Support group for those affected by someone else's drinking - thread 3

[pointythings]

Link to previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/alcoholsupport/5177307-continuing-support-group-for-those-affected-by-someone-elses-drinking?page=40&reply=147449407

Continuing our series of threads for people who have an alcoholic in their lives. This is a safe space to vent, look for advice and support and maybe find some strength.

And we are now stuck with 1000 posts of a thread with a spelling error in the title - I'll chase up HQ to see if they can help.

Checking in ✨ x

Thank you

Things are calm in our household. A decision seems to have been made this year to move forwards and be a grown up. Issues which contributed to drinking not really dealt with but it’s been over a year since the last episode. So I am cautiously positive that the change can be maintained. Certainly there has been a change in attitude towards life and a move away from the victim position. This is someone who has nearly died from alcohol on more than one occasion but who is a lovely person with a lot of potential. I hope it works out.

I have made a lot of progress in (for want of a better way of putting it) dropping the co-dependency. I am far more distanced from it all.

That sounds like good news on all fronts - the potential for change and the protection of yourself. Great stuff, sadly we don't hear enough of this on these threads.

Feeling so panicky and stressed. I live with my alcoholic sibling. They are giving me the silent treatment atm. He has just woken up in an absolutely disgusting state. I am feeling horrified and overwhelmed. He got up and went straight out to the pub. It’s making me feel so threatened in my own home. (Don’t worry about giving advice, all I want is to write it down somewhere.)

Signing in, and making sure I have the right user name for this amazing corner of Mumsnet

Thank you @pointythings for the new thread and to everyone for their contributions.

@BeardofHagrid vent away, it's what we are here for. Stay safe and take care of yourself.

Checking in so i don’t lose the new thread.

Checking in also. Thanks for all the much needed support and solidarity over the past two days.

Checking in - lifeline thread for a fair few of us I think. DH has been much less drunk this week than usual - lots of DIY, walking the dog twice a day, helping neighbours - even lifting some weights. This is when I'm the most confused - I know he still drinking pretty much 24/7 but is functioning more or less normally. It's bizarre.

The whole experience sucks when you're watching someone destroy their own health and relationships with those around them, knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

If I mention anything to my clearly alcoholic parents they will accuse me of exaggerating and saying that obviously they don't have a problem because they can go a few days without drinking so they can't be addicted.... They don't see / won't acknowledge the way alcohol is ever-present in their lives, the fact they drink to the point of being unable to walk without help / hold a decent conversation because they forget exactly what happened by the next morning. Reminding them would just upset them and DM would probably just stop talking to me. Alot of their socialising involves going to events with the same group of people and drinking alcohol whenever there's an opportunity to do so.

I know they are probably doing it partly to help deal with the trauma of Dsis' death from liver disease (caused by alcohol). They don't believe in mental health problems or talking about your worries because "that's just depressing" apparently 🤨.

It's horrible to watch. And makes us all feel helpless.

@CinderBlockandCustardI remember bringing up her drinking to my DM - she would stop talking to me for days, weeks. Then arrive at my doorstep randomly full of promises of AA etc. etc.
Years after and when she was very ill due to her drinking, we were able to talk about the height of her addiction. She admitted that Me challenging her drinking would make her feel like the roles had reversed, I was the parent telling off the child. When in reality all I wanted to do was save her - it’s a truly awful thing to watch and have no power to make it stop 💔

Joining this thread and the shitty club we all find ourselves in.

