jenniferlynne76

Hi all,
So I decided to devote my therapy session last night to discussing my codependency issues and desire to detach from ABF. It was a good session overall. I let her know I'd joined this group and was re-reading "Codependent No More," which I think I first read some 13 years ago. She was pleased with the steps I'd taken and some of the realizations I'd made, and asked me some very good questions. One of which I'm still struggling with. And I'm not sure why, though I think some of it has to do with my understanding of what it means to detach ... And that I'm guessing detachment is different for everyone.

My therapist believes that the only way for me to move on with my life and heal from everything I've been experiencing is to completely remove ABF from my life. She cannot see any good that comes from the time we spend together, and she asked me "why won't you just leave him?" (We don't share a home or anything...) She doesn't believe there's any healthy way for me to have a relationship with him as long as he's drinking, and that unless he is sober for 6 months to a year he shouldn't be involved in any kind of intimate relationship. (Her point being that IF he wanted to commit to sobriety and get back in touch with me 6 months to a year from now that would be one thing... But continuing a relationship while he's still actively drinking is not.)

I'm not sure WHY walking away is so hard for me. I'm still mulling it over. I think some of it is that I do care and I don't want to hurt him the way I've seen other loved ones hurt him (and that's not to say he is blameless in the least! I think I've shared with you all that my eyes are wide open to that...) I might be a little afraid of being lonely, and afraid of how he'd react to me saying we're done, too. So I'm still trying to work that out in my head... The WHY.

But I also wanted to ask all of you: in your opinion, is it possible for us to recover, set boundaries and detach while maintaining *any* form of relationship with an alcoholic loved one? Or do we truly have to say goodbye?

Ariesagain

Is he in recovery?

hopeful4

I tried for years. I was always looking for him to change. I was always anticipating the next bad that that would happen due to the chaos it brought to our lives. It changed me as a person.

I hate to say this, but I agree with your therapist.

Hugs to you.

Wisconsin

There is a very small handful of people here who have gone about their separate recoveries while still in a relationship. BOTH parties in recovery, not just one.

There have been a few people over the years who have come and gone, insisting that they were adequately happy and detached in marriages to active addicts. I do not believe any of those people still post on the forum, but I could be wrong.

My two cents? I agree one million percent with your counselor. Most of us who stay, do so with secret or not-so-secret hopes that our qualifiers are going to seek recovery. Your ABF does not sound like he is even remotely considering real recovery. Neither is my STBXAH, which is why I finally left.

Conventional wisdom about addicts is...are you willing to accept him exactly as he is, today? Because unless he CHOOSES recovery and WORKS for it, this is who he is. And if he keeps drinking, he will get worse. If you are staying because you hope he will change, or because you think he is on the verge of changing...based on what you have shared, his actions demonstrate quite the contrary. He is getting worse. And he is dragging you down with him.

Those experienced in such things will also tell you that true recovery requires a tremendous amount of emotional effort. So much effort that it is virtually impossible for an addict to maintain a romantic relationship during the first 6-12 months of recovery, if not longer.

There are always exceptions. Around here, they tend to be exceptions among married people with children, who have a lot more at stake than a relatively brief dating relationship. I spent years trying to detach and stay married to my AH who very clearly had no desire or intention of seeking recovery. He got worse. He got more abusive. It was hurting me, my job, and my children.

So ask yourself...do you want to spend the rest of your life with someone you are unwilling to live with, unwilling to marry, because of his addiction (an addiction he has no interest in kicking)? Most of us have found that the healthier we have gotten, the harder it is to stick with a relationship with an addict. Detachment isn't really a long-term coping skill designed to continue indefinitely in an ongoing relationship an addict. For most of us, it is a short-term and medium-term coping skill designed to help us clear our heads and figure out what we really want, apart from the insanity of the addict.

jenniferlynne76

He is not in recovery, no.

Ariesagain

Standing ovation, Wisconsin, That was all kinds of brilliant.

jenniferlynne76

Thank you, hopeful. ((HUGS)) ❤️

Ariesagain

See Wisconsin's paragraph four...

Sending you a hug.

healthyagain

I can only speak from my personal experience.

