Hangnbyathread

I will address this part. Before I even knew I had an AGF, I knew that I was tired of feeling miserable. Didn't know why but I was diagnosed with clinical depression. And to be honest I at that time was ignorant to what I thought I knew about alcoholism.

So at $255/hr. I spent a fortune sorting out my moral inventory. I had learned that for me detachment was actually my comfort. Not getting drug into someone else's life's dramas was my downfall. Letting that life become my life was my undoing. So at that point, I was already detached and was ending this. It was then that the Almighty hand of "I'm an alcoholic and I need help" card was played. At which time I called my shrink back and said...Hey could this be important? After my doc said Not only is it relevant it is probably the entire cause. My head was finally free of trying to find a broken me at that point. I had no dire life issues before meeting and becoming involved with an AC. I simply needed to get back to that point in my life again.

But now I have a loved one with a disease. I certainly would not want someone to leave me if I got a disease. So I agreed to follow the support path. By about week 3 in Al Anon, I finally decided to ask a question of the room. We have about 35 people give or take. I said for 3 weeks I have come here and listened to all of this misery. All of this heartache. All of this destruction. Can I ask any of you to tell me why you stay in these relationships? You would have thought I was a heretic! The leader said we don't ask questions of other members or judge them we are here to listen and share our own stories. Right in front of everyone. So I apologized to the room. The leader said, he will talk to me after the meeting.

So the meeting ended and he pulled me aside. He gets the longer version of what I said here. He said I'd like to get you a sponsor. I said fine...can I ask my sponsor questions? Yes. OK good. Meanwhile there is about 10 people that are still there hanging around. I get up to leave and these people all start to approach me. I thought I was in trouble. Instead they all said, these are exactly the type things I want to ask here thank you for bringing it up I was to scared to. I think this kind of annoyed the leader a bit.

So I meet my sponsor. Nice guy. He was an AC. Sober 12 years. His father was a dead AC. His son was killing himself from it. His wife divorced him from it. He was a man of about 60 or so. Our first meeting and he said Frank, you are way ahead of the group here in your recovery. You are coping with your GF better than I am my son. He started in on "Higher Power" and I responded to him about detachment. After about 3 weeks he asked if I could stand up and tell my story to the room? Yes if it will help others I'm happy to. So I do this. And I'm fine doing it. But there really isn't any feedback. You tell your story and that is that. They sort of Shepard them into the the literature and it all gets back to repetition. My value in helping others with my story is fine, but it doesn't really push me in any direction about me or my AGF. I get the feeling they expect things to happen by osmosis. My results didn't come from a spiritual awakening, or prayer or repetition. But I certainly got validation by hearing others that have hit bottom from this. It wasn't me after all. I went thru the whole moral idea that I must be causing her to drink. Etc. Not because I thought I was. But because my AGF told me I was. My moral failing was allowing myself to believe that.

So if I feel stagnant in something, it won't work for me. If I can't grow and learn and feel better, I can spend my time doing other things.

Hangnbyathread

And this where I will most likely divert from the 12 steps. I do not have to have a partner that refuses to be accountable. We all should be able to have a common ground exchange of moral beliefs and expectations in a partner we are choosing to fold into our lives. We are not talking about misunderstandings or lack of awareness. "Yes Frank I cheated on you, and I'm sorry but I was drunk". Is not being accountable. Or the famous "Well we were fighting so I thought we were done, so I had to do what I did, isn't accountability.

Yes Frank I have violated a foundational brick in our relationship house and here is what I doing to rebuild that foundation. And then ACT ON IT, is accountability. This is my car you dented!!!!!

For me it has a shelf life. I am willing to negotiate what seems reasonable, but it will be reasonable to me. If you can't show by actions, I won't wait a lifetime to hope it happens. If it takes my AGF too long, I will always wish her well, but I will carry on by myself. I will truly wish her eventual happiness no matter how long it takes her. But I won't be old and gray before it happens. I have my life to live.

SeriousKarma

Hangn, It sounds as though you feel that the 12 steps are advising you to stay with your AGF. I'm not sure how. They certainly didn't read that way to me. In fact it was very much with the help of Alanon, and the first 3 steps specifically, that I got the strength and focus to up and leave my alcoholic husband.

You are right, however, that it's not an action oriented program. That's why many people here advise those in domestic violence situations to seek help first from domestic violence programs before attending Alanon.

But there's nothing in Alanon, or the 12 steps, that would tell you to stay with someone you don't want to be with regardless of the reason.

