Tag Archives: alcoholic father

There Is No Bottom

12 Friday Oct 2018

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I’m not a huge fan of Alcoholics Annoymous though I always do qualify that by saying,

“But if it works for someone, then that is great.”

My issues with AA stem from the fact that its doctrine seems to put forth this idealogy that alcoholism is somehow this “simple” issue that has their one and only “simple” solution.

Turn your drinking over to (your version) of God. They couch God in the euphamism of “your high power” but don’t be fooled. AA is a faith based program.

Never drink again.

Attend AA meetings indefinitely.

One other, in my opinion, myth AA perpetuates is this idea of “rock bottom.” As in the alcoholic has to hit “rock bottom” before he will be able to stop drinking.

Of course for some alcoholics, there will be a cataclysmic event that so shocks and scares them that they turn to a life of sobriety and never look back.

They kill someone in a car accident.

They almost kill someone.

They pass out only to wake up with no idea where they are or how they got there.

They experience blackouts that cause them to lose days of their lives.

Jail time.

Yes, these can happen.

Of course they can.

Alcoholism takes all forms.

BUT…

The truth is the majority of alcoholics never hit the proverbial rock bottom.

They just free fall indefinitely until they get tired of falling.

Or never stop falling.

For most, alcoholism is a chasm with no bottom.

And guess what?

It’s the exact same for the wives of alcoholics!!

We don’t finaly decide to leave because there is one big, overwhelming event or tragedy that jars out of our troubled complacency: we decide to leave because the daily living of little tragedies (peppered with the classic-alcoholic events like ruined holidays and drunken family vacations) finally becomes too much.

I know I buried my lead here, but I am leaving.

I didn’t lead with my lead because I felt the need to explain.

I have said I needed to leave before.

I have written about my “decision” to leave and then wrote no more of any effort.

It’s not because I “lied” or was posturing.

It wasn’t an idle threat launched in the world blogging.

It’s because this is the very difficult and convulted emotinonal trajectory of leaving an alcoholic husband.

We make the decision over and over again until we finally make the decision.

I have chosen the date.

June 14, 2019.

There are things I need to get in place (i.e. finances. aka money!) and while June 7, 2019 is doable it will also be a hustle.

The biggest obstacle women face in leaving their alcoholic husbands is making the definitive decision to leave.

I have made the decision.

I am tired of falling.

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My Heart Is Broken

19 Sunday Aug 2018

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We went on a “day trip” yesterday to hike in the mountains.

We used to do this sort of thing as a family “all the time.”

I don’t know when we stopped.

Not all at once.

Just one day we didn’t.

Until another day we didn’t.

Until we just didn’t.

But yesterday we tried.

I don’t know why.

It was a disaster though I suspect not a disaster that anyone else noticed.

(Or did they?)

I felt like the only sober person at a party of drunks.

My family is short with one another, they snipe at one another and there seems to be a constant flow of ridicule.

No one can answer one another nicely or with a nice tone.

It seems no matter what anyone has to say to another, their voice is laced with hostility.

I suspect much of it is just “habit” now.

It’s my husband’s fault.

Yes, it is.

An alcoholic in the household is the proverbial bad apple.

No one is rubbing off on him.

He’s rubbing off on all of us.

It’s Not Too Late

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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I’ve never heard any woman who left her alcoholic husband say,

“I left too early.”

Or even,

“I left at just the right time.”

Every single woman I have ever spoken to who has left her alcoholic husband said,

“I should have left sooner.”

Every.

Single.

Woman.

And yet, I will dare to say they all probably did leave at exactly the right time because sooner, earlier it didn’t yet make sense to them. It couldn’t make sense earlier.

I don’t think any woman can understand – or even believe – how bad the alcoholism is going to progress. It seems unfathomable when her husband is “just” drinking a little too much during the week or “only” getting drunk on the week-ends. It seems incomprehensible that her husband, albeit drinking compulsively, is ever going to be the angry, hostile, combative, detached, abusive man she hears of from other wives. It’s not we doubt these woman who’s hell has progessed beyond ours. It’s just…

Have you ever seen the Wheaten Terrier dog breed?

As a puppy, the dog’s coat is a deep reddish brown.

That turns WHITE as the animal matures.

My friend had one and I told her if I hadn’t seen it as a puppy, I would have never believed it! I couldn’t imagine how that deep, dark colored coat would eventually grow in white.

Living with an alcholic husband is sort of like that.

You can’t imagine the animal your husband’s drinking is will become the beast others must battle.

But it does.

And so if and when we decide to leave, we can think we left “too late” or we should have left “earlier.”

