Hello Fellow Members,
I just joined this group. I'm just needing some support. It's been a long rocky road for me as I'm sure it has been for all of us who belong to this group. This is my second time being married to an alcoholic ~ I lost my 1st husband of 23 years to a single vehicle accident,his blood alcohol level was very high at the time of his death. After living through 23 very hard years with an alcoholic husband I vowed that I would never get in that kind of situation ever again. I loved my first husband very much...just not his constant drinking.
Being only 42 at the time of my 1st husband death I began dating a wonderful caring man whom had actually known and worked with my 1st husband for many years. This man knew my pain and sympathized with me for what I had gone through because he had witnessed many episodes with his own eyes...The abuse towards me when drinking heavily and so much more. When he proposed to me however I was still hesitant because I knew this man did drink an occasional drink now and then ~However~ He assured me that is all it would ever be...just a few drinks on occasion and never any more...So we got married and things went well for the first few years ~ But life always comes with problems...deaths in the family,sometimes financial difficulties,teen children going through problems..You know the usual game of life...Anyway through each of these obstacles of life he began drinking more and more and I figured he was using drinking as a crutch...A way for him to cope with his stress and problems and I knew this was not a good sign and I talked to him about it...So he tried not to drink so much around me but I soon discovered ALL he was really doing was attempting to hide his drinking from me. He would come home smelling of alcohol and just say he had a long day at work and that he didn't want his dinner to just put it up for the next day and he would go to bed. Soon after that he no longer hid it anymore...he pretty much told me, I work hard, I earn the money and pay the bills and I'll drink if I want to, kinda like I earned this drink attitude. Over time it just got more and more and if I said anything to him about it he would say hurtful things to me like..I and my daughters and our problems drove him to drink the way he does and added to that, Now I know why your 1st husband drank so much because he had to deal with you and your daughters problems on a daily basis..Gee no wonder he drank so much. So all of these everyday problems that are a normal part of life were now all my fault...I was the one to blame!! Me and my family and pets were the ones he blamed for his drinking ~ I believe this is probably typical behavior for an alcoholic...They want to blame someone else for their problems..And say the reason I am this way is because of this or because of that in his case he blamed me. I want to assure everyone here that reads this that I AM NOT nor are my daughters or my pets the CAUSE of his drinking.
He now drinks a half gallon of Canadian Mist Liquor everyday maybe more than that because he comes home from work everyday already drinking. I dare not say anything to him about his drinking because when I do he tells me how worthless I am and gets very angry and irate..I'm always walking on egg shells when he is around being very careful and cautious not to set him off and believe me sometimes even the smallest thing will send him into a verbally abusive rage. It's very hard to live like this but I don't have anywhere to go and right now, I'm disabled with severe degenerative disk disease so I'm not working...So you can imagine how it makes me feel when he tells me I'm worthless...The saddest part is that most of the time he seems to not remember saying mean and degrading things to me at all...He actually calls me from work each and every day to see how I'm doing and always acts like nothing happened the night before and Always tells me he Loves me. I love him too but this is no longer the person I married.
That is my story :(