Maybe for you the answer is simple. Lose the AGF and move on with your life. Maybe you're not powerless over alcohol, and your life has not become unmanageable after all. Cool!

schnappi99

I hear your pain hangn. Not all meetings are the same, not all are good. Not every group is ready for the agonized prickly newcomer.

For my part it worked like they say in the closing, "let the peace of the program". After a while I started realizing some things about myself and quit trying to realize them about my RAW. I think thats when I started recovering, before that point I was getting ready to start. Maybe you're rushing it.

But in your posts I see quite a lot about her and the hurt she's caused, and a lot of reasoning about what recovery is and isn't- but not a lot of introspection. For instance, given whatever horrors she's done, why are you still with her? I see it because I did a lot of the same stuff. For instance early on I decided I was going to re-examine the entire question of marriage to RAW every 6 months to see if I was going to stay ie "what at about MY needs etc.." & the nice set schedule sounded responsible to me. Not doing that kind of thing anymore...

I guess I'd say you have some boundary work to do wrt your girlfriend and that takes a while to work out. Once you have them you can set down the problem of "her" and leave it. Stay with or not turns into a simple yet scary question of telling her what is unacceptable to you and having the courage to take your stated action if she does it & then sticking with it. I have only one boundary, "no active alcoholism in the house" and the result is I ask her to leave and if she does not I leave with our daughter. This scary to me because its for real and if we cross that line there is no going back... all the stuff we've built together over 20 years is torn apart... but the alcoholism is worse, by far. In return for having that boundary I feel I need to be in recovery and making amends for the various pressures I've put on her over the years... she has not imposed a boundary on me so far but if she does its only fair.

Early on I also expected (demanded) apologies until I started realizing I needed to make some to her. My sponsor told me "once you set down your issues you start recognizing your own claw marks on them"... very true in our case.

Please don't take this as some kind of directive that you should do one thing or another. But please do consider the possibility that recovery for you might be something very different than what you're thinking it is right now.

Hangnbyathread

schanppi.

Nothing in any of my counseling in any front says I am to stay with her. What I see most often in Al Anon is the fact that the whole room is there trying to figure out how to cope with and live with the hardships that alcohol has placed them in. Co Dependency. And I think perhaps you missed the part where I already said I was done. That is when the Alcoholic card got played.

Recovery for me means, letting go of the idea that we have become dependent on this misery. It isn't normal and its not OK to consider this for our long term life plans.

What I have to work out is. Is she worth forgiving and having a life with? When I take away all that alcohol has caused for problems, she is wonderful. But she isn't unique in her wonderful. And I don't yet know how much of wonderful was driven by her need to compensate for her drinking.

10 lbs of wonderful can be outweighed by one ounce of repeated past behaviors. And if wonderful has been the set up for the 2X4 you know is going to crack you in the head just when you relax enough, then the good isn't worth it either. If alcohol is also responsible for the good, to sort of have a good bank account balance built up, then its simply a matter of time before the relationship will be bankrupted.

Relationships require some compromise to work. No matter how perfect 2 people can be, there is always some compromise needed. Under good circumstances, relationships are work to sustain. Throw in alcohol as your elephant and it becomes hard to see if the scales will ever balance enough.

Hangnbyathread

This where I am at. It had become unmanageable because I got drawn into a battle I was never expected to nor had any hopes of winning. Once I saw this, it became evident to my AGF that I was done. Suddenly she needed me to recognize she has a disease.

I am compassionate, to a point. But we all have our lives. I am ultimately responsible for my happiness. I certainly don't need to have my life sucked dry by alcohol.

lillamy

Absolutely. So what you saw at Al-Anon were people who hadn't gotten to that point. My family group had quite a few women in their 70s, women who had no education, who had married young, and who had no marketable skills. For them, the idea to leave was more frightening than learning how to cope with living with an alcoholic. Al-Anon gave them that.

The stories, and the "no crosstalk" idea: People function differently. You walked in, wanted a solution that you could take with you and walk out. I did, too, when I first came to Al-Anon. I wanted to know how to get my husband to quit drinking. What ended up working for me -- and I think this is the idea -- was that I couldn't see how sick my own behavior as a codependent was, but when I heard other people tell stories very similar to mine, I was able to identify the dysfunction. And apply it to myself.

Maybe this is a cultural thing, also -- I grew up in a culture where there is a strong belief in the healing power of stories. Where if I ask an uncle or aunt a direct question, I won't get a direct answer -- I will get a long story.

