Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
Has anyone felt a major shift in the view they had on their relationship with their partner post finding their feet and entering the sober life???
My partner and I have been together a very long time. We have a house, a dog and for a long time I had hoped a ring would be next, but recently I feel different.
Alcohol always put me in the position of feeling guilty, continually. Recently my mother came to stay to help me get back on my feet. She was overwhelmed at the lack of interaction, support and overall interest my partner had in my life. She witnessed the mood swings, slamming doors and mumbled responses on his behalf and was astounded that even though I was in a very vulnerable stage, his behaviour remained distant and aggressive.
Tonight, without warning, it was like a storm came through the house. I immediately started scanning my brain for what I had done, or said or not done or forgotten?!
Then, there it was. The little voice that tempted me.-‘Just keep out of his way, get a bottle of wine and watch a movie in bed…disconnect, hide from it, chill out’. The pattern of behaviour that snuck in somewhere between the loving, supportive, idyllic relationship and the fractured, co-existence I have now.
He saw me slipping for a long time…years. He watched things escalate, bit by bit. Still, he said nothing. Blame is not a word I like, however, contributing factor seems appropriate.
The clearer my mind is, the more apparent it becomes that any respect I once had is gone. Kindness is a foreign entity; passion, understanding and love have evaporated.
My soul needs more than this.
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
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I was recently separated from my wife of 33 years and it's complicated. Anyway I rented a room about 15 minutes away and I see my kids about once a week. I see the people who own the house I live in once in a while but other than that I stay in my room where I do my cooking, wash dishes in the shower, read, color, and sleep. I get out at least once a day. I grocery shop and I attend 2 meetings...
That tends to happen to a good few relationships when one person gets sober. It probably happens for a variety of reasons, and it is not necessarily one person’s fault. I am going to suggest below a means of dealing with such situations and if you can grasp the idea, it can make a life-changing difference. Whether or not you follow this course of action is of course entirely up to yourself and no business of mine, but what I can tell you is that it really works.
Drinking tends to paper over undesirable aspects of a relationship and with sobriety, once hidden faults suddenly come to the surface. Your partner may also feel somehow threatened by the new you and he may feel insecure or frightened that you are going to end the relationship. Therefore, efforts at renewed communications are important, but that is not what I am going to deal with here.
You mentioned the ‘Blame’ word and that is where I would urge caution. Attaching blame to another person, even when you think that it is justified, often leads to resentment and it looks like you now feel resentment towards your partner. The AA Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) suggests that for the alcoholic, resentment is the number one offender – it kills more alcoholics than anything else. You have seen first-hand how resentment is followed by that little voice that was urging you to drink.
The problem is that we cannot change other people into what we would like them to be so does that mean being angry with one person or other forever more? The Big Book suggests a way of dealing with resentment and I shall try to describe it below, using your recent experience as an example.
It is easy to see who caused you to feel hurt and resentful – your partner. You have also described the behaviour on his part that has caused the problem. Each human being has this thing called ‘Self’ and it is made up of three instincts, namely The Social Instinct, The Security Instinct, and The Sex Instinct. For you to feel resentment because of the actions of your partner, you had to be hurt under one or more of those instincts. For example, you were expecting the ring and it hasn’t come, so that will affect your security instinct. The lack of interaction could affect the social and possibly the sex instinct and so on.
So far, it is easy to see that the other person, your partner in this case, is to blame for the way that you feel. In an ideal world, the other person would change his ways and it would be a case of ‘happy ever after’. However, it is not an ideal world and we cannot control other people or mould them into what we would like them to be.
In order for you to solve the problem, you need to own it and you cannot own it for as long as it is someone else’s fault. Therefore, it is suggested that the part played by the other person should be disregarded entirely, so the question of who is to blame is now irrelevant. Look instead at how YOU have REACTED to what the other person did. Were you in any way selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened, inconsiderate etc.? Those terms are only a guide to get you thinking in a different way but you could apply your own words.
The Big Book goes on to state: “We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they like ourselves were sick too.”
When you see a sick patient in the hospital, I am sure that you would treat them with kindness and compassion. You can now apply the same thinking to those people who are spiritually sick.
This is part of Step 4 in the Big Book and prior to that chapter, it suggests that we should put our trust and faith in some sort of higher power, “a God of your understanding”. It now suggests a prayer for dealing with resentment:
“We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.”
Therefore, when you encounter the type of behaviour that is being displayed by your partner, you now have a new way of handling it. Changing to this way of thinking takes practice and people tend to get it wrong a lot of times at the beginning, but with practice, it eventually becomes second nature.
It may be that the relationship with your partner has run its course and that you will eventually separate if that is what you both decide. However, regardless of how it goes, you can apply the new thinking to all sorts of life situations.
P.S. You can read about Step 4 in the Big Book, pages 64 – 71.
There came a point where I actually understood what she was going through because I had flashbacks of my mother's drinking. It is very very difficult to watch a loved one commit a slow suicide with the bottle! People react to in different ways, some with anger, some with sarcasm, some with empathy and some with hate.
I would not be here today if my wife hadn't called the police one day for reasons I won't mention. I wasn't taken to jail, I was taken to the hospital detox. It was a very bad day for me but yet....a very good day. It was the beginning of the rest of my life! After detox, I went directly into an IOP and following the IOP had more counseling. Throughout all the treatment I had, AA meetings were a requirement. All the pieces of the puzzle of my life came together at the right times and in the right places to help restore me to the person I use to be but in a better way.
After I finished treatment, I went back to a normal sober life. One of the things I learned while in treatment is how our loved ones suffer as a result of our drinking and that is seen in a variety of different ways. My wife's soul was damaged and as a result, she divorced me when I had 4 years of sobriety. It was when I learned to let go of the anger and the resentment that I was able to find Peace.
Now, 5 years after the divorce, my ex and I remain good friends and are able to emotionally support one another in all that life throws at us. I am happier now then I have ever been.
God Bless
It's okay to change the way you feel about someone or realize that they aren't right for you. We all evolve and grow and find things out about ourselves as we go and it's better to go with the flow than to fight it. If you're unhappy and you don't think there is a way to fix things, might be better in the long run to move on.