I’m a bit concerned that I don’t seem to feel the empathy for my ex DP that a lot of you have for your loved ones.
I used to. But as time has gone on, the things he has put me through at the hands of his drinking have turned that empathy into resentment towards him.
I don’t resent him because he has an addiction. I resent him because of the way he will always try to twist the narrative to make me responsible for the breakdown of our family unit.
I resent him for the fact that even though he knows how deeply unhappy I was with him, he still continuously pleads with me for yet another “one last chance”, then turns nasty when the answer is no.
He’s been drunk all weekend. Again.
I know this because as I was casually scrolling through Snapchat stories, there was one of him posted by someone I vaguely know.
A video of him barely able to stand, at the side of a main road, bottle of vodka in his hand & urinating in full view of all the traffic that was passing. Not even trying to be subtle or conceal himself.
The person who posted it was ridiculing him for the state he was in at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon.
It was sad to see, but also extremely embarrassing. All I could think was what if our DD was older and saw this? What if his older DD has seen it?
I’ve had his phone number and all social media messaging apps blocked for a while.
Yesterday I figured out how to block his email aswell after I started receiving some from him that made absolutely no sense.
Today, I got another email from him, from a different email address.
In which he says “even though I broke his heart, he still wants a relationship with me” - there’s that blame again. Blaming me for our relationship failing, because I refuse to tolerate his drinking any longer.
But fails to aknowledge how many times HE broke MY heart, which is what led to me saying enough is enough and prioritising my own wants and needs above his finally.
Told me I’m “cruel for leaving him over an illness”.. No, he’s cruel for expecting me to stay with someone I was unhappy with, don’t trust, and am no longer in love with.
Asked me if I’m still in love with him.
I responded with one word - No.
And then because he didn’t get the answer he was hoping for, straight in with a threat
“I swear with every breath in my body I will take (DD) from you, f**k you” …
using our DD as a weapon to try and intimidate me into giving him what he wants.
Then he wonders why my love for him doesn’t exist anymore. Convinced it must be because I’m interested in someone else, because the reason I don’t want to be with him could never be anything he’s done.
When he sobers up, he will be full of apologies as usual and claims he didn’t mean anything he said - like that makes a difference to how hurtful and distressing it is for me.
I’ve now blocked that email address too.
But no doubt, he will make another.

@MamaBear81 I don’t feel empathy for dh

i loved him so much but his drinking , his attitude and lies killed my love for him

I have huge resentment and always say this when i go to Al Anon

@Penguinsandspaniels

It’s reassuring to hear there are others who feel the same way I do.
I was starting to think he’s turned me into something that isn’t human anymore, as I just feel nothing for him other than resentment these days.
There was a time not too long ago where he was able to guilt trip me into giving him chance after chance, because when he’s sober it gave me a flash of the person he could be if the drink was out of his life, so I always had that hope.
But not anymore, he took me and the chances I gave him for granted every single time. The bad outweighs the good by far, and I’ve come to the realisation that he is probably never going to change. Because no matter how many times he says he wants to, he will still continue to minimise and justify his drunken episodes. One week he will refer to himself as an alcoholic, the next he’s not.
So I don’t believe anymore that he actually wants to change, since he isn’t fully admitting how bad the problem actually is and tries to defend it.
And to be honest, even if he did manage to get sober, I know I wouldn’t magically fall back in love with him, and I will never ever trust him. I will always be waiting for a relapse and the chaos that would come with it.
Too much damage has been done now. And I have a two yo DD to shield from it aswell as myself.
He’s emotionally abusive to his older DD, he sends her suicide threats etc like he does to me. Even pretends to be someone else reporting to us that he’s dead.
But it doesn’t seem to affect either of us anymore because it happens so often, we’ve just become numb to it. She actually texts me saying “have you heard dad’s dead again”.

I also feel a sense of resentment towards myself sometimes, for allowing it to go on for as long as I did before kicking him out for good. I sit here complaining about what he’s put me through, but I’m the one who allowed it to happen by caving into his guilt trips and manipulation over and over again.

I think we see the good in people. Esp those we love and have kids with

we want to beleive they can stop drinking and give them another chance etc

but how many chances do we give them ?

it’s very different trying to support a
family member to supporting a dh or a dw

when we live with the drinking lies and behaviour every day

people don’t see that who don’t see then every day 24/7

i think I said on the last thread @MamaBear81 that you and I seem very similar

I tried for years. Forgiving and hoping each time there was a relapse it would be the last one

that each event that happened would be the final straw and he hit rock bottom

losing

home
marriage
seeing his dc daily
job
van
health

but nope. Still drinks. Still lies

Checking in, and thanking everyone. Hearing the experiences you share so generously helps me feel so much more sane.

Also checking in. And sending love to @ pleasecomment, who I don't think is here on this thread yet.

@MamaBear81 I found it almost impossible to have empathy for my mother, so please don't feel alone in that. She seemed to me to have lost all humanity. I posted here about how she showed no care or love to anyone. I hate it to say it, but sometimes she seemed more like a malevolent force than a human being. And I was so confused and frustrated by it all. I have found some empathy for her since her death and that makes me feel better. (Unlike a lot of suicides, the aftermath of her death actually gave us lots of answers and context, rather than more questions.)

