I am not sure why I am surprised. Maybe I’m not surprised. Maybe I’m just angry? Embarrassed? Fed up? He didn’t go to the event tonight. I just got back a few minutes ago. I called him on my way to work this morning and he told me over and over he’d be going. I asked him to please let me know now if he didn’t think he could make it so I could try to find someone else to go. He said he’d go. Like a fucking idiot, I believed him.
I tried sending him text messages during my break but he didn’t answer. When I got off of work, I tried calling him several times before he finally picked up. He sounded terrible. I asked him if he was getting ready to go and he said “Not yet, but I will be. What time will y0u get here?” I told him, but I wasn’t convinced that he would actually go. There’s a different sound in his voice when he’s coming off of a binge, and I wasn’t hearing it today. Within about 2 – 4 minutes of conversation, he told me “I’m not going. It’s not a good idea.” I just hung up. The asshole didn’t even bother trying to call me back until I was already at the event. I didn’t answer. I told my family another lame ass excuse as to why he wasn’t there, and I felt like a dick for doing it. I think of the four or 5 years I’ve been going to this same event, he’s stood me up all but twice.
On my way back, I noticed he called while I was getting ready to leave. I am not calling him back. I am so mad I feel like hurting him. I feel ashamed, idiotic, desperate, sad, mad, trapped and confused. I don’t know where he is getting his money from. I feel absolutely hopeless that I’m ever going to have any semblance of a real relationship, marriage; life. What am I doing with this loser? I wasn’t supposed to end up like this. I never imagined my life like this. The people I saw this evening asked about him, and I had to lie and pretend I’m happy and that he’s a good husband. I had to lie to their faces as to his whereabouts. I am just as big of a loser as he is.
So now what? What I am I supposed to do now? He is going to continue to drink and miss school and ignore his responsibilities to his clients. In the meantime, I’m sleeping on a couch and hiding it from everyone in my life except for two people. I am living out of a garbage bag full of clothes. I miss my cats so much. That worthless piece of shit is sitting in my home, smoking and fucking the whole place up with his pile of bottles and cans and ashes. I hate him.
I hate him so much.
Wifeofalchie,
I have been following your blog for a couple of weeks now and I wanted to reach out to you because I have been where you are and I know it sucks. I know I would get my hopes up, have them dashed, and cry for him and ME, over & over again. I wish I could tell you what you need to do, but you and I both know I can’t.
All I can offer is this: I wish so much for you to take care of yourself. In this big, bad old world, YOU are what you have to hold on to, and you are the ONLY one you can depend on who can give you what you deserve, whether he is or isn’t sober.
I’ll be thinking good thoughts for you. Just know I am thinking of you, and I feel some of your pain like no one but another wife of an alcoholic can. Take a couple of deep, deep breaths and take care of yourself, ok?
Hi Terbear,
Thank you for your comments. I’m all alone right now and I did need a reminder. I know all of this stuff! I just forget sometimes.
When I used to go to the family/codependent meetings at the hospital, I would see new families of alcoholics come in and their lives were turned upside down at that point. I was in a good place then mentally. I would tell them the very same thing you told me but they would often have a hard time understanding.
I am just going to try to get through each and every day and try to remember the simplest thing is to just take care of me.
From reading your blog, I figured you knew this, but I know when I am in the middle of the turmoil, sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees, and I thought maybe you too, could benefit from a reminder.
I truly hope today finds you in a better place. I’ll keep you in my thoughts.
I was in a similar situation. I didn’t cover up for him after I realized that covering up for him was enabling him to drink more and not accept his responsibilities or his commitments to me and others .
In my case, all he wanted was the bar. He drank at home but the bar and the low growing fruit that occupied the stools were his true loves.
I finally made good my threat to leave if I saw him drunk one more time. I left New Year’s after seeing both the man that I “loved,” and his loser son both drunk with shit eating grins on their faces at the bar. This after a day of them not talking to me and a pervasive black mood through the house and me walking on egg shells.
Trust me! I was hard to leave. Since I’ve left there have been pleas and crying, anger, remorse and pledges to seek help from him. I did this twice before. There are no third chances.
Once out of it and it’s been basically only six weeks, I cannot tell you what a relief it is not to be with him, not to hear his drunken snoring, the clank of the ice in his glass, the glimmer in his eye when a bar maid brings another drink, the bad moods and me counting drinks.
Believe it or not, I’m here at 60 with my mother and planning on renting a small apartment and getting my life back on track without a man that was trying to take me down for three years.
A healthy relationship or no relationship at all.
IT IS FABULOUS six weeks out.
He’s a loser and has lost everything in his life including his job. ALL his relationships have failed. His three sons are losers too since the apples did not fall far from the tree.
I urge you to leave, reduce communication to the barest level, don’t let him wheedle you with false promises, GET OUT! You will love it. I pomise.
Linda, thank you so much for sharing your story. When you said “not to hear his drunken snoring” I got shivers. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
I think it is so awesome that you finally left. I want to get there. I want to have that strength but something is making me feel scared to move on or leave him completely. I see the good person that is trapped way down inside and I just keep waiting. People would tell me, “You’ll leave when you’ve had enough” but I think I’ve HAD enough, and I continue to stay. It’s a terrible cycle and an awful feeling.
I think you have a lot to be proud of having left at 60. I have heard women who are younger say that they’re too old to leave and I was always afraid I’d end up there. 10 or 20 or 40 years into a marriage that I was never happy in. You have so much to look forward to now! I hope you’re able to pick up and move on and never look back. Best of luck to you in getting your own place. What an awesome feeling that must be.
