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~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Tag Archives: alcoholic husband

WHY I AM FAILING AT BLOGGING

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, divorce, wife of an alcoholic

I’ve been married to my alcoholic husband for over 20 years.

I’m leaving him.

I’m starting a new blog.

I’m contributing on my friend’s blog.

I’m buying my own house.

Etc., etc., etc.

And so on and so forth.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

“Tomorrow morning,”(as in about four hours from now since it’s nearly 3 o’clock in the morning) I am going to….

Start getting up early.

Establish a morning routine.

Eat right.

Manage my anger.

Start moving forward with my life.

Etc., etc., etc.

And so on and so forth.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Trying to free yourself from the shackles of an alcoholic marriage is like being given a big, beautiful pair of wings…

With you feet tethered to the ground.

You flap and you flap and you flap.

But you go no where.

I started this blog (and even a second blog, my wasn’t I ambitious) because I thought I could offer some help or support or a bit of solace in the dark lonely night to other women, younger women, “newer” (as in newer to the alcoholic marriage) woman than myself. But how do I help them when I can’t even help myself?

What can I say to these women?

After 20 years you get “used” to it. (Except you don’t.)

After 20 years, you just start living your own life. (But you don’t.)

After 20 years, you don’t even notice his drinking. (Except you do.)

How am I suppose to advise other women on saving their souls?

When I can’t even save my own?

PEACE, PROGRESS AND OTHER EXCITING NEWS

14 Saturday Nov 2020

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, divorce, wife of alcoholic

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.

I’M SO EXCITED!!

07 Saturday Mar 2020

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alcoholic husband

My heart is racing.

Ready to beat right out of my chest!

For so long…

For so very, very, very long now…

All I have wanted is my own house!

A house that is warm and comfortable in the winter, cool and inviting in the summer.

A house where there aren’t half-finished projects everywhere. Broken this and that else where.

A house full of color and joy and loud, obnoxious laughter.

A house where I went to bed at night without a flippin’ fan blowing for white noise and the bed is covered with sleepy pets.

A house I couldn’t wait to come home to.

A house that was mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.

All.

Mine.

No, I have not bought that house.

Yet.

But what has me so excited is today, it finally became clear to me.

Actually buying my house will be the easy part!

As they say, it’s all down hill from here!

It’s not an easy thing to end your marriage.

Even one to a verbally abusive alcoholic.

And so today, realizing I am 100% committed to recreating my life, building a new future different from the future I was expecting, was liberating for me.

All this time, it hasn’t been the mechanics of getting a divorce or making enough money that has held me in my marriage.

It’s been my – rightfully so – ambivalent feelings.

It’s been my – justifiably – doubts and wavering conviction.

It’s been my – understandable – grief over losing the future I thought was to be mine and my children’s.

In other words, it’s been the completely natural progression and process of ending one’s marriage.

It’s been a “long time” coming.

Not just time wise, but emotions-wise.

I remember writing with such conviction I was “done” only to watch another six, 12, 18 months tick by with seemingly no change on my part.

But today I saw, felt, all that change that has been happening.

Within me.

When you decide you’re going to build your dream house, there is first the not-so-exciting, not-glamourous stuff. Finding the site. Getting a “perc” test. Closing on the site. Clearing foliage. Digging the basement. Laying the foundation. It can seem so trivial and tedious. Like nothing is happening except a big hole in the Earth where you beautiful, sun-light breakfast nook, master bath with a Jacuzzi tub, gourmet kitchen house is suppose to be. Septic tanks and rebar. Backhoes and cement mixers. A muddy hole and waiting for the rain to stop hardly seems the stuff dream houses are made of.

But then “suddenly,” the sun comes out – both literally and metaphorically – and like a colony of perfectly synchronized ants, workers are raising walls, hanging kitchen cabinets and caulking around the Jacuzzi tub where you will bubble away the day’s cares as you sip wine and gaze out at the view you’ve dreamed of, longed for and waited on for so very long.

I thought buying a house would be the hard part.

I thought packing and moving and just dealing with all the STUFF would be the hard part.

I thought the mechanics of divorcing would be the hard part.

But I was wrong.

The hardest part of creating any sort of great change or personal metamorphosis is the journey you must first take.

Within yourself.

SOMETIMES I FORGET…

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

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Tags

alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, divorce, wife of alcoholic

The beast lies in wait in the tall grass of complacency.