Thinking about grief right now. I had a quiet week last week, which was lovely. I had chance to think and I realised (and really understood) that I'd been grieving my mother since I was about eight. Really, she died/left 30 years ago. That's when she properly slipped into alcoholism. She wasn't there any more, I didn't have a mum any more. But she was still physically there, and no one talked about it. I knew that on paper but I hadn't truly understood and accepted it until last week. It feels both sad and comforting now. I reckon I feel a bit lighter. Making progress in getting through this.

I just want to thank everyone who posts on this thread ☺️. It has saved my sanity and gave me the strength to leave. I post very rarely but I read every single one (then re-read them all again).
I am two months divorced from my problem drinker and two weeks into moving back to my old house by myself, I have no family left and have no children so it’s just me. It’s been immensely hard to walk away from the only person I had left of course but I could not have done any of it without you and I am so glad I did ☺️. Thank you xx

I applied for divorce few weeks ago. He could have and as on benifuts wouid have been free for him. But he doesn’t want to get D and therefore I have had to pay over £1200 to start the process which is on my credit card

It is one of the reasons I love this bit of Mumsnet, is the questions it throws at me and makes me think.

Empathy…as he is dead I think I can think about this more clearly, and I do have closure and don't have to still respond to the shit...and that is a huge relief - if that hadn't happened I would still be dealing with divorce/court cases etc.

I feel many things about my husband. I loved him, he was a funny charming man, who I know deep down loved me, who gave me confidence and was the person I shared myself with. I miss that person every day, I miss that I don’t have someone who I can share the minutiae of life with. At one time we used to talk about our dreams every morning, he would bring me coffee and let me lie in as he woke up early and sorted the dogs. I thought he was going to be the person who would hold me up when I needed it, and I would in return hold him up, and we would battle on despite it all.We moved 4 months before the shit hit the fan irrevocably, to the most beautiful place, and even in the last weeks I remember saying to him, it will be all right because we are in the right place now.

He was also in the last years a total bastard. On Saturday night I ended up sleeping on the sofa with the dogs as one of them was poorly.It made me remember the nights when I couldn’t get him to go to bed, and he would force me to snuggle up to him on the sofa which just repulsed me as he was drunk, hadn’t showered for days, and would not give me space. I also remember the nights when he woke me through the night to come to him as he couldn’t sleep, or I had lost it with him and needed to just get out of the room he was in. I don’t think I had an uninterrupted night for months before we separated.

The main emotion I feel about him is sadness – that he had everything, and he lost everything, The thing that makes me feel the most sad was that he never saw the dogs again after his arrest. He was useless with them, but he loved every hair on their bodies (and our clothes). I am cross and angry, but I don’t hate, in the end he had nothing that he felt was worth living for, and I don’t wish that on anyone.

I realise I had 2 people in my life, the one who I loved and loved me, who was dying for a long time before his actual death, and I miss that one and love that one still, and he is the one I bring to the surface to the outside world if I have to talk about him. I can be empathetic to him.
The other was the person who drank, who was cruel and unreasonable, unkind and angry and increasingly violent, and who would never seek or accept help despite being in a medically aligned profession. He is not someone I want to remember or have define my life going forward. I can feel he made his choice, and I could not influence it.

He was physically in my life for 12/13 years, and I have to reconcile that time in my mind going forward, and personally I feel better about sadness and love rather than hatred and anger. (which is not to say I don’t stand in the woods and physically shout at the universe about how f**g c*p it all is)

Sorry for th essay, well done if you have got this far x🌼

@MamaBear81 My mood towards ex is erratic as him! I spent the summer feeling nothing but anger and resentment and if I am honest a whole lot of hatred. You all advised me as I was getting abusive text after abusive email on multiple email addresses. I had destroyed his life, I was punishing him for an illness, I would never treat him like this if he had cancer, I was aaaaall the adjectives.

But he reeled me back in with another run at detox and sobriety and now I am sucked back into sadness and empathy. It won’t last. At the moment he is resisting turning on me because his ex wife, loss of child contact and mental health is at the top of his to blame list. It will be my turn soon and that empathy will all be gone.

I feel like I will never be free of him.

You are also so strong @MamaBear81. I don’t have children with ‘addict ex’. My children are with exDH who doesn’t have an addictive gene in his body. There is just no good reason why I cannot draw a line and remove myself permanently. We have a long history together as family friends, but I have zero reason to be in contact. I am so angry and resentful at myself so much of the time for my sheer weakness

You have just said everything I would have said about my late husband, and in such beautiful words. This is exactly how I feel 7 years after his death.