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~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Tag Archives: alcoholic marriage

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

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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Tags

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.

SOMETIMES I FORGET…

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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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.

BUT…

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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Tags

alcohlic husband, alcoholic marriage, alcoholism, wife of alcoholic

I hope you’ve had a chance to hop over to my new website – WrenRWaters.com. I’m excited for this new venture and pretty proud that I managed to build a website because despite how “easy” the Internet world proclaims it to be, maneuvering your way through the website-building process is not so “easy” for those of us who grew up with four channels on television and car windows you had to actually roll up and down yourself.

But I did it.

I did and for that I am proud.

And the reason I did it is because I am at that place (finally? Finally.) where I realize (finally? Finally.) that “it” as in getting my life back, getting me back, living the life I want to live, being the person I want to be has nothing – N-O-T-H-I-N-G – to do with my alcoholic husband, my alcoholic marriage, the soul-sucking effects of his behavior, my grief over what was suppose to be and on and on and on. The fact is, we all have or come from “something.” A loss, a tragedy, a disadvantage, a challenge. It could be an alcoholic husband. But it could also be losing a husband to cancer or a freak car accident. It could be losing a child. Or it could be never having had the chance to have children. It could be chronic illness and/or pain. It could be something major with our parents or other family members. It could be an emotionally and/or physically abusive past or childhood. It could anything. No one gets to ride this ride called Life for free. But whatever path we have been trekking, eventually we converge at the same point on the trail where there is a sign that says “this way” and an arrow pointing to one singular path. Eventually, it is of no matter our different pasts because the way to our new futures is the same.

That’s what my new website is about.

Focusing on what I’ve learned – and how well I am implementing it – about how to move myself past the alcoholic husband path and onto the universal take-my-life back path.

But…

But I don’t want to totally ignore whence I came.

I don’t want to totally forget or abandon those of us, women in this suck-butt club, who haven’t yet found their way to the arrow. It’s been a long time coming, this awakening of mine but not so long that I forget what it’s like to feel completely mentally and emotionally debilitated by the behavior of an alcoholic husband. It’s been a long time but not so long that I have forgotten what it is to sit in my car in the driveway and cry or to hide in the basement and scream or to feel like I don’t even know how I can possibly survive the toxicity and chaos One. More. Day.

I don’t know if there’s a way to move faster down the alcoholic-husband-trail to the your-life-this-way trail head. We can only hear what we can hear when we can hear it. We can only do what we can do when we can do it. But perhaps there is a way for me to help you walk a little faster or jog for a bit or even full out run on occasion as you do move forward.

You are my peeps. You are my tribe. You are the reason I have found my way to the arrow. So I can’t just abandon you on the alcoholic-husband path.

But…

Eventually you have to leave that path.

So you can follow the real path.

The Your-Life path.

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?

 

 

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.

There Is No Bottom

12 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

alcholic husband, alcohoilc holidays, alcoholic, alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage

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.

It’s One Of Those Nights (Mornings)

16 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage

It’s 3 am.

I have a glass of white, a bottle of diet coke and an ice cream sandwich.

I have my brand new “Passion Planner,” which if you don’t know what it is, you’re probably not the planner/notebook/calendar junkie I am. I could recite all sorts of acolydes and praise for the Passion Planner – and I’m sure all justified – but the truth is it’s just one more (planner) desperate attempt by a desperate woman to some how gain control of her life. Her Self.

I’ve cried this early morning hour for the loved ones I’ve lost and miss.

And for the life I lost and miss.

We have a wedding to go to in the normal-morning hours and when I tried on the outfit I plan to wear, all I could think was,

I’m as big as a house.

I’ve “let myself go.”

I have.

I’m one of those women.

I blame his drinking for that too.

I blame this whole hot-mess-of-a-life I am living on his drinking.

I do.

And I don’t think I am wrong.

But I do know regardless of who or what’s to blame, I am responsible.

Responsible for fixing in my life what his drinking has destroyed.

I just wish I had a better idea of how to do that exactly.

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

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, Gary Vee, married to an alcoholic, motivation

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.

This Blog Is No Longer About His Drinking

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, Gary Vee, married to an alcoholic, motivational

When your husband is an alcoholic, it will make you feel miserable, hopeless, overwhelmed, irritable, depressed, angry, hostile, lonely.

Until you decide it doesn’t.

This is not to say you shouldn’t feel those things.

In fact, I think you have to.

You have to go through the storm.

But keep going.

Every morning for the past two, three, four, five years – I lost track – I would wake up hopeful and optimisitc.

The day before me was going to be The Day I changed.

I wouldn’t suffocate my feelings with food.

I wouldn’t yell at my kids.

I wouldn’t hate my life.

And every night when I went to bed, I felt I had failed.

I ate too much.

I yelled a lot.

I spent the day cursing my life and myself.

But I never gave up.

I didn’t even realize it but I never gave up.

I’d wake up the next morning with the same hope and optimism.

And yes, I’d go to bed with the same sense of defeat and failure.

But in between, I was reading and writing, journaling and “googling.”

I was finding other people – writers, speakers, sages – and I was listeing to their words. Reading their teachings.

Then yesterday I came upon this fella “Gary Vee” and the things he said and the way he said them just clicked.

It didn’t have to be him.

(He’d probably agree.)

But now I see, it was going to be someone because I never quit.

Even when I felt like I was quitting, I actually never quit.

I’m kind a proud of myself for that.

I think you have to feel the anger and hostility, the regret and despair but you feel them so you can move beyond them.

One day, in the words of Gary Vee, you have to say “fuck him!”

My life is no longer about him, his drinking or even the fall out of his drinking. That is all his to own.

My life – and this blog – is now about Me.

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