You forget he’s there.

You move freely.

Too freely.

Because he’s always there.

Always waiting.

Always ready.

I hate him.

Ok, I hate him.

He ruined my life.

Now, I know, I know…

Life is all about how you allow someone to make you feel and life is about not allowing someone to take away your power and your life is only ruined by someone else as much as you allow them to ruin it but sometimes…

Some days…

Some nights when you have forgotten the beast that alcoholism is…

The beast that it made him…

You get caught.

The filthy claws slash though your flesh and soul.

And you wonder how you could have even POSSIBLY forgotten!

How you could have for one single, solitary, no matter how brief, moment taken your eyes off that grass.

How you could have possibly let yourself get close to that grass.

Where the beast will always be.

Feeling The Feelings

01 Friday Nov 2019

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alcoholic father, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, divorce, living in an alcoholic marriage, wife of alcoholic

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 Stuff No One Tells You (About Being Married To An Alcoholic)

28 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

alcoholic husband, living with an alcoholic husband, married to an alcoholic

It’s Monday morning.

The Monday morning when I planned to start taking this blog – and my life – in a new direction.

The direction I have pined for for a very long time now.

But then this morning played out in such a stark, sad irony that I feel compelled to write about it.

My (to-be-ex) husband leaves very early for work. 5 am. I am not normally up when he leaves but this morning I had to finish up some things one of my kids needed for school. (Yes, they may have told me around 10 o’clock Sunday night, ha.) As he was getting his coat and things to leave for work, I stood not ten feet from him. He put on his coat, picked up his bag and…

Walked out the door.

Not so much as a “why are you up” or “have a good day” or even the most basic “good bye.” Literally nothing. No matter how many times he does this (and he’s done it before to be sure) I still can’t get my head around this kind of behavior. I mean, you have to TRY to not say good-bye to someone who is standing just feet away, right? I contemplated for a moment calling him on his behavior but then I realized, why? Obviously this is the way he WANTS to go through life so what impact will any words from me have on him?

Shortly after my (to-be-ex) husband’s behavior, I left for Starbucks. (I don’t think it takes much to see how or why it is I came to carve out my morning Starbuck’s routine and family.) There was one of the people I see regularly but hadn’t seen in awhile there. We said our pleasantries, how have you been, what are the kids up to, etc. and then as I got my coffee and went to sit down…

“It’s good to see you.”

I felt like the Gringe, in that my heart “grew three sizes.”

Has he really beaten me down so far that a simple (though sincere I’m sure) salutation from a virtual stranger can warm me?

This is the stuff no one tells you about living with an alcoholic.

People think they know.

People think it’s just the drinking. Just the drunk week-ends, trashed holidays and/or ruined family events.

But being married to an alcoholic is so much bigger than that…

Because it affects even the smallest things in your life.

Who Really Threw Away The 40 Years?

19 Saturday Oct 2019

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Tags

alcoholic husband, alcoholic relapse, married to an alcoholic, wife of an alcoholic

There is a regular group of us who gather at Starbucks.

We weren’t friends first who decided to meet at Starbucks.

We were five or six individuals who found ourselves regularly in the same place.

Friendships like this are kind of odd because we are as sincere and honest with one another as with any friend and yet, who we are outside our morning get-togethers is relatively unknown. Oh, we know about each other’s kids or grandkids, pets or new car, each other’s political views and yet, at the same time, we know very little about each other. Our personal lives – the nitty gritty stuff – doesn’t really enter into our morning gatherings.

Except when it has to.

When something so large, so all-encompassing occurs in one of our lives that it can’t help but sneak in.

Amongst the group is a man, in his late 60’s. “Jim.”

By all accounts, Jim is a devoted father, husband and recently new grandpa.

He and his wife are financially comfortable and have good relationships with their children. They are active in the community. All and all, they seem to have carved out a nice life for themselves and their family.

Jim is also a recovered alcoholic who suffers from depression. (But then what alcoholic doesn’t have a comorbidity of depression?)

He mentioned this once to me, a rare moment when it was just him and I having coffee, though I’m sure everyone else knows as well.

That was a long time ago, he told me.

He got the appropriate help, pursued the necessary sobriety.

