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Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 1,452
FreeAmy, I am so sorry for the circumstances that bring you here. You have lived a difficult life in a marriage with an alcoholic, and now, to face the devastation of losing your marriage as he appears to recover, is just double pain.
I'd suggest that you copy and re-post your original post on the Friends and Family of Alcoholics forum here on SoberRecovery. It is fine to post on any forum, but Friends and Family are specifically for people like us who have lived with an alcoholic/addict.
We understand very deeply what it is like to lose a relationship that, while often very troubled, is one that we have committed tremendous emotional energy to and fought to make it work, make it survive.
As someone mentioned in a post above, your name of "FreeAmy" is a a very healthy choice. For me, having left and divorced 3 years ago a then alcoholic and abusive husband after 20 years of marriage, the past three years have been a journey of self discovery and healing and, while painful and difficult, have led me to the happiest place I have ever been.
"FreeAmy" suggests two things to me: first, Amy needs to be freed, released, extricated from a painful unfulfilling yet compelling relationship. Second, "FreeAmy" is a new edition of you, one that will be happier, more self-aware, and more joyful.
To become "FreeAmy", you will need to continue on the path of instropection that you've begun with your therapist, and you already have a lot of insight that many of us, as co-dependents, don't have.
Many of us, with all good intentions, want to guide, control, direct our partners' behavior so that their lives - and ours - come out happier. We do so with all good intentions. Living in the desparation, chaos, and unhappiness that alcoholism/addiction in our partner brings to our lives is painful, destructive, and grief stricken. Of course we want to "fix" it.
From my experience, what we don't understand at the time is that we can only live our own lives, and we do not have the right or the obligation to try to "fix" someone else's life to be what WE decide is healthy. Everyone is a separate soul, and each of us has the right to choose to live as we want, despite someone else's view that the life we choose is destructive.
What your husband does not understand or value is that you did the best you could, given your understanding, to make living with an alcoholic work. That you - as many partners do - overstepped into HIS life and his choices is a measure of your choice, however misguided or ineffective, to work within the framework of his alcoholism and make the marriage work.
For me, after 3 years of instrospection into my own behavior as well as my former husband's, the concept of blame is limiting and, in the end, a diversion. The truth is that he, as an alcoholic, introduced and sustained a terrible element in our marriage - alcohol as the primary and pre-eminent force to be served, no matter what the consequences.
The equation of marriage: two people mutually committed to each other's health, welfare and happiness - was profoundly altered. Alcohol and addiction trump that promise and become the god or goddess to be served, first, and always.
We, as partners try to rebalance the equation to mutual love and respect, but one person cannot do that when the other is not willing or able to put their mistress - alcohol/addiction - in second place. We want to make our partners "behave better" and return to their promise to love and honor us; we want them to value us before and beyond their addictions.
But when our partners reject that, it often becomes us trying to control them and monitor them and force their behavior to fit what we need. What we think the marriage needs to survive.
That is the tragedy of it all. The life alcoholics/addicts choose for themselves has terrible and destructive consequences to the people around them, those who love them most. The alcoholic/addict chose it. We, the partners, can't live with it and be healthy; sometimes we can't live with it and survive.
Yet we love them and want them and will do whatever we can to keep them. And that reads, to them, as controlling them, demanding their behavior conform to our wishes, and not letting them live as their addiction demands they live.
The thing that you don't get yet, Amy, is that the equation is far more complex than you - or he - blaming YOU for everything. Blame is, for me, in the end, a kind of useless dead-end that can obscure the real accountability each of us owns for our own behavior in this relationship spiralling out of control as a damaged plane spirals before it hits the water.
For me, the search for the truth about what happened to my marriage became a deeply introspective, honest, and searching look into who I am and who I want to be. That has taken me, over the past 3 years, and continues to take me, toward acceptance of my flaws and failures as well as what I see as his. I have done what I can to learn how my behavior hurt, and what I can do instead.
I believe that he loved me as best he could, and I loved him as best I could, and that, once the third force of alcohol and addiction entered our marriage, we could not rebalance in time to save the relationship. And for us, like Humpty Dumpty, the marriage trust was broken like a shell into pieces that could not be put back together. So I moved on, as I had too, but I still honor and remember and occasionally long for the best of what we once had.
I now so profoundly believe that each of us has the right to live as we choose, for better and for worse, and it is paramount that each of us honor that in ourselves and in our partners. And the people in my life now also believe that, and it has made all the difference.
I hope that you will come here, and to Friends and Families forum, often, post often, because sharing with others supports us all, and we all move toward release and healing.
ShootingStar1
I'd suggest that you copy and re-post your original post on the Friends and Family of Alcoholics forum here on SoberRecovery. It is fine to post on any forum, but Friends and Family are specifically for people like us who have lived with an alcoholic/addict.
We understand very deeply what it is like to lose a relationship that, while often very troubled, is one that we have committed tremendous emotional energy to and fought to make it work, make it survive.