As I understand Al-Anon, the organization doesn't give you the answers. It provides stories that your mind can use to come up with the answers that work for you. For me, having lived with an abusive alcoholic for 16 years when I walked into Al-Anon, that was what I needed. I was so broken inside that the last thing I needed (even though I wanted it) was for someone to tell me what to do. I already had a husband who told me what to eat and when, what to wear and not, how I could cut my hair, who I could associate with and when. Al-Anon helped me find myself, my backbone, so that I could -- at my pace -- learn how to make decisions.

I have not liked everything in the program. But that's the beauty of it for me, too: I can, as they say, take what I can use and leave the rest.

I think it's important to understand that the same thing that makes me roll my eyes might be the thing that makes a thought "click" for someone else, and not throw out a program because everything in it doesn't apply to you.

Hangnbyathread

Totally understand. What I learned before even going to Al Anon or even learning I had a AGF was that, no matter what the circumstance, we have instincts, we have a moral compass, we have a sense of right and wrong. Some require the concept of God to steer them, some do not. There is no one choice there. As we experience life, we will calibrate that compass along the way, but nobody should be in our lives that set it askew so much that we lose our own way. No God I understand would allow that to happen to me. So I am back to the beginning of this thread. I took the 12 steps that is proposed by AA, and boiled it down to, if my AGF can show me these 4 outcomes, using 200 steps and a kazoo for all I care, there is hope that she will be worth this to me. And these 4 steps are steps prescribed by the 12 steps, just without all the fluff that doesn't matter to me.

But this is not my battle to win. It is her battle. Joining her battle, skewed my compass drastically. Now that I have learned that this is alcoholism, I am able to navigate this storm too. It isn't relevant to me if its a faith based program or not. It is one type program. I am grateful to her for at least trying it. For me it will be an action based outcome for her, or it is wasting more of my life than it deserves to.

And I don't mean to sound cruel. I obviously care for my GF or I wouldn't have bothered with any of this. But in the end, I have to care for me first.

Stung

Totally agree with this. When I finished step 2 I was left feeling that if you simply acknowledge that there are powers greater than yourself (let's not even be spiritual here, just plain ol' tangible forces - the power of an al-anon group, the power of the ocean versus one single person, etc.) it makes accepting the true depth of your own powerlessness easier. My higher power isn't religious and it isn't something that is easily defined. A few weeks ago I heard someone say "I don't fully understand the higher power of my understanding" and it makes total sense to me.

Al-anon isn't about religion and it's not even really about the steps, it's about the community and having a safe place and understanding people who know what you're dealing with.

Hopeworks

There are millions and millions of people including innocent children who are in tremendous struggle and endless misery on this planet as the rain falls on the just and unjust. Pain, evil, poverty, injustice are all around us everyday but it is through struggle we often grow the most and learn from our mistakes and our wise choices. My choices led to the chaos and insanity that became my life and I know can see that clearly. I never asked God about it and if he spoke to me it wouldn't have deterred my path...I was determined to have that man! Freedom to screw it up...yep...we do have that!

Here is what I experienced when I began my Al-anon journey 4 years ago ... that my best thinking and conclusions where waaaaay off base because I was looking at my situation through my own broken prism and belief system. Unlike you I was convinced that MY A was different and we would be one of the rare couples that not only survived but thrived. In going back and reading my early posts I was quite obnoxious really but I never saw that. It was obvious to me that the posters on this board were not strong enough and frankly I found them to pretty mean! Needless to say they were right and really were pretty cool in how they responded to my endless drivel and stupidity of my early days in recovery.

You are in a different place and have a much healthier outlook on your relationship in this recovery journey you are on but if you stay involved in al-anon and other recovery tools and come back and read your early thoughts you will be amazed how much you might have a different viewpoint.

Statistics with AA are deceptive because the doors are very wide and many pass through the doors but only a small percentage ever actually seriously go through the steps with complete honesty. Meetings are the social part of AA and not all meetings are created equal. There are speaker meetings, Big Book meetings, 12 step meetings and each has different types of folks and the group conscious determines how that particular meeting will conduct itself within the guidelines of AA. But the heart of AA is the 12 steps which many choose not to embrace or use. Some just go to meetings and stay sober...others just go to meetings and end up relapsing. Those who have decades of sobriety (the old timers) are most often Big Book Thumpers and attribute their success to LIVING the steps each and every day. It is a pattern for living...constantly reaching for a better you that wants to be loving, unselfish and giving back to others as a way of life.

