Tag Archives: you and your alcoholic husband

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.

How Much We Lose

02 Monday Jan 2017

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A friend of mine is a bereavement doula for pregnancy and infant loss.  She and I talk often about how callous and insensitive the world-at-large seems to be when it comes to a baby lost during pregnancy.  People seem to think because a woman’s baby was not born – and especially if and when the loss was very early in the pregnancy – that the grief is somehow not real.

“It’a not just the immediate loss of the pregnancy,” she told me once.  “It’s the entire future and life with who that baby would have been.  It’s birthdays lost.  Holidays lost.  The baby growing up and having his or her own babies that is lost.”

I think something similar can be said about the alcoholic marriage.  And perhaps why it’s so hard for women to actually leave their alcoholic husbands.

Yes, we live with the daily discord and chaos.

Yes, we live with the verbal abuse, the emotional withdraw and the clanking of empties.

Yes, we live with the empty sex or the no-sex and that glazed over look in their eyes that tells us, “we’re in for a bad one.”

And often the day to day life with an alcoholic husband is so draining, so taxing, that we don’t really notice or think about the other losses.  The deeper losses.

My husband and I don’t dream about our retirement.  We don’t fantasize and plan what we will do when the kids are grown. There is no talk of a cabin in the woods or a cottage at the beach.  No excitment at the thought of grandchildren to spoil.

And we’re not creating a history.  Not one that anyone would want to re-live anyway. We won’t one day look back fondly at the trials and tribulations of raising a family, “surviving” marriage.  We won’t laugh about the good times and shake our head at the hard times.  We won’t look at each other with hard-earned admiration and seasoned love and say, “we made it!”

When you marry an alcohoic, you lose everything you hoped and dreamed and planned life would be.

You lose memories that never get to be.

 

If Someone Won’t Swim…

26 Monday Dec 2016

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is it your fault if they drown?

I tried talking to my husband today about our marriage.

He said, to paraphrase, he’s tired of walking on egg shells around me; I am always angry and mad; nothing he does makes me happy; I am the unhappiest person he has ever met and…

Wait for it…

He doesn’t know how much more of our marriage he can take.

I looked around, half expecting to see Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter popping out of the closet.

It’s insane.

It’s crazy.

It’s mindboggling.

And dangerous.

Do you know I have – and did – actually stop and think,

“Could his perception be the accurate one?”

Look, life is all about perception.

For even the healthiest of adults and relationships.

But some perceptions just have to be more accurate than others, don’t they?

In the alcoholic marriage, who is the problem?

Really?

Well, it can become that you both are.

I am angry.

I am unhappy though only with and around him.

He does piss me off with just about everything he does.

(And by “everything” he does, I mean the NOTHING that he does.)

But this is how I see it, the alcoholic spouse “starts” it.

How do you not become angry and moody and unhappy when you are called a fucking bitch, told to shut the fuck up and emotionally ignored and by passed by the one person who is suppose to be with you through it all?

The alcoholic starts it.

But it’s up to you and me to end it.

That is, we have to save ourselves, even if it means leaving our husbands behind to drown.

It’s not an easy choice.

Not in the least.

But you can’t make someone swim.

And you can’t make someone save their marriage or themselves.