As someone mentioned in a post above, your name of "FreeAmy" is a a very healthy choice. For me, having left and divorced 3 years ago a then alcoholic and abusive husband after 20 years of marriage, the past three years have been a journey of self discovery and healing and, while painful and difficult, have led me to the happiest place I have ever been.
"FreeAmy" suggests two things to me: first, Amy needs to be freed, released, extricated from a painful unfulfilling yet compelling relationship. Second, "FreeAmy" is a new edition of you, one that will be happier, more self-aware, and more joyful.
To become "FreeAmy", you will need to continue on the path of instropection that you've begun with your therapist, and you already have a lot of insight that many of us, as co-dependents, don't have.
Many of us, with all good intentions, want to guide, control, direct our partners' behavior so that their lives - and ours - come out happier. We do so with all good intentions. Living in the desparation, chaos, and unhappiness that alcoholism/addiction in our partner brings to our lives is painful, destructive, and grief stricken. Of course we want to "fix" it.
From my experience, what we don't understand at the time is that we can only live our own lives, and we do not have the right or the obligation to try to "fix" someone else's life to be what WE decide is healthy. Everyone is a separate soul, and each of us has the right to choose to live as we want, despite someone else's view that the life we choose is destructive.
What your husband does not understand or value is that you did the best you could, given your understanding, to make living with an alcoholic work. That you - as many partners do - overstepped into HIS life and his choices is a measure of your choice, however misguided or ineffective, to work within the framework of his alcoholism and make the marriage work.
For me, after 3 years of instrospection into my own behavior as well as my former husband's, the concept of blame is limiting and, in the end, a diversion. The truth is that he, as an alcoholic, introduced and sustained a terrible element in our marriage - alcohol as the primary and pre-eminent force to be served, no matter what the consequences.
The equation of marriage: two people mutually committed to each other's health, welfare and happiness - was profoundly altered. Alcohol and addiction trump that promise and become the god or goddess to be served, first, and always.
We, as partners try to rebalance the equation to mutual love and respect, but one person cannot do that when the other is not willing or able to put their mistress - alcohol/addiction - in second place. We want to make our partners "behave better" and return to their promise to love and honor us; we want them to value us before and beyond their addictions.
But when our partners reject that, it often becomes us trying to control them and monitor them and force their behavior to fit what we need. What we think the marriage needs to survive.
That is the tragedy of it all. The life alcoholics/addicts choose for themselves has terrible and destructive consequences to the people around them, those who love them most. The alcoholic/addict chose it. We, the partners, can't live with it and be healthy; sometimes we can't live with it and survive.
Yet we love them and want them and will do whatever we can to keep them. And that reads, to them, as controlling them, demanding their behavior conform to our wishes, and not letting them live as their addiction demands they live.
The thing that you don't get yet, Amy, is that the equation is far more complex than you - or he - blaming YOU for everything. Blame is, for me, in the end, a kind of useless dead-end that can obscure the real accountability each of us owns for our own behavior in this relationship spiralling out of control as a damaged plane spirals before it hits the water.
For me, the search for the truth about what happened to my marriage became a deeply introspective, honest, and searching look into who I am and who I want to be. That has taken me, over the past 3 years, and continues to take me, toward acceptance of my flaws and failures as well as what I see as his. I have done what I can to learn how my behavior hurt, and what I can do instead.
I believe that he loved me as best he could, and I loved him as best I could, and that, once the third force of alcohol and addiction entered our marriage, we could not rebalance in time to save the relationship. And for us, like Humpty Dumpty, the marriage trust was broken like a shell into pieces that could not be put back together. So I moved on, as I had too, but I still honor and remember and occasionally long for the best of what we once had.
I now so profoundly believe that each of us has the right to live as we choose, for better and for worse, and it is paramount that each of us honor that in ourselves and in our partners. And the people in my life now also believe that, and it has made all the difference.
I hope that you will come here, and to Friends and Families forum, often, post often, because sharing with others supports us all, and we all move toward release and healing.
ShootingStar1
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 222
ShootingStar1, your words truly touched me. I do realize i was trying to hold the reins of his life rather than the reins of my own. and i need to take back my reins. I did everything you spoke about. I was constantly trying to "rebalance" and shift to make up for the alcohol that wove it's way into our family, even though for 25 years I didn't even know it was there. I knew something was wrong, i just didn't know what it was. my therapist said I came into the relationship looking for someone to love me (because i know i so did not love myself) and he came in looking for someone to guide him. We were both 22. Then we spent the rest of the marriage trying to make each other more like us, not what we needed from the other. it was years of frustration because neither of us had the maturity or a healthy sense of self. separation was really inevitable. its been a tumultous 25 years to say the least. i think the alcohol in a way was a gift to push us both to change, find ourselves, take care of our individual selves and live the lives we were meant to live, rather than the chaos which had become totally "the norm". I choose peace instead of this is my new mantra. this is going to be a very big lesson in taking care of me. finally, at 49. taking care of me. Your words are so beautifully written. thank you so much for your kindness.
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