Detachment for me was only a temporary solution. With detachment came awareness . . . and with detachment and my refusal to enable came abuse. My ex became so defiant and so toxic, that there was no way I could have stayed married to that.

And since he has not stopped drinking, he is getting worse and worse each and every day. There is no point in communicating with him, there is no reason why, he is basically slowly dying, and still refuses help. So, why being exposed to all that pain? I cannot help him, he does not want to help himself, he probably hates my guts, but that is ok. When he hates me, I know I am doing the right thing.

atalose

My opinion……

US to recover = you are the only part of that equation that is seeking recovery…so no it’s not possible for the US part.

Boundaries……active alcoholics don’t like or respect boundaries.

*any* form of relationship = a codependent willing to accept crumbs from a relationship out of fear of letting go.

Listen to your therapist!!!!

Liveitwell

Ditto to what Aries said....every word, Wisconsin! Every word. Same with my relationship with my ex. Sadly, I agree with hopeful-I don't see this getting any better for you-in fact, odds are, it will get much worse.

Hugs and peace to you!

jenniferlynne76

I will say that I no longer have any hope, secret or otherwise, that he will seek recovery. If he does, he does. If he doesn't, he doesn't. I can't control that, and aside from the sadness I feel knowing the abuse he's putting his body and his loved ones through, I don't feel much of anything (other than frustration when I see him doing the same things over and over again).

No. Plain and simple. I refuse to keep living on this roller coaster to hell.

Most definitely not. As I mentioned I have no hope that he will change, nor do I think think he's on the verge of changing. As you stated, I actually believe he is getting worse. And that is my fear... I am NOT going down with him.

H3ll no!

I can definitely see that and I think that's what I'm trying to work through now. Truly, Wisconsin...thank you for sharing such fantastic wisdom.

jenniferlynne76

By "us" I meant the members of this group, recovering codependents. But, nonetheless, point taken. LOL And thank you!

Wisconsin

Dear friend, it is a process, for sure. Baby steps. All we can do is make the next right decision, and keep our own emotional health at the top of our priority list. You're doing great.

atalose

By "us" I meant the members of this group, recovering codependents.

Yes it's possible but first we must let go of what holds us down!!

((hugs))

bluelily

I tried exactly that, to adapt my expectations of a normal relationship to the reality of being with an alcoholic, telling myself that it was his issue and it shouldn´t affect me if we had our separate lives and didn´t live together. So, I didn´t complain when he was drinking himself to stupidity, went home when he fell asleep, tried not to take his furious rants personally.

But then the limitations for this relationship increased in number. For example, I couldn´t stay over at his place because he wouldn´t let me sleep - he had altered sleep patterns and thought it was perfectly reasonable to turn the lights on and wake me in the middle of the night.
I couldn´t go anywhere public with him for fear of him getting drunk. I only took him to visit friends of mine three times and on two of them he became so drunk I had to take him home asleep, the other time there was no alcohol at my friend´s and he complained about it for weeks afterwards, saying I took him to a boring tea-party with old ladies. (Btw he was perfectly capable of drinking semi-moderately or not drinking at all when we were with his friends or family)
He had no interest whatsoever in my life, he didn´t make any attempt to meet my kids - which looking back was a good thing, I know, but it made me feel like everything evolved around him and I didn´t matter at all.

Being with him often felt like a waste of time for me. One saturday we were going to spend the day and night at a cabin in the woods of his parents´. I had my children settled with my mom and my ex (their father), which always takes a lot of planning for a lot of people. When I got there, XABF had invited another couple with their kids, who are about 5 and 8 years old. So we had a barbecue and it was nice until all the adults (except me) began drinking and probably smoking a bit of marihuana. XAbf fell asleep sitting at the table and I somehow managed to make him stand up and go to bed. The other couple went to lie down for a bit inside too and fell asleep too. So I was left alone with two very small children who werent even mine!
I had really wanted to have a nice romantic saturday with my bf in the woods but suddenly I was cast in this role of babysitter. I could not possibly leave those kids in their own, they could fall in the river for all I knew. I didnt know when the other would wake up and be sufficiently sober to drive home.
I considered taking the children home with me and let the others come look for them when they woke up, but I was really hoping I could spend some time with my bf! So in the end I entertained those children for hours until it became dark and the little girl managed to wake up her mother.
I did spend the night with my bf in the end, but was it worth it? I still can´t understand how this happened.
(The only good thing is that those children adore me now, it made me quite popular.)