I certainly have been feeling this but then I was talking to a friend Monday morning and we were re-capping our week-ends. She said she had a really nice week-end as both her college-age kids were home with their girlfriends and they all “sat around” all week-end watching movies, playing board games, etc.

All I want (ALL!! I WANT!!) is a home that is pleasant and cozy and roomy and nice and comfortable and safe. But as my children get older and older (one is off to college next year!) I found myself thinking it’s “too late.” I “should have” given that to my kids sooner. But hearing about my friend’s week-end made me see…

It’s never too late to enjoy your life!

Time To Triple The-F Down

11 Monday Jun 2018

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I can’t get enough of this guy Gary Vee because he is so spot on!

I was watching this video and thought,

“I wonder what he would say if I told him how my marriage was killing me?”

And while obviously I can’t literally answer for him, I’ve watched enough of his videos now to think his answer might go something like this:

“Fuck him! Get the fuck out! Look, I’m not just some cold-hearted bastard but it all comes down to this: your life or your marriage. And if you spouse is dragging you down. If he’s making it so you can’t live your life, that you are WASTING this one opportunity you have at this thing called living, then you have to make the hard choices, the tough decisons.”

Yep, that’s what I think he would say.

It’s Been A Long Time Coming But I’ve Arrived!

29 Tuesday May 2018

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I love this guy.

And in this video, he actually mentions the demographic that I am part of!

Go figure.

I have to tell you, I am STOKED!

It’s taken a long time for me to get here, but I am HERE!!

I spent the day repeating the mantra I took from one of Gary Vee’s videos:

I am a human being!!

I made it!

To human being-ness!

It is flippin’ crazy when you really think about it.

As Gary Vee says, it’s winning the Universe’s Lotto!

And so when I came home tonight and my husband found a reason to yell and curse, I didn’t care!

But in the right way!

It wasn’t I didn’t care in that white-knuckling it sort of way where you are actually seething with anger.

No, I didn’t care as in that anger was NOT going to touch MY life.

It’s been a long journey but I am here!

At My Life.

And I’m unpacking my bags because I plan to stay for the duration.

It’s! Time!

28 Monday May 2018

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I’m ready!!

I had never heard of this guy – Gary Vee – but one click on someone’s Instagram account led to another click led to another and suddenly there I am, listening to a guy who is known more as an inspirational gury to 20-somethings than to “middle-aged housewives.” Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind that this “old lady” got fired up from one of his YouTube videos.

I am done!!

Listening to this made me accutely aware of how much I’ve been living in the chaso and turmoil of my husband’s drinking and the affects our marriage rather than basking in the miracles and abundance of my own life.

As Gary Vee says,

“I am a HUMAN BEING.”

I won the flippin’ lottery, he says.

I am a thinking, feeling, free creature in a Universe that could have made me a bug or a rock just as easliy. I have allowed his pain to become my regrets for too long.

It’s time.

To fly.

Why I Finally Feel Ready To Leave

03 Monday Jul 2017

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People in the “outside” world seem to be befuddled by the fact that the wives of alcoholics don’t simply run for the door the first time they trip over a pile of “empties.” They think drinking problem = marriage dissolution. No questions asked. No doubt. No remorse or hesitation. If only it was that simple.

Or easy.

Or painless.

No, leaving our alcoholic husbands is never simply, easy and certainly not painless though that seems to befuddle the outside world as well. Why would we grieve leaving some “no-good drunk” of a husband?

Well, for lots of reasons I won’t go into right now. What I will go into is why I finally (finally?) feel ready to leave. Ironically, it has nothing to do with his drinking, per say.

I asked my husband if he wanted to take a vacation this summer.

“We can’t afford it.”

“Who is going to watch the dog?”

“I don’t know if I can get off work.”

No sooner did he finish his last objection thent I realized,

“Oh my God! I have been listening to these excuses for 20 years!”

Everything – EVERY! THING! I have ever – EVER! – presented to my husband in terms of our lives, direction we might take, dreams we might pursue, adventures we might create has always – ALWAYS – been met with the same – SAME – reasons why we CAN’T.

First and foremost is the steadfast,

“We can’t afford it.”

I don’t care if I was suggesting planting a willow tree in the backyard or taking an overnight trip to the lake.

“We can’t affort that.”

It’s his go-to, his safety, his stand-by.

Then, depending on the situation, he has his alternates.

The dog is a popular one for any sort of trip.

“What are we going to do with the dog?”

When I suggested we be foster parents (this was LONG ago, when I would even dare suggest such an idea), I guess since money is hardly an issue there, he had to pull out the,

“We don’t have room for that.”