Personally I found that the steps are what set me free and NOT the meetings so much...although many meetings were very helpful. I also listened to thousands of hours online speakers in both AA and Alanon....very, very enlightening. Also had a great counselor well versed in addiction and relationships. My XA and I attended faithfully an AA/Alanon meeting that was very, very good with lots of wisdom and sobriety. Also found the Big Book to be very helpful in understanding the alcoholic.

My XA was there all along the way and he relapsed anyway. Over and over. Went into program after program. AT a certain point I didn't relapse, drink the koolaid or cave in and finally kicked him to the curb to find his own way out of addiction. I was certain he would die. He came close but is sober today in another program...this one VERY spiritual and Christ centered and long term. He says this is it... he will never drink again. And maybe he won't...time will tell.

My point is that it is a journey. Sometimes its a long journey and with an alcoholic it is ALWAYS uncertain even if we love them. I have been split up with my XA for almost 4 years now. I still love him...but he is still an alcoholic and is just not active right now. I won't even see him...when he is in recovery I will talk to him on the phone ...but won't talk getting back together. He has to be sober and in authentic recovery for a full year before I will even talk about the possibility of a date.

When you are in a relationship and both are in recovery it is like train tracks ... will each path of recovery mirror the other? Same speed? Will the tracks move closer together or go farther apart? Will you like the new and improved version or will you determine you were addicted to the adrenalin and the chaos? Can you heal the hurts from the past and truly let go and forgive that person fully and completely?

Most of the time we codies simply have to ride that pony till it drops to its knees...we simply have to know that we have done all that we could to "save" the loved one. Once your eyes are fully opened to the fact that you can't "save" any one and do not have that power and never did everything changes for the better.

That is why you saw so many women in relationships that puzzled you as to why they were still there... that pony is still gasping and stumbling along and they are not ready to walk away....yet. This is why we share stories and not advice!

Rosalba

To quote from Alanon: "Let it start with me". This slogan is there for a reason.

AnvilheadII

so hangyn....have YOU actually worked the steps? im sorry, I may have missed that in your posts...have you sat down with a notebook and a good pen and wrote til your hand cramped? put the spotlight on you and your stuff?

what we learn as WE go thru recovery is that it's really so much more about OUR stuff than theirs.....and we progress in spite of what the addict does.

the way we do the steps is to DO THEM. one at a time, in order.

it's like the Seahawks and the 12th man...the Seattle fans are notorious, we are loud, proud, all that. Every Friday before Sunday game is Blue Friday and everyone decks out in their gear. I do our grocery shopping on Sunday AM before the game and almost every patron is in their gear. at the stadium the crowd breaks sound records.....

and yet, NONE of that determines the outcome of the game. WE are not the players on the field, WE can't MAKE them WIN....or run faster, throw farther, tackle, kick or catch. WE are merely spectators in THEIR battle. and they play their game whether we watch or not.

Hangnbyathread

Thank you Hopeworks. A very well written post that I appreciate and admire. I am not ignoring the rest but I do want to highlight for me what was for me, my view on part of the 12 Steps conundrum.

This sums up a big failure problem to me. And one that seems to dog the other family members a lot . Nothing commits the RA to being truthful to anyone but themselves. And protecting that truth is how they accomplish being an AC. If I am in a room full of strangers, with a sponsor who knows only what I decide to tell them and accountable no one besides them and a higher power, and I am a pathological liar, it is ripe for abuse and half hearted attempts at telling whatever version of the truth you can live with saying. OK I robbed a liquor store. Isn't the same as I killed the owner and got away with it.

Nobody can physically question what they are hearing, they just blindly take in whatever is being said to them. Being accountable to a "higher power" carries no real consequence if they are being dishonest. Nothing I have seen in the 12 steps so far has told me that the RA will become accountable to those they have harmed the most. "Admitting it to one other person" (per Step 5) is the hall pass they need to get away from admitting it to the ones that have the MOST knowledge on the facts of the damage done. One other person can be of no use if that one other person has no clue of what really happened.

Not saying that being honest, truly honest won't work. It absolutely will. But you have to able to face the ones you have destroyed the most and be HONEST in what you know you did. And be made aware of other things they the RA may not wish to address unless forced to. Until a RA can do that, I fear that the AA program serves as nothing more than a crutch for many. It has absolutely worked for millions. But many more millions haven't fared so well. I blame some of this on the nebulous aspects of how they can position themselves to work the system and not have to work themselves. It is still an individual human that has failed because they found a way to avoid being honest with themselves.......again!

