Grief

Okay, my title is a bit of exaggeration. I'm referring to a longtime friend, who knows a good deal about the relationship between my AH and me. Now he is involved with an alcoholic woman, who is still married to her ex-husband, and who just became engaged to a man she broke off with four months ago. . . .choosing this old boyfriend over my friend and their two months together.

So what's my point. It's that nothing I say deflects him from his determination to rescue this woman who doesn't want to be rescued. I am not upset -- I'm dismayed --- it's boggles my mind. You like to think that your own painful experiences will spare someone else from going through the same thing. Not true, apparently. Or not true a lot of the time.

All right, all right, I'm not really surprised. But I am. This friend watched me in Purgatory and tried to advise -- and now look at him! I referred him to Sober Recovery, but I don't think he intends to check it out.

Thanks for letting me get this out of my system. <sigh>

53500

You know what Grief, in my experience no one EVER learns from someone else's experience. *Especially* not in romantic relationships. Don't take it personally.

I came to SR because a good friend of mine is living with an alcoholic woman. This woman abuses him emotionally, physically and mentally. She's a violent lunatic when drunk and not that much better when sober. She's pregnant now and he intends to get a paternity test as soon as the kid is born. That's how much he "trusts" her. Why not get it before the kid is born? She won't cooperate.

I begged him since day one of this sick relationship to get the hell out. Day one was about two years ago. I told him of my experience in a relationship with an addict - the abuse, lies, broken promises, the times of hope always followed by disappointment. I listened to him sob - repeatedly - when her words or actions or both tormented him.

Needless to say he didn't get out. If the kid is his obviously he's in even deeper. But you know what? Even if the kid isn't his I bet he stays with her. Something has to click in him to get the f*** away. I can't click it. You can't click it for your friend. It sucks.

dandylion

Grief.....what makes the situation even more tenacious is that Mother Nature has arranged for all the pair bonding and the actual physiological responses that cause it---the cascade of hormones that is in early romantic attraction!!!

Also, I have noticed that if this happens to be a "trophy girl" for him---it is almost impossible to get a man to back away.

You sound like a very compassionate person---and you have my empathy. It is hard to watch!!

dandylion

Grief

You're right, Dandy and 53500. So right. My friend's relationship doesn't have the longevity of your friend's torment, Fifty-three, but it'll be interesting to see how long he hangs in there. I'm trying for clinical detachment, can you tell?

NWGRITS

We see it all the time in new members here. We call it being "terminally unique." My alcoholic isn't like all the others out there. We have something special that you just can't understand. I can fix him/her if I try hard enough, because we're different. Yep, hear it often. It's painful to watch, but there's nothing we can do but let them make their own choices.

53500

Good luck with that. I mean it seriously, not sarcastically. I try for it too. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I was able to listen and stay calm and detached. Other times I failed miserably and argued, threatened, pleaded, etc. It fell on deaf ears, changed nothing and just sucked me into the misery.

I care about this guy. I've listened to his tales of her trashing his apartment, screaming enough so the neighbors called the cops, and smacking him in the face with a ring on that cut him under his eye. Another inch higher and he would've lost the eye. You know how difficult it is to hear that and stay detached when he f'in stays with her?? I hope you don't find out.

I've learned some things on SR that helped me. One - don't let him stay at my house, which he asked to do many times when she became unbearable and he ended up sleeping in his car. I offered him money for a motel but can't have him under my roof because then *she* might show up. I felt very bad saying no but you know what? He's a grown man, he got himself into this mess and he'll have to get himself out.

Two - his situation is not unique. AT ALL. This is life with an alcoholic. Sometimes its okay, they settle down and give the non-alcoholic hope. Some even recover long-term. More often than not they make life a living hell for the non-A.

But it's the non-A's call as to what to do. Friends like you and I can only watch, pray, and offer the support of which we are capable without compromising our boundaries.

If you get the detachment thing down please let me know!

iamthird

Nothing is ever all for nothing. There is always something to learn from every situation. Nothing is wasted.

Rosalba

I've sometimes found that when I've supported a friend who's in a relationship with an alcoholic (or any other kind of dysfunctional person, come to that), there's a very thin line between supporting and enabling. For example, listening and being kind can make it bearable for the person in the painful relationship to carry on - like the alcoholic who needs to hit rock bottom before they'll seek help, the codependent partner needs to feel the full pain of their situation before they'll seek support in getting away from it.

There was one friend of mine who kept going back to her abusive boyfriend, then would regale all her friends with tales of what he'd done to her. All her other friends told her to dump him (something she wasn't ready to do) but I refused to listen to the stories, telling her that his behaviour was actually quite predictable - and that I felt more concerned about HER, and the fact she kept walking back into it. Whatever, once nobody was prepared to listen to her tales of woe, she actually DID get professional help in the end.

I've found that detaching like this needn't be done unkindly ("You must be getting something out of this situation - whatever - but I'm not helping you by listening to all this") but, for my own sanity, I just needed to switch this one off because I was finding it so emotionally draining.