I am going to keep your comments in my thoughts as I try to get out of this mess I’m in one way or another. I’ll definitely try to keep you posted.
My husband is an alcoholic. He had his drivers Licence saspended and since then his drinking got worse. I hardly ever see him. We do not sleep in the same room any more, it’s been at least three years. I am not working, he works but occationally he misses work. He doesn’t tell me anything and I think he has cheated on me. The man I married is gone. His wife is the booze. I am now under a new mind set. Its about me, not him. I am working on myself. I have come to relize that I cannot wait until he figures out that he has a problem. We have our home up for sale and When it gets sold, It will be a good chance to seperate from him. I do have one child with him in which he never pays any attention to her. I feel so hurt, sad, depressed and angry at times. I went to an Al-Anon meeting and obtained some pamflets. It was a good read. It made me relize that If he does’nt change, I have to. It will be hard leaving him, I do love him but the alcohol has taken over and I do not believe he will ever stop. He has been drinking since I met him 14 years ago. But I was blind and never noticed his drinking habbits. As time went on I had hoped he would stop. I call this “False Hope”. Now 14 years later Its worse. I am lucky he is not physically abusive. He is a closet drinker. Locks himeslf in the room and only comes out to use the washroom. In the morning he still wakes up and goes to work, I cannot figure out how he does it, most people get hang overs and sleep.
My advice to any person living with an alcohoic get as much reading materials as possiable to help yourself. Its a good start to self recovery.
I just tripped up on to this site. Great place. I have been married 35 years. The 1st half we were happy growing up
together having kids and fun together. We were high school sweet hearts. He really started hittting the bottle in the mid 80′ I thought it was just a phase. The drinking didn’t worry me as much then. In 2002 he lost his job and got really depressed, the Dr. laughed at him and asked “What do you have to be depressed about?” It’s been downhill since then. He drinks every evening after work, smashed most every weekend. We have 7 beautiful grand children, and I hate for them to see their Grandpa this way. He doesn’t want help, I’ve thought about some type of intervention, but I am afraid it wouldn’t work. It’s such a pity to see our lives in such a mess. My daughter says it’s my turn to leave, maybe it is. I am so sad. There
is nothing else I can do for him. I’ve tried everything and he is stuck in a very bad place. Thank-you all for this web
site. I guess it’s my turn to leave
I hope things are better for you. I am in a similar situation. I have been married to my husband for 15 years. We have been together a total of 16. I was never an alcoholic but did drink on very rare occasions. I think possibly five times I can say I was truly drunk. I however did have my own issues and they were very much worse than his back then. I have had heath problems from childhood and as a teen my physician loaded me with pain meds when he was unable to diagnose me. For almost seven years and one day I woke up and realized I needed total control of the addiction I had fallen into. I started rehab first with methadone and then one day several years after I had married my husband decided I was finished with that addiction and stopped on my own. Now I have almost successfully quit everything. Well with the exception of my coffee the world is not ready for me without coffee lol. I am trying to be funny because my situation differs in more than one way and it is breaking me. My husband is a half way functioning alcoholic. He goes to work most of the time and works very hard. His checks however large at times never seem to pay much when he is always in a bar or buying beer when a bill is due. Then seven months ago I started to feel very abnormally tired.I called my mother and went to stay with her overnight as she lives close to my physician about two or so hours from my home. I got to the doctor and off to the hospital I went for four long weeks of tests only to be transferred to another hospital for six weeks. The second hospital said I needed a specialist and the only option was Moffitt or Mayo. I chose Moffitt and spent three months there having several tumors removed one the size of a football one was grapefruit sized and thirty one small tumors ranging from a quarter to ping pong ball. I nearly died and was in a coma for a couple of days. During that time in their search for diagnosis they found I have something called Arnold-Chiari Malformation of the brain with adult onset. It is rare and deadly, painful, depressing and there is only a small percentage of the people who have this illness who sucessfully have the operation and are normal after. It is so scary and during my long stay at the hospitals plural my husband showed up two times both were to get money from my family. He has already spent all of the money my grandma left for me when she passed away. Drunk driving charges as well as a few other charges. Finally we moved from Texas to Fl and I thought we would have a fresh start as he left TX on a monitor for alcohol. One of those ankle things but what I was unaware of until he got here was he wrapped the thing and never stopped drinking. He can never travel or to jail he goes. Who knows the ultimate outcome of the issue with his license since it was a dui and now he is in violation there. Now I am very ill and with only one income and his regular drinking and verbal abuse as well as his occasional outburst where he grabs the leg of a chair i’m seated in and flips it while i’m still in it and then there are the kids and grandkids because we purchased a home here with an apartment ajasent to our home so the kids would have an easier time of things. We argue or rather He drinks and I get upset and say anything to get reaction and all I get now are his comments about how you don’t need bars to be in jail. Then learn he is screwing around and I am100% helpless to do anything about any thing with surgery around the corner and that is after having 11 procedures over seven moths and all he can say is that I walked out on him. I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL AND COULDN’T WALK ANYWHERE IF I HAD WANTED. Plus without this next set of surgery I may never walk again as it can paralyze me from the neck down. I have been hurt, upset, angry and in a sexless marriage where al he does is work drink pass out repeat and now i’m scared of what will happen if I do survive.He says if I do not like it I can get out and I have no where to go. He is going to end up losing the house if he doesn’t start paying stuff on time and I do not know what to do! I am sorry I am now just rambling and really maybe just needed to talk to someone who can identify with the day to day BS OF A DRUNK…. Thanks to anyone who is listening. JDLASK