As it is, he left a month ago & is STILL fighting with them over getting his last 2 months of wages. The whole thing is like a bad soap opera. Worse, he had considered the owners friends until he started working for them & saw how they take advantage of their employees so he's a bit devastated at losing the personal relationship as well. They had a meeting yesterday & he said it got SO bad that he ended up threatening to file complaints with the Dept of Labor & talk with the local news channel that pursues employers/situations like this if he isn't paid by Friday. It's a tough situation & I couldn't be bothered to get involved (yay, recovery!) but I DO care about the missing income since we need it so badly.
So in the interim he realized his dream job has always been in law enforcement. Duh, I coulda told him that years ago, but his Billy-Bada$$ Ego has to go the long, hard road around everything. When he started lamenting that it was too late, I basically told him to stop playing the victim & look into it before assuming it to be an impossible situation. I told him that he has more people willing to help him than anyone I know & it's his own fault if he doesn't pursue it. Lo & behold..... one of his buddies is a cop & was happy to ease the way for him to start an internship with the local PD while he works out the details of becoming an officer. So he's been interning 6 nights a week at the PD & really getting a sense of what that entails & got a call this morning to start FT work at another company right away. He'll reduce the internship to PT so that he can continue that long-term goal, but will have income in the meantime. Yay!
Last fall, we managed to swing a family vacation to a theme park in our state by using credit card rewards, rolled change & the proceeds from a small garage sale. I think 6 days ended up costing us $100 out of pocket, I had been saving these rewards for 5 yrs & they were set to expire by early 2013. The best part was that it ended up being cheaper for us to buy annual passes for the park than to buy tix for just the trip so we can go back throughout the year if we get the chance. It's a couple hrs in the car each way, a pretty close getaway.
I've been itching to get away again just for a weekend, DD & spend a lot of time alone & it gets so mundane..... I'm miserable at my job, just waiting for him to be on a more even keel before I look into making any big changes. It's frustrating. I work & work & there's little to no reward. I got sick just before Christmas & it stuck with me for a more than a month. I've been dealing with FOO/ACoA issues for about 3-4 months that are making me just wanna
. DD & I literally do nothing every weekend, saving every $ possible. Plus, with him on nights it's a struggle for him to sleep on the weekends while we're home & likewise for DD to stay quiet while dad's sleeping. Taking her to the beach, McDonald's & a movie would seriously cost about the same as an overnight trip for us at this point. It'd be awesome if we could all get away together, but he can't take a weekend off for who knows how long & I'm tired of waiting around for him alllllll the time. Waiting for him to get his crap together, waiting while he works through sobriety, waiting through the financial fallout, waiting for his job situation to improve so I can make a move professionally, waiting to get some 'me' time, waiting, waiting, waiting, WAITING.......! Some days I feel like all I do is work on my patience.
So I made up my mind that afford it or not, DD & I (& maybe my niece who also has her own park pass) ARE going to take this trip with or without him. That my sanity is valuable & worth dipping into the small cash savings I've managed to hide for emergencies. My sis would happily cover any expense for my niece so no issue there.
But for 2 solid weeks now I have talked myself right back out of this. I keep coming back to finances, the irresponsibility of running away since it logically won't fix anything, better off waiting til my health improves, etc. When it's come up with RAH he says he'd feel better knowing we were enjoying ourselves sometimes instead of just sitting around at home... which makes sense because I hear him talk often about how his biggest regret is affecting our quality of life with his selfishness.
When he asked me last week if I had decided to go I snapped back, "trying to get rid of me??" And then it hit me - this isn't about anything other than my own codieness.
Every time this has come up I needle him in subtle ways trying to force him to give me a reason not to go. When he was actively drinking, leaving him alone for the weekend set my teeth on edge & I would never do it except for business (& even then, grudgingly). I spent every minute away worrying about what I was coming back to. NOTHING in his words OR actions shows me that this is still a valid feeling. It's more like a leftover habit, my codie desire to control not because I WANT to, but because I've gotten so USED to doing so. I keep waiting for those little tingles in my gut telling me I'm right to be on guard, but it isn't happening. I have NO reason to distrust him right now AND I've taken this trip alone before with DD when she was 3, so it's not like a totally new experience.