He seemed neither asahmed nor “proud” (in that annoying way some recoverying alcoholics can be) of his past. In fact, it seemed like he had exatly the “right” attitude about his drinking and recovery. He owned it without wearing it.

A success story in the alcoholic recovery areana.

Recently he told us that his wife of 40 years had left him!

I literally did not think I heard him correctly.

I told him somethig along the lines of,

“I thought you said your wife moved out.”

He said,

“I did. She did.”

I couldn’t believe it.

He said that was the reaction of all his friends.

He didn’t go into details but he did say that they were in counseling and he “just needed” to “keep the drinking under control.”

I know alcoholic double-speak when I hear it.

He started drinking again.

This man is so gentle, so kind, so nice that it’s hard to reconcile the limited snapshot I have of him with what I know the big picture of alcoholism is.

But I can do it.

I understand.

I dobut those who interact with my husband outside of our home would ever guess who he is behind closed doors.

I told Jim I noticed he still wears his wedding ring.

He said he is hopeful and optimistic he and his wife will get through this. He said,

“I don’t think she is going to throw away 40 years.”

Wow.

I smiled politely but inside I raged.

There was SO MUCH I wanted to say.

It’s the rare – if any! – alcoholic who REALLY! GETS! What it’s like to be married to them!

I wanted to say to him,

“You know, when you’re an alcoholic who got sober but then falls off the wagon, it’s not ‘starting over’ in your wife’s eyes.”

I wanted to say,

“All that pain of the years ago, it wasn’t erased by your sobriety. It may have been tempered but it wasn’t erased. She may have chosen to not feel it but it’s still there.”

I wanted to say,

“This is not a new chapter to her. This is another chapter of the same, old tired book that she thought she was done with.”

I wanted to say,

“She’s not throwing away 40 years. You did.”

“One drink at a time.”

The Embarrassment of Procrastination

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

alcholic husband, alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, alcoholism

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?

 

 

I Thought The Resentment Would Go Away

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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Tags

alcoholic husband, divorce, wife of alcoholic

Now that I am truly committed to leaving my marriage, I thought the resentment I have toward my (to-be-x) husband would go away. Disappear. Leave me alone. I thought it would do so just sort of “naturally.” Automatically.

I thought very, very wrong.

Yesterday my kids were fighting.

A HUGE trigger for me.

One (ONE!) of the problems in an alcoholic family is that normal, to-be-expected, conflicts or incidents take on a beyond-normal signifigance. Kids fight. Especially teenagers. But because our household is so fraught with tension and unrest, my children fighting is a dangerous trigger for me.

And yesterday that trigger was pulled.

I started yelling and it was like I couldn’t stop. The laundry. The dirty dishes everywhere. The coats on the floor. The trash left on the counter. All of the “usuals” and then some I didn’t even know was brewing within me came spewing out. In my head, I kept telling myself, “Stop. Just stop.” But I didn’t.

Couldn’t?

I won’t say I couldn’t.

I will it was more like a release I wasn’t interested in arresting.

I’m not proud or even “ok” with my outburst.

I am deeply saddened.

I thought that was all behind me.

But I see so clearly now that resentment doesn’t simply go away – even if the cause of the resentment is removed. It is going to take work on my part.

There is no way (or need) to make a complete list of all the ways the alcoholic husband creates resentment in his wife. The loss is so extensive. Everything a woman thought her life was going to be is destroyed by an alcoholic husband.

That depth of resentment does not just “disappear.”

Trying Not To Hate Him

14 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, divorce

As I become more and more invested in my journey out, I feel myself becoming even more critical of my (to-be-ex)husband’s behavior – both past and present. I don’t want to be critical of him. I don’t want to evaluate his behavior, think of how he has and does treat me. The whole point of leaving is to purge all that from my life and soul.

So why now?

Now that I am resolved and determined, why do I feel a new anger and resentment toward him.

I don’t know really but I can’t let myself hate him.

I can’t let myself spiral down into those thoughts.

If you read anything (and I read “everything”) about the metaphysical, you’ll know that the energy you put out into the Universe is the energy you get back. We have to be careful of our thoughts. We have to keep useless, negative emotions in check.

I know that.

I want to put all the resentment behind me.

Not for him, obviously.

For me.

So I have to try hard…

Not to hate him.

For his selfishness.

His verbal abuse.

His cruel coldness.

It’s the only way out.

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