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QuietRagingWaters

~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Tag Archives: wife of alcoholic

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.

SOMETIMES I FORGET…

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

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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

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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.

Tis The Season

29 Friday Nov 2019

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alcohlic husband, alcoholic holiday, married to alcoholic, Thanksgiving with an alcoholic, wife of alcoholic

Happy Thanksgiving.

How was your turkey day?

Did you stay home?

Travel?

Have family in or just your immediate family?

Did you do the cooking?

The cleaning up? (Yes. to probably both I will guess.)

What was on your Thanksgiving menu?

Just the tradtional like turkey, sweet potatoes (marshmallowed or not-marshmallowed?), cranberry sauce, stuffing, green been casserole?

Or is your family a little more daring, adventurous with the meal? Maybe ham? Tacos? Forgo the sweet potatoes all together? (Hark!)

What about that side dish we seem to all share though no one “prepared” it?

The alcoholic outrage/outburst/tirade.

I don’t know why the holidays are ripe for the worse of an alcoholic’s behavior to erupt but they are. (I’m sure if I googled it, I’d find some definitive reason why the alcoholic’s abominable behavior is intensified during the holidays.) I guess I’m past caring about the why anyway. I just know it’s happening. It starts with Thanksgiving (or maybe even Halloween depending on the year) and goes right through to the new year. Like over-eating, over-spending and new year’s resolutions – it’s pretty much the same every year.

Yesterday my to-be-ex didn’t disappoint though he came up with a new line, a very telling line, a line where I thought he had no more mean, harsh, ugly, vile lines to offer. I told him to stop yelling and he said, (drum roll please),

I’m only yelling at you.”

Yeah, I know.

I said,

“I count. I! Count!”

In case no one has said it to you, really said it to you,

Happy Thanksgiving – as in “thank you.”

Happy Thanksgiving – as in “I love you.”

Happy Thanksgiving – “you are amazing.”

Happy Thanksgiving – thank you for reading and supporting me in this little blog-venture of mine.

Happy Thanksgiving – I love you in that I mean I don’t know you but I send love to you as a fellow human being and survivor of another person’s compulsive drinking.

And Happy Thanksgiving – you are amazing. We didn’t choose the best travel partners for this ultimate travel adventure called Life and yet, we all are keeping our heads up and looking forward.

Enjoy your holiday week-end.

And if you’re shopping, buy yourself a little something.

It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. Maybe just a candle or an inexpensive little piece of jewelry but something to remind you that you count.

You do indeed…

Count!

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.

I Thought The Resentment Would Go Away

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

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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.”

It’s Not Too Late

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, married to alcoholic, wife of alcoholic

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!

It’s! Time!

28 Monday May 2018

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alcoholic father, alcoholic marriage, Gary Vee, inspirational, motivation monday, wife of alcoholic

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.

I Used To Hate Him For…

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, married to an alcoholic, surviving the alcoholic marriage, wife of alcoholic

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.

Did I Forget To Mention This?

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

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alcoholic husband, divorce, save your marriage, tips for saving your marriage, wife of alcoholic

I have a new book out.

It’s probably not what you would expect me to write.

I didn’t expect to write it myself.

A book for “them?”

It just kind of happened.

I was thinking about what I wanted, needed – longed for – from my husband.

And then wondered if there were any men who were interested in hearing what their wives want, need, long for from them.

It’s not a fluffy, feel good book.

I hope the guys get that.

But I hope they also get that for most wives of alcoholics, we hold onto the love and the hope for a long, long time. Maybe too long in all honesty. That can be bad news for us..

But good news for the men who want to hear it.

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