Hazelthebunny

Good morning,
I'm very new to this and I had posed this question in a thread in the Newcomers forum, but it was suggested to me that I might be better off asking it here. I would be grateful for any perspectives you can offer, positive, negative, or anywhere on the spectrum! I love my boyfriend and think he'd a gem, but he does binge drink.

Can I ask - was I enabling him...
so the team rookie night did prove to be a bender, as I thought it might. He couldn't stand any more or barely see and had reached a level of speechlessness that we all call "speaking Bob" (his name isn't Bob but you get what I mean...)

enabling? I rolled him into a taxi and told the cabbie to take him to mine. I followed on my bike because I didn't want to leave my bike downtown.

Enabling? I met the cab at mine and had to pay as my boyfriend couldn't see to use the credit card machine although he was really trying.

Enabling? I brought him up, helped him all the way into bed, took off his socks, brought him water.

Enabling? I finally just took an extra sheet and went to sleep on the couch as he had gas

I'm wondering... was that helping? Or enabling... I don't know, I really dont...

Any wisdom would be so much appreciated...
thank you!

LeeJane

Hi Hazel the Bunny

In my view yes are you very much enabling him.

For a person with an alcohol problem they need to be allowed to feel and deal with the full impact of it. By preventing this, we aren't helping them, we are delaying them seeking recovery.

The best thing we can do is work on ourselves. Maybe look at a program to help you understand setting boundaries for yourself and taking care of yourself.

The stronger and clearer you are in yourself, the better you will be able to deal with this and decide what is best for you.

Welcome and glad you are here.

That was an interesting question you asked.

Liveitwell

Enabling. Total enabling (and I say that having been enabled with my drinking and addiction issues and also having been an enabler).

Work on you-you'll get this...

Btw, sounds like an awful night for you!!! No fun with a drunk.

Hazelthebunny

OK... yes from what I'm reading in other posts it sounds like you are both right.

This is making me so sad. I really love him. I can't bear to thin of him hurting himself or getting hurt or finding himself in places he doesn't mean to be or doing things he doesn;t mean to do... I feel like leaving him alone in that state is like "abandoning someone I love"

but maybe that's what I should be doing...

FireSprite

I think the Enabling part is when you attend functions together knowing that he's likely to get blackout-drunk & need to be carried home. In your last thread you stated that before the event you were already predicting "blackout plasteration" but followed it up with how your every effort will then be on making sure he is taken care of.

Does that sound like the way a grown man should need to be treated? Is that how you want to have to think about someone so important in your life? Is that how you want to be treated BY that important person? How many times do you think you'll want to repeat this same scenario before it wears on you? 10? 25? 100?

The rest of what you listed is part enabling/part consequences of having already enabled...... it gets blurry. Making sure he made it home safely is sort of understandable once you were that far into things, but removing socks/glass of water bedside... not so much in my opinion.

SparkleKitty

You can look at it like abandonment, if you choose. But that perspective will result in things staying the same. Until they get worse, which they will, because alcoholism is a progressive disease. Yes, even the binge-drinking version.

OR, you can look at it like you are affording your adult boyfriend the dignity of dealing with the consequences of his choices. He's not a child. You're not his mom. You deserve a partner who is, at the bare minimum, a functioning adult.

dandylion

Hazel....I am in agreement with Firesprite....in mid-stream, it does get "blurry".
Myself, I could not, in good conscience.. deliberately.leave a person to experience loss of life or limb.
But, just as Firesprite suggested, the extra efforts, beyond that, to make the person more "comfortable"....is an effort to make the drinking experience more pleasant.....thus, a level of enabling......

Not all would agree with me, of course, but, this is my take on it....

atalose

Your motivation in worrying ahead of events due to his drinking, putting him into a cab, meeting the cab at home to pay for his ride, helping him into bed then having to sleep on the couch is to keep him and the relationship intact. Prove your love and devotion by those actions.

His motivation is attending these events in order to drink period. He has no regard or respect for you or your feelings. He doesn’t have any reason to act any other way because he already knows you will make sure he can drink as much as he chooses and that you will get him home safe and sound.

Maybe moving forward you can chose NOT to attend events with him where drinking is readily available.

Or set a boundary for yourself by telling yourself – not him – that if he has more than 2 or 3 drinks you will leave and he will be on his own.

Boundaries are for us, not rules for them, so any boundary you set is up to you to follow, not him.

Berrybean

As I see my partner reaching his point of no return, I usually inform him that I will be leaving for home in X minutes time. At that time I ask him if he wants a ride home with me or if he's going to get himself home. And then I either take him home or leave him to his own devices as he chooses (because he is an adult and has to make his own choices ). That did entail a few stroppy sulks at first, but now he knows I mean business and that I am not taking responsibility for him. He can be as Peter Pan as he likes, but I'm no Wendy or Nana-dog.

I am an alcoholic in recovery and didn't get sober to look after his drunk arse.

honeypig

Hi, Hazel--I'm glad to see you found us here at SR, and I hope you find help and answers. I'm especially encouraged to see that you've been reading around the forum. Sometimes newcomers post a thread and never look any farther than that one thread; by doing so, they miss a great deal of experience, strength and hope as well as seeing how NOT unique their situation is (and that's an important thing!).