So now I feel like I HAVE to go to prove to myself that I CAN. Is that crazy?
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
Posts: 4,719
Originally Posted by FireSprite 
So I made up my mind that afford it or not, DD & I (& maybe my niece who also has her own park pass) ARE going to take this trip with or without him. That my sanity is valuable & worth dipping into the small cash savings I've managed to hide for emergencies. My sis would happily cover any expense for my niece so no issue there.
But for 2 solid weeks now I have talked myself right back out of this. I keep coming back to finances, the irresponsibility of running away since it logically won't fix anything, better off waiting til my health improves, etc. When it's come up with RAH he says he'd feel better knowing we were enjoying ourselves sometimes instead of just sitting around at home... which makes sense because I hear him talk often about how his biggest regret is affecting our quality of life with his selfishness.
When he asked me last week if I had decided to go I snapped back, "trying to get rid of me??" And then it hit me - this isn't about anything other than my own codieness. Every time this has come up I needle him in subtle ways trying to force him to give me a reason not to go. When he was actively drinking, leaving him alone for the weekend set my teeth on edge & I would never do it except for business (& even then, grudgingly). I spent every minute away worrying about what I was coming back to.
NOTHING in his words OR actions shows me that this is still a valid feeling. It's more like a leftover habit, my codie desire to control not because I WANT to, but because I've gotten so USED to doing so. I keep waiting for those little tingles in my gut telling me I'm right to be on guard, but it isn't happening. I have NO reason to distrust him right now AND I've taken this trip alone before with DD when she was 3, so it's not like a totally new experience.
So now I feel like I HAVE to go to prove to myself that I CAN. Is that crazy?
But for 2 solid weeks now I have talked myself right back out of this. I keep coming back to finances, the irresponsibility of running away since it logically won't fix anything, better off waiting til my health improves, etc. When it's come up with RAH he says he'd feel better knowing we were enjoying ourselves sometimes instead of just sitting around at home... which makes sense because I hear him talk often about how his biggest regret is affecting our quality of life with his selfishness.
When he asked me last week if I had decided to go I snapped back, "trying to get rid of me??" And then it hit me - this isn't about anything other than my own codieness.
Every time this has come up I needle him in subtle ways trying to force him to give me a reason not to go. When he was actively drinking, leaving him alone for the weekend set my teeth on edge & I would never do it except for business (& even then, grudgingly). I spent every minute away worrying about what I was coming back to. NOTHING in his words OR actions shows me that this is still a valid feeling. It's more like a leftover habit, my codie desire to control not because I WANT to, but because I've gotten so USED to doing so. I keep waiting for those little tingles in my gut telling me I'm right to be on guard, but it isn't happening. I have NO reason to distrust him right now AND I've taken this trip alone before with DD when she was 3, so it's not like a totally new experience.
So now I feel like I HAVE to go to prove to myself that I CAN. Is that crazy?
Go! Jeeze, life is short - if you were on your death bed right now, I can guarantee you your thoughts wouldn't be about how much time you policed (pun intended) his drinking and how successful you were at it. It would be on all the time you wasted not living your own life and having a good time at it.
If you can swing it, go. Laugh. Eat junk food. Make memories with your kid. It will be so worth it in the end.
A work in progress
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
Posts: 16,633
Yes--GO. Even if some parts of it make you uncomfortable, DO IT.
I had to force myself to have fun when I split up with my second husband, and then again when I was in early sobriety. It seemed wrong, somehow, to be doing it. You can't babysit him forever, it isn't good for either one of you, and my bet is you will be SOOO glad you went.
I had to force myself to have fun when I split up with my second husband, and then again when I was in early sobriety. It seemed wrong, somehow, to be doing it. You can't babysit him forever, it isn't good for either one of you, and my bet is you will be SOOO glad you went.
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