There is also his all encompassing,

“That will never work.”

So when he said we “can’t afford” a vacation this summer, it hardly seemded the sort of thing that would cause a deep revelation within me. But that’s the thing with “revelations;” they may seem sudden, like a volcano erupting, but really they have been a long time coming. Like a volcano after all. The energy brewing and percolating beneath the surface, “undetected” until the day…

And so last night when my husband began with his litany of “can’ts,” it hit me,

“He will never want to do anything.”

His excuses are just that. Excuses. The real “excuse” is he doesn’t want to or can’t leave his comfort zone. He wants to work, come home, drink only to wake up and do it all again the next day. Now I by no means think he’s happy or fulfilled. No, I know he is quite unhappy but he’s not going to challenge that. He’s not going to work to Be happy. He’s just going to sit in our house, worrying and yelling about about money until the day he dies.

And THAT is why I finally feel ready to leave.

Because I want to LIVE…

Until the day I die.

I Used To Hate Him For…

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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his drinking.

I used to hate him for the beer bottles littering my house.

I used to hate him for his snoring as he laid passed out in the living room.

I used to hate him for the way he would scream and curse at me.

I used to hate him for the dirty dishes and trash he left laying around.

I used to hate him for being emotionally unavailable.

I used to hate him for never fully participating in our family life.

I used to hate him for the way he drove.

I used to hate him for being such a pessimist.

I used to hate him for his anger.

I used to hate him for turning the smallest incident into a verbal assault.

I used to hate him for his refusal (or inability?) to communicate with me.

I used to hate him for his constant harping about money.

I used to hate him for the suppressive pall he cast over our home.

I used to hate him for everything our marriage was not because of his drinking.

Now I just hate him…

For making me hate myself.

Who Are The “Lucky” Ones?

02 Friday Jun 2017

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If you ask me, eventually and essentially, the alcoholic marriage comes down to one of just two types:

The Slow Erosion.

This is my marriage.

There are the expected flare-ups every four, five or six weeks. Sometimes not for months. The fuck-you’s and the fucking bitches, shut the fuck ups and go fuck yourselves. It’s a pressure cooker of a home, no doubt, but the intensity of the pressure is not constant. What’s constant is the slow climb. The building of pressure that leads to the climax. The alcoholic unleashing his fury and purging himself – at the expense of his family, of course – of the loathing, self-hatred and anger like a volcano spews it’s lava, noxious gases and broken rock pieces.

It’s a deceptively dangerous alcoholic, what some in the “industry” euphemestically refer to as a “functioning” alcoholic. The idea (fallacy!) being that somehow, in between the eruptions, everyone is living mentally healthy and emotionally safe lives. That because the alcoholic doesn’t spend the mortgage money on booze or get arrested on a regular basis, somehow his wife is spared the sterotypical pain and dysfucntion of an alcoholic marriage.

And it’s the marriage that is most likely to rob us of our lives, our souls. The marriage that steals our days and lives so gradually, so insidiously that we lose ourselves to complacency.

We live in the in-betweens. It’s like we are periodically jerked out to sea, tossed about violently and mercilessly in the ocean depths only to be returned to the peaceful shoreline for a few weeks or months. We live with the fear, the dreaded expectation – the knowledge! – that it will happen again but the warm sunshine and the soft sand are deceptive. We let ourselves be fooled. Not because we are dumb or weak or “co-dependent” on the ocean’s rage but because we are human beings and human beings (the good ones anyway) tend to have a hard time walking out on committments they have made and people they love. (Or onced loved?)

And then there is the other alcoholic marriage.

The Pure-Hell-All-The-Time.

An ocean that is constant in its assault on us. An ocean that nearly never stops pounding us with thousands upon thousands of gallons of bone chilling water. An ocean that we somehow endure its absolute worst day in and day out until one day it delivers even more.

One day it becomes even more viscious in its attack on us.

Think of the alcoholic marriage where there is repeated jail time, jobs continually lost or extra-marital affairs regularly. Think of the alcoholic marriage with physical abuse or holes punches in walls or public displays of drunken behavior.

The alcoholic marriage that one day, somehow, is even worst than all the years of worst.

This is where my friend is in her marriage.

A marriage that it is impossible for her to deny its destructive affect on her.

A marriage she knows she has to leave and yet she doesn’t know how.

She will find a way.

Because she has to.

Meanwhile, I am “safe” (relatively of course) in my marriage of mostly nothing. My marriage with an emotionally absent husband whom I can “ignore” because he’s not in jail or having an affair or losing job after job.

