Tag Archives: alcoholic father

PEACE, PROGRESS AND OTHER EXCITING NEWS

14 Saturday Nov 2020

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I started this blog as a way to support other women going through the hell of living with an alcoholic husband or partner while trying to process my own painful trip through Hades.

I fear I haven’t been very successful in that I have been far from consistent in my blogging. About a year ago, I thought the issue must be that I was ready to move past being married to an alcoholic. I couldn’t really write about being married to an alcoholic, I reasoned, because I was done being defined by being married to an alcoholic. To this end, I started a new blog: WrenRWaters.com

This was to be a blog not about being married to an alcoholic but about moving beyond being married to an alcoholic.

But just as a house divided cannot stand, a writer divided cannot write. Every time I had an idea for a blog post, I would question: was this an “alcoholic husband” sort of post or more a “moving past” alcoholic husband post? In the end, it became no post.

To the rescue, as often has been the case in my years as a writer and the wife of an alcoholic, was my friend, Linda Bartee of the Immortal Alcoholic blog. (immortalalcoholic.blogspot.com) She and I are always cooking up something between us and so it came to be that I will post on her blog once a week – Monday morning – with an excerpt from my book, “The Alcoholic Husband Primer: Survival Tips For The Alcoholic’s Wife.” I first published this book in 2016 but recently re-published an updated 2nd edition.

So if you are just climbing into your boat for this trip down the Styx River, I hope you will check out Linda’s blog, immortalalcoholic.blogspot.com for some insight into the things I wished I had known in the beginning. And if you’ve been on the river for awhile now, check out my blog, WrenRWaters.com for how I finally took control of this boat called My Life and am steering it into more peaceful waters.

Feeling The Feelings

01 Friday Nov 2019

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You can’t swing a metaphysical cat without hitting a writer, speaker, sage or motivational guru who will tell you that before anything – before the great job offer or the new dream house or the sports car in the driveway – comes into your life, you have to first feel the emotions of that thing. Everyone on the forefront of this whole metaphysical movement knows that the emotions are the horse and the manifestation the cart. Of course, the majority of us put the cart before the horse, declaring once that new job is here, the house is ours and/or the kazillion horse power of Italian engineering is puring under our buns, then we will be happy and satisfied.

But it’s the other way around the sages/gurus/random bloggers say.

Feel the feelings first.

Feel the joy.

The satisfaction.

The happiness of leaving your dream house to drive your dream car to the office of your dream job.

But recently, I realized something rather powerful.

Feeling the feelings ALSO allows you to bring forward the doubts, hesitaitons and limiting beliefs you may be having about achieving that trifecta of life’s success.

I started thinking about the day I move into my own house.

I was mentally watching the movers pack up my share of stuff and load it onto a truck.

I was bringing all the excitment and happiness and relief I will no doubt feel.

And then I got to the backyard.

We have one of those nice, big wooden playsets that my kids “grew up” on. That would move with me because there are young nieces and nephews in the family who will be visiting at my new house. As my mind saw it being dis-assembled and loaded onto the moving truck, I was suddenly struck by such sadness and grief. This house, that I hate so much, that I curse on a nearly daily basis, that I dream of leaving one day is the house where my children grew up. The house where all their holiday and summer and daily memories were created. Sure, they aren’t truly grown up and out of the house but they are teenagers. The new house, my house, will not be the house of their childhood.

It’s not reason to stay.

I know that.

But it was powerful (and important. Maybe even vital!) for me to feel that un-realized grief and loss. Is that was has been inadvertently holding me back?

It seems it would be (should be?) easy to end a marriage to someone who has a drinking problem, screams obscenities at you and spends his days checked out.

But it’s not.

Far from it.

So while I know that I need to dwell in the good feelings, the happy feelings, the feelings of success and contentment, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to occasionally let myself feel the feelings of loss. Pain. Grief.

So I can move past them.

The Embarrassment of Procrastination

20 Monday May 2019

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Thank you to those who have reached out to check on me.

I am fine.

Fine as in the kind of fine you are when you’re married to an alcoholic.

I want to leave.

I need to leave.

I make small steps toward leaving.

And yet…

I seem to always backslide.

I seem to always be fooled by his momentary niceness.

But I’m not fooled.

I’m not.

But still somehow he weakens my resolve.

It’s not easy breaking up a family.

Even one that is already broken.

This is what leaving you alcoholic husband looks like, I guess.

Two steps forward.

One step back.

How do you gain your focus?

How do you maintain your commitment?

 

 

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.

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.