JMHO.

LexieCat

I try not to worry about how other people work (or don't work) their program. Not within my power to control.

You seem to be suggesting there should be some kind of "AA Police" to make sure someone isn't taking the easier, softer way. People who seriously want to get well will do what they have to do. The whole reason AA works the way it does is that it requires willingness and honesty for success. If you're only staying sober because someone is "checking up on you" or making sure you don't drink, then you haven't really changed--you've just gotten more careful.

There's an old test for insanity in some of the very old, dusty casebooks I had to study in law school--would the person have committed the criminal act if he'd had a "policeman at his elbow"? An honest recovering alcoholic will stay sober whether anyone is watching or not. The active, drinking alcoholic will be insane enough to drink whatever the consequences. The ones who "game" their recovery risk drinking again.

Hangnbyathread

Fair question. I had sought help through the professional mental health community prior to knowing my GF was an AC. From that I wrote reams of papers worth yes. I was asked to go to Al Anon because that is what AA preaches to the AC seeking help there. Which stands to reason as the founder of Al Anon is the wife of the founder of AA. Some steps are easy. As I can readily identify with them. Step 1 easy. Step 2.....I am responsible for me, no one else. Same for Step 3. So I haven't forced an answer out of those past that. I accomplished Step 4 in previous therapy. 5-7 is no ones responsibility but mine. Asking me to figure out who I hurt as per Step 8, I can answer with I hurt me or I will have to get back to you on this because I am not aware of anyone else as really noone else is involved in this. According to my AGF I have hurt her hugely. I can't deny that we have thrown some pain in each others direction. All could have been avoided had she not been an AC. A few years of therapy helped me realize that this was the AC manipulating me. I re-learned that detachment has served me well in life and have been good since.

Step 10 has been a model of my life since childhood. That one was easy.

11 and 12. God gave me the power to direct myself, it was me how allowed me to lose my way. Noone else. I have believed in meditation since about age 9. Had learned to go back to it before coming to Al Anon. My AGF distracted me from this path. I found my way way back before seeing this step.

LexieCat

AA doesn't "preach" Al-Anon for anybody. It mentions it as a resource for those who want to use it, but it doesn't recommend it or require it or suggest that alcoholics insist that their families go. Maybe some rehabs do that, but AA doesn't.

The Steps are worked IN ORDER, preferably with a sponsor who can help you understand them (because you clearly do not). I'm not insisting you do them--it's everyone's choice whether to avail themselves of the program, but your saying you "get it" and that it isn't helpful is pretty similar to the same things said by alcoholics about AA's Steps. Reading them, and thinking that you "get" them isn't the same as WORKING them. And you can't KNOW that they wouldn't be helpful if you haven't worked them. Again, not to say you have to work them. That's completely up to you. There's no Al-Anon police, either.

There's a reason that at the end of many AA and Al-Anon meetings they say, "It works if you work it."

lillamy

Between this and Anvil's 12th man, I've gotten a better summary of these programs in one evening than I have in eight years.

Hangnbyathread

Totally concur.

You have right to think this way if you like. I care about one current member. While I worry that she will find a moral loophole for her responsibility. That will be her choice and noone elses. AA can't change that. Its a faith based program.

lillamy

I said "summary" -- I didn't say "enlightenment" -- big difference.

And I have to say, as someone who has worked this program for 8 years, that I find it incredibly useful for me. If you don't find it useful, that's your thing. I guess I find it difficult to understand why you keep finding fault with a program that many people find useful -- why not just move on?

schnappi99

hang, I'm still in this thread because when I started in alanon I was very much in your shoes. I was thinking about this thread in the meeting tonight- searching for some perfect argument or comment that would communicate what I wanted so you would understand. But I realized on the way home thats probably not something I can do.. and really the effort probably has more to do with me working from some desire on my part to be right or similar.

So I'll leave it like this instead. The 12 steps are what they are- a suggested program of recovery. They are not perfect, they are not gospel (though some treat them as such), but they have worked for many people, myself included. I have <never> in my life had as relaxed a mental attitude as now and this is directly a consequence of working my way up to step 4, with a sponsor and 2 mtgs/week. I find that engaging in judgements where they are not specifically needed/desired/requested, particularly those relating to my RAW's behavior is the 1st step in losing that peace of mind. I find my internal dialog quickly tends towards control- "I'd be happy if she would ..."- my mind actually will come up with that thought even now.

I do hope you achieve some peace of mind over this. I have been in that judging & demanding place and I never want to go back.