redatlanta

Last night RAH and I were watching a show which was focus on an alcoholic as main character. During a break he started talking about how he is so glad he doesn't drink and all the things that happened to him when he did. I like these conversations because I like him to remind himself daily of what life was like actively drinking. Then he started using the wrong pronoun.

"When WE had a few drinks last year, when WE decided it was ok for him to drink, when WE blah blah blah.

WE???????????

Hang on a second what's this "we" s**t?

My RAH isn't perfect - he never went back to AA - he reads his big book fairly regularly and shares with me things or passages that he finds important. He says after 5 years of intensely going to to meetings that he is unable to get out of AA what he once did when he was first in recovery. I owuld have liked to have seen him go back and at least pick up another white chip (would have been number 10 in his collection). Sometimes he likes to pretend that his relapse last year after 10 years sober just didn't happen. I find that thinking to be terribly unhealthy and typical of A's to deny. His comments about the relapse have typically been "I can't believe I did that I am going to just pretend it never happened" - My typical response is well it did and I am so happy you chose the right path.

Here we are on the cusp of 6 months sobriety. I have not seen any red flags indicating that his thinking has gone wayward in any way. Now we have moved from "lets pretend it didn't happen" to "we tried an experiment together".

My response was to correct the pronoun - 'Your choice to drink wasn't a good choice however, YOUR choice to stop was an amazing accomplishment. Please don't say WE because when you do you take away from something you did yourself that I don't have anything to do with'. No argument there.

Yeah there was a small part of me that wanted to blast him with "lets review" what happened as I never endorsed his drinking rather my mantra was "I don't support it, it will only end badly. Its your decision do what you want". I should have had it printed on a t-shirt to save having to say it every other day.

Picking and choosing battles is something I have worked on these past 6 months in Al Anon. I don't feel the need to correct everything RAH says that is incorrect from meaningless correction (say a wrong name) to meaningful correction (like the above). I will correct things sometimes- this attitude has done a lot as far as our relationship. We communicate better and the important things are addressed calmly. I have no need anymore to force RAH to see things the way that I see them, and to argue him step by step into a corner to agree that I am right. Last night irritated me yet I decided if he is staying sober, working "his" program, and has changed for the better over 6 months just let it go.

Thanks for letting me vent!

CXR

Thanks. All good point. You have a good, healthy perspective on this.

I don't know what or why the use of the "we" -- and what it meant, but thanks for sharing your insight on it.

Robh850

As I have told people "words have meaning." Good job on not getting baited. I have discovered in Al-Anon I also try to apply the right pronouns.

SparkleKitty

Whew, Red, I gotta tell you -- the title of this thread scared the cr@p out of me!

You handled that super-well, as expected. Good on ya.

redatlanta

Sorry for the title Sparkle! I see it could be read as back to square one. Thankfully not!

HopefulmomtoD

My heart skipped a beat, too. It is a very interesting choice of words (by him .. "we"?)

firebolt

Just when I think I'm doing fine in my recovery, I read this. What I would have said and done flashed into my head, (it involved choice words and me wielding a cast iron skillet) and....I clearly need to get back to meetings.

Way to handle that! Thanks, I needed to read this today!