Guilt
 

Its been over a week since I last have heard from my exA and I am proud of my progress as I get more and more clarity thanks to the help of all of you! Something new is emerging.....
I am struggling with these feelings of guilt! ...........................

That I never tried hard enough to help him or I didn't tell him enough that his disease was gonna kill him!!

Why do I want to reach out to his sister and tell her how sick he is. She is a kind, loving, understanding soul and I am not sure she knows the extent of his disease! My ex and his sister have lost a sibling already (not sure addiction related) and my fear is she will lose another brother sooner than later!

Just my experience . . . when you are worried about THEM . . . it is generally an indicator that it is time you should be working on you.

YMMV.

You have to let go of the guilt. Nothing you say will make him want to get healthy. I completely can relate to what you're feeling. It's been 3 weeks for me. I still worry about him, but I'm also enjoying the peace & quiet and I don't miss the drama & chaos. It get easier each day. I still love him & miss who he used to be, but I need to take care of myself. Hang in there & stay strong!

Guilt and especially misplaced guilt sucks.

Maybe in a way I want to purge the worry and the burden of worry and give it to someone else! I so so care about him and think I would just feel better if I knew that someone else who cares about him as much knows.

you seem to be forgetting one critical person in the matrix......HIM.
assuming you didn't leave him chained to the radiator with no food or water in reach, and assuming that he is not FIVE....he is a full grown adult perfectly capable of taking care of himself and his issues. he doesn't need a mommy, or a caretaker, or someone to whom he can ABDICATE responsibility for his own life.

let's look at this worry of yours....has it fixed anything? has your worry made a difference to his stuff?

no.

but it has given you someone, some THING to focus on besides what is most important...YOU.

A person should feel guilty when they do something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. It serves no purpose here. You know you did, and are doing, the only thing you can do in the face of these horrible circumstances. Save your guilt for when you really need it. Like the next time you flip someone off in traffic only to see that it's a sweet little old lady.

How much harder do you think you should have tried? How many more times should you have told him this disease would kill him? You were fighting a losing battle. You know that. Don't feel guilty that you surrendered. The war was already lost.

Don't feel guilty that you surrendered. The war was already lost. - SeriousKarma

Thank you. I love this.

I need you as my life coach. lol. Damn, you're good at this.

I seriously love you, Anvil.

Anvil always hits the... well, I lined myself up for quite the word play there. Too bad I couldn't tie Hammer in there somewhere. ANYWAY, what Anvil said is spot on. When you remove yourself from the situation and look at it from outside, what other grown adult do you treat this way? Do you treat your boss like this? Your postman? Your doctor? Chances are probably good that's a big fat no. So why do you treat your A this way? He's not a naughty preschooler who needs redirection and a bit of coddling. If he wants help, he'll seek it. If he wants people to genuinely care about him, then he'll become someone worthy of that affection. You don't need to be concerned with anyone other than yourself, because you need and deserve the affection that only you can give.

I just feel some guilt because of acts of omission on my part.....meaning unlike most of you, I withheld BLUNTLY telling him OVER and OVER again how worried I was about his health!!!. and not because I didn't care but because maybe I knew it would have been received with anger and rejection. It kind of leaves me feeling like I didn't say enough to him, to make him feel like someone cares about what the disease will do to him in the end. The last thing I want to feel and the last thing I want my ex A to feel checking out of this relationship is that I didn't care and I wouldn't be there for him when he finally makes that decision for sobriety!

Sweetheart, you are putting so much energy into someone who doesn't feel any of these things back. You could have told him every stinkin day that you cared about his health and it wouldn't have made a difference. None. I promise you that. He doesn't have the capacity for the type of love and empathy you do. You're creating guilt where none is warranted. All the words in the world wouldn't have made him stop. He will only stop when HE wants to. And that'll happen with or without anyone else around. That's a huge blow to the ego of a codependent, but it's true. If he ever sobers up for good, it won't be due to anything you or anyone else said or did. It'll be due to the pain of his addiction being greater than the joy he gets from the drink. Not because of you.

Im slowy getting it!! Thanks

Probably should read codependent no more...I have seen posts on this.

I feel like im standing in front of a person ready to pull the trigger....of course I want to leap and stop him from doing it! Its a human response!!! He is so broken..sick....I just cant imagine how someone like him...in such a low place...can walk away from the gun without someone else's help!

He can. And it is the only way it will mean anything.

I withheld BLUNTLY telling him OVER and OVER again how worried I was about his health!!!.

the HEALTH talk doesn't work. not with alcoholics/addicts. I was IN the hospital room when the doctor told my mother (age 57) that if she drank again, even ONE drink, it would KILL her. he didn't mince words. he was blunt.

so what do you suppose she did? drank again. by the time she got home, my husband and I had gone thru her house and cleared out every last bottle - and boy howdy were there a lot of them. we filled the bed of his pickup truck. while this isn't recommended, it did mean that if she wanted a drink she'd have to go buy booze and maybe that would give her enough pause....to think about it.

I was also 5 years sober at the time,

so she had a DOCTOR give her the health talk, while she was IN the hospital for alcohol related problems.
her home had been eradicated of alcohol.
her daughter (me) was sober in AA and i'd made my case to her about getting sober - in reply she told me to get my "fat ass out of her house".

still she made a bee line to the liquor store, drank again, and was back in the hospital in 3 days, was later transferred to a convalescent center (the kind where NO ONE ever convalesces) and died 5 weeks later.

the alcoholic who wants to quit, who wants to live a sober life, can and will find a way. there are almost as many treatment centers as Starbucks. as of Jan 2014, according to the General Service Office of AA, there were an estimated 59, 565 groups in the US. http://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/smf-53_en.pdf you could dang near find a meeting blindfolded.

Unless he is deaf and dumb, I am pretty sure everyone in society knows addiction causes serious health problems and/or death. In this day and age, you have to literally be unable to read, blind to see, and deaf to hearing anything to not know.

Read up on this site, you will hear time and time again how an addict fears for their life then will turn around and drink again. You don't hold the power of this in your hands at all.

The Three C's: You did not cause it, you cannot control it, you cannot cure it.

Step away and turn him over to God.

Thanks for those powerful responses...understanding and letting this go is a process, but your responses are helping me get there!!! The three C thing is pretty poignant and I guess sums up getting rid of the guilt!!!!!!

Thanks so much ! Lots of hugs

Maybe it's sinking in...I get it! .. I'm suddenly pissed! I go through all these feelings of rejection, sadness, guilt!!! And he doesn't feel or care about a thing.... He just drinks it away!