Ok you guys took me to the table regarding the whole AA thing so I have a question for you.

My FWW first blamed me for her A.

Then once we sorted through that she blamed her alcholism for the A.

Whenever we talk about her A she insists it all happened when she was drunk or drinking etc.

What I am having a problem with is I know she is trying to avoid the issues and now has an easy escape. Her alcoholism.

I want to give you one scenario as to what I am talking about. She missed her friends wedding because she was so hung over from the night before she couldn't go. But she was able to sneak down and have some beers with OM and then have SF. Now during her drinking what would happen in my world with her if she was really that hung over she would sleep til about 10am then struggle through the day then maybe have a few glasses of wine to get the edge off then be in bed by about 8-9pm. I have never seen an occasion when this wasn't the case. Including our Honeymoon. No SF for first two days because on day one she got too drunk and was so hung over the second day.

There are a ton of these inconsistencies but this is the easiest to explain.

Now she is in the program and many people talk about the bad things they did while drinking. She seems to be grasping at these things as to why she did the things she did.

So how do you get an alcoholic to see that maybe the alcohol helped them along but using it as an excuse for everything is not acceptable.

Being drunk is not an excuse for sleazy behavior. Tell her that crap won't fly at AA meetings and it sure won't fly with you. She is 10000000% responsible for her EVERY CHOICE. She made the CHOICE, no one else did. Tell her to knock it off.

Hi HL,

Ya had to know I'd jump in on this one!...but do feel free to tell me to pi$$ off.

I can relate to where you're coming from - back when my recovering alcoholic H and I were going through MC after the A much of his behavior was blamed on his ism's.

The MC didn't let it fly, and neither did AA - but he couldn't admit to me that it was no excuse until we were much further along in recovery. At that point he did apologize for trying to blame the A on his 'alcoholic thinking'.

ML is right - AA won't let that fly, and you have every right to call her on it.

You may not see any results from that for a while, but it will come if she keeps working her program.

Those in AA do learn to become accountable HL...it just takes time.

Take care.

You cannot GET anyone to see anything.

I recognize myself in your question...
"Why can't you see things correctly, the way I do."

What you can do is, share your perceptions/feelings/realities.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you imagine that hung-over sex, or drunk sex .... is soul-felt, intimate and wonderfully fulfilling?

Are you giving the message to your wife... that you wish she would have consented to more of that type of sex with ~you~ ?

Do you think that, perhaps, she did these drunken encounters with OM & not you ... because she did not actually have to show up emotionally for drunken/hung over sex with OM?

Pep

All alcoholics do is escape.
They are avoiders.
The drinking is an escape.
The affair was an escape.
The alcoholic existence revolves around emotional absence achieved through various escapes.

What you are asking her to do is to accept responsibility.



alcoholics and their spouses ~in early recovery~ look for blame

in later recovery, both look for areas of personal responsibility

It seems you are also in early recovery ... search for things you are responsible for, and take care of those things.

placing blame positions one spouse above the other and creates an environment of shame for one & a scapegoat for the other

take a look at your part in this dance

what can you do today to forward your own recovery?

Pep

Certainly. Don't allow alcohol to become the excuse for the behavior. Quite simply, it's not. It may have lubricated the wheels by lowering inhibitions, but it certainly didn't cause the behavior. Understand alcohol for the drug that it is. It lowers inhibitions in a person so s/he can perform a behavior without the fear or anxiety they would normally experience. That's the bottom line.

The desire to do the behavior is already there. In many cases, the behavior itself already exists as well. Look at the alcohol factor long enough to understand that it only played the role of reducing or eliminating emotional involvement by lowering inhibitions. That pretty much means that the behavior would have taken place anyway without the alcohol, just into the future (without intervention) and that the underlying reason for wanting to do said behavior still exists.

Do people do dumb stuff when they're drunk? All the time. Is alcohol the reason people do dumb stuff? Nope. It just makes it easier. Hope I've helped some.

Best wishes. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Here is why you can't blame an affair on alcohol. The alcohol is the addiction. So you are saying because of my "ALCOHOL" ADDICTION I HAD AN AFFAIR. Ok, now substitute gambling, sex, drug, shopping, eating, or any other additive word for alcohol. So lets say, "I had an affair because of my eating addiction.", it just doesn't sound right now. You know alcohol might loosen a person up a little, but they knew what they were doing when they started and they had enough sense to back off. The problem is they are battling an addiction, they need to face the addiction, seek help for the problem and call it what it is. Most of us who have had addictions can't quit grasp we have one until something smacks us in the face. But then if do realize it we need to do something about it and that is when we are failing we when we fail to seek help for the problem.