When my friend tells me of what she is enduring in her marriage – infidility (blamed on her, of course) – I think I am “lucky” one to not have to face the pain of betrayal while trying to navigate and mitigate the anger and hostility of an alcoholic husband. (Caught in an affair, no less. Like a cornered animal, the alcoholic who has no way out will attack).

Yet, when I think of how she will find her way out because she has no other choice, I wonder…

Maybe she is the “lucky” one.

P.S. I love you T. You can do this!

Spoken Like A True Alcoholic

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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If you’re too young to know who David Cassidy is (“was”) he was a teen heartthrob from the 70’s and the frontman for the group “The Partridge Family.”

At the time of this interview, he was a recoverying alcoholic.  I don’t know if he still is though if I was going to place my bet based on this interview, I’d say he did not stay sober.

The first 15 minutes or so are interesting enough but it’s around the 16 minute mark when he begins to talk about his marriage, getting divorce and the affects of his alcoholism on the marriage.  Apparently as far as the divorce was concerned, all was well and amicable in the proceedings until his wife saw a picture of him with his new girlfriend.  Then that old bitch of an ex-wife-to-be just couldn’t handle it and got all vindictive.  And he’s really hurt by it.  And he tried “reaching out to her” but she won’t speak to him.  Oh David, how could she be so petty and cruel?

Hey, I know, maybe…

Maybe she was gritting her teeth and biting her tongue just to get through the divorce “amicably.”  Maybe she was trying to put 25 years of being married to an alcoholic behind her just for the sake of getting the divorce over with.  Maybe she was trying to move forward and not hold onto all the pain and hurt you caused her.

Maybe she saw a picture of you and your new girlfriend and said to herself,

WHAT THE LIVING FUDGE!!

I DEALT WITH HIS S*T FOR 25 YEARS AND NOW HE THINKS HE’S TAKING HALF OUR ASSETS TO SET HIMSELF UP WITH A NEW LITTLE LIFE?

Maybe it was something like that David.

At the 20:23 mark, Pierce asks him what would he say to his (ex) wife if she were to be watching.

Oh!

My!

God!

I’m surprised my computer is still in one piece.

Typcial (T-Y-P-I-C-A-L!!!) alcoholic non-apology apology.

He said he would say he is “sorry” “if” he hurt her.

Oh wait, he says yes he did hurt her and he’s sorry BUT…

But he “just” wants her to be fair and if she has a problem with him having a girlfriend, well he’s sorry for that but…

And then he SHRUGS HIS SHOULDERS!

He goes onto say he hopes she considers their 25 years together and all he did for her, their family and her family!

What he DID for HER FAMILY!

Straight out of the alcoholic’s playbook!

“You can’t be completely mad at me because look what I did FOR you!”

I supported you or gave your mom money or paid for your brother’s college or whatever!

I don’t care if he set her and 250 members of her extended-extended family up in tiki bungaloos in Tahiti for six months!!  Here’s what alcoholics – and even recoverying ones apparently – DON’T! GET!!

EVENTUALLY THERE IS NOTHING (AND I MEAN NOTHING!!)THE ALCOHOLIC CAN DO TO “MAKE UP” FOR HIS BEHAVIOR AS AN ALCOHOLIC!

There is not enough money, enough trips, enough designer handbags, diamond bracelets, sweet surpises, ENOUGH OF ANYTHING!! to “make up” for the alcoholic’s behavior and the pain he inflicts!

The only way to “make up” for it is to apologize.

Not as an alcoholic apoligizes but as someone who is sincerely taking ownership of their actions apologizes.  The day I hear an alcoholic say something like this:

I’m sorry.  I have hurt you beyond what I know I can fully comprehend.  I will spend the rest of my life working for your forgiveness.  Whatever you need from me in order to heal from me, I will give you.

Is the day I trust I am speaking to a truly recoverying alcoholic.

At the 24:33 mark he does say his greatest regret is that his son no longer trusts him “but…”  “he’s been living with his mother…” so Cassidy is sure that has influenced him “some.”

Yes David Cassidy, that’s it.  Again, that mean old vindictive bitch-of-an-ex-wife-to-be has victimized you. Your son’s feelings and mistrust of you has nothing to do with what life was like growing up with an alcoholic father.  That couldn’t possibly be it.  No, it’s his mother’s “influence” that is causing him to shut you out.

Sadly to me David Cassidy sounds like a non-recoverying-recoverying alcoholic.  He apologizes and acknowledges things but always with a caveat.

The “yeah but” of alcoholics everywhere.