NWGRITS

It's just what's nurtured into children in an alcoholic home. Like Hispanic or Asian families have a home culture, alcoholic families have their own culture. It's dysfunctional and backwards and sometimes downright abusive in every sense of the word. It's the only thing we know, never having had the opportunity to know what life was supposed to be like. Honestly, therapy is what has helped me the most. I'm getting better at not jumping at every little thing. I'm slower to anger and frustration. But it's taken a LOT of work. Some of it has been painful. Nobody wants to drag all that crap up after keeping it buried for so long. If he isn't in therapy or Al-Anon yet, those would be the best places to start.

Christopher1

[QUOTE=iamthird;4951966]I heard in a movie "it should be almost boring how reliable someone is"...I could not agree more. Yes,that is so right-because that is what normal is and we lose sight of it.Thanks IAMTHIRD(and in my humble opinion ,you are not!).

Christopher1

That is so right-because reliability is normal and we lose sight of that.

iamthird

This truly sums up my separated AH and his behavior. Thank you for helping me understand.

Christopher1

Hammer,interestingand informative article yet very sad.Suppose the bottom line is no matter how someone may have been treated, whether in childhood or in the present -the willingness to take responsibility for our own lives and how we treat others is key to recovery for everyone? Otherwise the awful cycle just continues with victims looking for victims.

Christopher1

Completely understand where you are coming from-I feel fear when in the situation ,yet still have that feeling ,in a different way without it.Read somewhere that the intensity of those feelings is a reflection of how much work we need to do on ourselves-keep going-you know you have good reasons for changing things no matter how hard right now.

Hammer

THAT. is. so. freakin. HAWT.

Hammer

For our case . . . my Therapist's caution was: Borderlines create Borderlines.

But even thought that T is a top level PhD, who teaches at a local high ranked University, she is a . . . little . . . but just a little behind on the Physiologic aspects. Being a Psychologist, who works in behaviors -- behavior is how she sees the world. Been an Engineer who does Neural work, I see things from a Hardware/Biological aspect.

In truth, we are both part right and both part wrong.

But that fits with my #1 Priority of Protect and Nurture for the kids, and again in our case, the one of the kids who has some early markers, make sure he does not have the Abandonment Experience to fully trigger the condition.

Christopher1

Thanks Hammer-protecting your children obviously has to be your number1 priority-you can't "fix" your wife but you can do that for your kids-we can only do what we can do.

Christopher1

-we don't have kids although we had talked about the options such as fostering some years ago-it never came to fruition though as things were never stable enough: I had this notion that maybe things would have been different if the responsibility of them had been there and that maybe SHE would then have been different,but what if that hadn't happened.....?

NWGRITS

Christopher, the WORST thing you can do is bring children into an alcoholic home. It's abuse, as far as I'm concerned. Children are innocent and don't ask to be treated that way. You CHOSE to ride along, they don't. Please don't ever have children or bring them into that environment. Ever.

lillamy

I had the notion when I divorced that being responsible for the kids part of the time might make my ex stick to sobriety and recovery. I was wrong, and the abuse the kids suffered during that time was unacceptable. You are very, very wise to not have brought children into an unstable situation. Children are supposed to be cared for, not something you get to try to fix a broken relationship. And I'm preaching to myself here. It was a very, very bad decision to have children with an alcoholic.

TerpGal

This is why, after 8 years of marriage, I do not have any children. As an adult child of an A father (who I didn't even realize was an A until Al Anon, all I knew was how verbally abusive he was) I know what growing up in that kind of environment does to a child and how that then totally screws them over as adults. I could never do that to a child.

This makes me insanely sad though, all I ever wanted to be is a mother and it doesn't look like that's going to happen now.

Hammer

Ummm. No, I would say you are not. Just preaching to yourself here, that is.

I R Listening. My concern matches from your experience. I do not see where it is always best for the kids to split things up just say we did.