Besides all these things that you can somehow rationalize away, there was the physical and mental damage of alcohol on XABF that I could no longer overlook. Irrational discussions and anger, his inability to watch a film because he´d became distracted, falling asleep in the bath with the water running, peeing on himself.
The thing that finally made me realize I couldn´t deal with it anymore (beside the stress this was giving me) was that he lost his job and asked me for money. In the beginning, he would return it, then he didn´t. And I just wasn´t willing, as a single mom, to take care of him financially.

And of course, more importantly, I couldn´t deal with seeing him deteriorate further, and knowing that he was poisoning himself a bit more every day. I often imagined what his funeral would be like, and how soon it would come - really, who wants to live like that? I still dread the day when I´ll find out he has died.

FireSprite

Absolute ditto to Wisconsin's eloquent post.

One simple thought to add for you to contemplate: Without your partner in recovery, this is the very best your relationship will ever be because the one known, constant factor is that his addiction will progress.

The unknown is how long that will take, what stages he will go through, how easily will you be able to see that his/your problems are related to that increasing progression?

So, if this, right now, is the very BEST it will ever be - is that worth fighting for?

You're really doing fantastic Jen!

jada1981

I couldn't have said it better than Wisconsin. I could never understand or truly detach from my STBXAH because I would always future trip. Even though he was going to meetings, he wasn't truly trying to recover. After each relapse, I would think "is this going to be how I'm going to live the rest of my life?" In Al-Anon, I hear stories of older women who have been with their AH's for years and they say that are now able to detach. Great for them, but honestly, it sounds like a sad way to live your marriage and life.

You say you may be a little afraid of being lonely. There's a difference between living alone and being lonely. I don't think there's a lonelier feeling than being in a relationship with an active alcoholic.

alcoholics wife

My relationship with my AXbf was not a healthy one. He was addicted to alcohol, cocaine and at the end of our relationship became addicted to gambling. Let's just say he had a very addictive personality. Even though I loved him, I needed to live my life without that chaos. I eventually left him and when I did, I wished I would have done it sooner. It felt like a great weight has been lifted. Of course, it's not easy but time heals. It's been 9 years since then and I have no doubt that my ex is still an addict and has not gotten better but worse.
Problem though is that I didn't understand me yet, and I ended up meeting another alcoholic who is now my husband!

Seems like you are doing yourself good by going to therapy and working on you. You don't want to keep diving into relationships with addicts!

dandylion

Jennifer.....you asked WHY it is so hard to "walk away". Well.....I say that it is hard because it IS painful.
When we have bonded with another person...and, especially, when we have invested a part of ourselves---bonds form.
Mother Nature arranges this because these bonds are what motivate us to remain close to others....it enables the propogation of the secies, in several ways.
These bonds are strong and powerful because they need to be in order to do their "job". Same with the cascade of bonding hormones that flood our system when we are in early attraction to another (in "love").
The sticky wicket is that it is painful to break these bonds whether the relationship is a good one or a bad one......

The pain can be compounded if we, for certain reasons have an extraordinary fear of abandonment or have had unresolved grieving from past losses in our past life.

Part of the reality is that we have to go through a grieving period (the pain part) in order to move on and to heal.
We DO heal...Mother Nature arranged for that, also...but, it takes TIME. From about 6mo. to two years....depending on a list of variables about a mile long...lol...

Sadly, lots of people stay in relationships for much longer than they should, for their own good, because of the FEAR of the grieving process....
They may think that the pain means that they are doing the wrong thing....or, that the pain means that it is a written in stone "love"...or, that they will never love l ike that again (an erroneous fear),,,,,or, that they may become overwhenmed by their fears of abandonment.....
They may, also, have such an active ability to empathize with the feelings of another...so much so, that it overwhelms their own feelings of self defense....and, they transfer ther own fears of abandonment onto the other....so, that it actually feels l ike you are abandoning yourself, if you leave the relationship.....

What I am trying to say is: You have to be willing to endure short-term pain for the l ong-term pain.....

At least, this is how I conceptualize it....

Hope this helps, a bit.....

dandylion