I certainly have felt this ^^. I think many of us here have, and have struggled mightily w/it. The thing that was said that finally got thru to me was that "abandonment is what you're doing if you leave a child or an animal who is helpless, not a competent adult human being." Since my XAH and your ABF are both grown men and NOT helpless, we are NOT abandoning them if we leave them to run their own lives, figure out how to handle their own problems and experience the consequences of their own decisions.

And, as SparkleKitty said, don't YOU deserve a functional adult partner rather than someone who seems to be more of a liability than anything else? Atalose made a great point in mentioning that YOUR actions were about showing him you care about him while HIS actions were all about him doing as he pleased w/no concern for anyone else.

You've gotten some good input here. I hope you can begin processing it and start to see where your path might lie, going forward.

LeeJane

Love love love this.

So am I and I didn't either!

Hazelthebunny

I agree - I have gotten some really good input. I appreciate it all very much, and thank you to everyone who took the time and care to reply.

hopeful4

Enabling.

You took him in, took care of him, and had to sleep outside your own bed. This is a problem.

Take good care of YOU, as you deserve more.

redatlanta

.

Sure it's enabling. But, it's also being a caring human being when someone is so inebriated they cannot function. I'm unsure that I could leave my husband, brother or friend on the side of the street in this condition. Actually I would not.

There is one thing I am sure about, it wouldn't happen more than one time. That means I would no longer participate in his drunk fests. Party? Nope. Dinner with friends? Nope. Anywhere that he planned on consuming alcohol I would not be along for the ride.

Then it becomes someone else's problem not mine.

Hazelthebunny

boy oh boy... my reactions to all of your advice is kind of "but no, I can't leave him alone like that..."

I can't seem to help feeling this way. I guess that makes me a co-dependant enabler. Shoot - live and learn eh??

Honestly I never experienced this before so had no clue. But it must be true about me. Maybe I better read the damn book...

XOXO thanks all <3

Berrybean

Thing is, the only thing that's ever likely to cause him to make the effort to get well are the consequences of his drinking. If YOU take it upon yourself to remove said consequences, you're effectively removing any likely motivation for him taking steps to turn his life around. Care taking isn't helping him in the long term.

teatreeoil007

For most of us, our conscience tells what we should and shouldn't do in various situations.

Your conscience is perhaps telling you that you are being an enabler and that feels wrong...(and it is). But your conscience is also telling you that you wouldn't leave him to die, get mugged or beat up or end up dead somewhere or severely injured.

You can live with the fact that nothing really bad happened to him that night and he made it home safe.

But on a regular basis I don't think you're going to like living with knowledge that you enable him. (I don't know how often he binges and how much more you're willing to put up with and "help" him with and rescue him from). What can you live with.? And, what do you need to live without.? There may come a time when you feel a definite conviction and draw the line with him. ("Yes, I love you, but I am not going to participate *in any way* in your drinking).

It is possible to love and care for someone while still not enabling, but getting that right is not easy! As others have said, it's likely gonna get old real quick if you start to feel like a parent instead of a partner.

Add to that the simple matter of when you have step in and rescue someone like that it's gonna eventually wear you down not to mention sort of spoil the night out for you. You go out to have fun, right? Well, it's no longer fun when he gets so drunk like that.

Bekindalways

Hi Hazel and welcome to SR (albeit a bit belatedly). I pretty much second everything everyone said.

I will only add that I probably would have done what you did even and including the glass of water and sleeping on the couch; however, yes, it is protecting him from his consequences. Because I knew I would take care of him if he was rolling drunk/high, my boundary had to be "Do not be around him when things start heading south." Again this boundary was a rule for me as knowing myself, I would have destroyed my life to "help" ( really enable) him.

Let us know how it goes. You sound like a wise woman.

bluelily

Hazel,
Another thing you have to consider is that these behaviors will increase and get much, much worse. As most on this board probably know, you ain´t seen nothing yet.
It´s probably no problem for you to pay for his cab, put him in his bed and take off his socks. But what if next time he throws up or pees in your bed? Or at your parent´s, during a family gathering? What if he falls asleep in the bathtub with the water flowing out (happened to my xabf, more than once)?

He´ll be used to having you there to clean up the mess. If he is thankful for you now, he will feel entitled to your "services" sooner than you think. And then the demands will get worse. If you don´t comply, he´ll become angry and agressive and that will really hurt. Because you see, you´ve become his enabler and he´s counting on you to take care of all the things that stand in the way of his drinking.

teatreeoil007

Something else crossed my mind and it's this: We are willing to help other people; especially those we love, right. And, the ways in which we help others can vary to greatly depending on what kind of help they need. But, the kind of 'help' a lot of addicts want is not really the kind of help they NEED. They want reassurance that you will always be there, that you will forgive them for when they mess up and perhaps that you won't interfere with their addiction.

YOU may be willing to accommodate him for a certain amount of time; maybe indefinitely...but during that time, even though you are a willing participant in helping, you stand a good chance of building RESENTMENT toward him. Resentment can literally RUIN relationships and destroy what peace/harmony there is. Once resentment is rooted it's hard to get out, I think. So, that is just something to think about too....