Here is the thing, hurtingless, your W knows she is responsible for her idiotic choices but is hoping she can con you into thinking it wasn't her, it was the booze. Did it work?

Banyak please do not pi$$ off.

Thank you all for posting on this I really appreciate it.

"You cannot GET anyone to see anything."
This is the problem exactly. I don't want her to agree with me. I don't want her to see things my way. I want her to act and see things the way she sees them. For lack of a better term she is quite hypocritical in her day to day life.

As far as the drunken, hung over sex part. Thats the other point I was trying to make. She is re writing history. She was not drunk or hung over. She was staying with my family. On the day she missed her friends wedding becuase she was "hung over" she was not. That was my point. I know this because my Aunt told me she was fine all day long. So she is using it as an excuse that doesn't fly. She refuses to admit the truth which is that she missed her wedding to be with him. Now the reason for this is she wanted to move back east before the A and one of the points she always made was how much her friends and family meant to her. She told me before the trip there was no way in he11 she would miss that wedding. So by saying she was drunk or hung over it is blamed on the alcohol not the true reason. If she missed it for him how important was her friends wedding? This could be a long uncomfortable conversation for her.

I do not imagine the drunk sex as great. I know she wasn't drunk like she says. If my wife had 4 glasses of wine she would pass out the minute she laid down. She had to lay down with my kids everynight to get them to sleep but never once passed out.

I think you get what I am saying. Her drunk behavior does not match her story.

So far nothing has worked in discussing her A. I mean nothing. I can not even call it an A. When discussing the situation I say "when you went back east".

I chose to stop going to MC because both of them told me they can not help us if they do not know the truth. They also told me that they believed what I was saying. They never came out and said my wife was lying. LOL. I also knew as long as she was drinking it wasn't going anywhere anyway.

As far as me taking responsibility I have. I have taken responsibility for things I didn't even do. LOL. I have told her in the past I do not blame you but you are responsible for your actions. Responsibility means you can do something to positivly affect the outcome of a situation that is bad.

When my wife first told me she had an A I had already figured out it was at least an EA. While we were discussing that Alcohol never came up. She told me they had SF once after about a week. The MC had us working through what was wrong with the M before the A. 6 months later she told me it was 3 times. At this point I figured out on my own it happened on the first night. The second MC dealt with the situation entirely different based on the fact it happened on the first night. Which basically eliminated all of her prior excuses. So for 9 months I worked on her EN's which btw were being met or she was responsible for the situation that made it impossible to meet them. Thats when it all became about the alchohol.

My wife refuses to be honest. She refuses to take responsiblity for her actions. She doesn't see that her decesion making process has been flawed for quite sometime even before the A and it continues today.

I really don't want to call it a day but I am no longer going to live by her rules.

She can tell I am upset right now based on all of the triggers and has asked me whats wrong. She knows but won't say anything. If I bring it up and say I am a little down right now because it was three years ago you had the A she will then say "maybe you need to leave me because you are never going to get over this." If I say you just told me 3 weeks ago you finally told the truth about everything and the new details are whats causing the triggers. She will say see I told you it would do more harm then good for you to know what happened. When in all reality I would not be here hitting these new fresh triggers if she would have been honest three years ago.

But then I will here I was in my disease and I didn't know right from wrong. BLah blah blah.

Hurting,

In my opinion, you are right to be worried about this. And everyone else is right that there is little you can do about it.

My H had his affair during the worst of his drinking/drugging years. When he finally got sober, they told him in rehab that the affair was just part of the whole addictive behavior pattern and to not worry so much about it. They also told him to not tell me about the affair (following Bill W's suggestion in the big book.)

I think that prevented him basically from ever really following the program. And failing to follow the program resulted in him being a dry drunk for another lost 15 years. A dry drunk, as you probably know, is a former drinker who has given up booze but not the lying, blame-shifting and other dysfunctional behavior patterns of an alcoholic.

I don't know how long your wife has been in the program, but you can't do a real fourth-step without taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions and faults.

If I were you, I would wait through that point in her program and see whether her actions/thoughts change. Believe me, when my husband did his fourth step for the second time 18 months ago, the difference in him was obvious to everyone.

If your wife has a decent sponsor and a willingness to truly change, she will learn personal responsibility from doing the fourth and subsequent steps.

There's nothing you can do to give her that willingness or insight. You can tell her that you believe that her choices are and always will be her responsibility -- drunk or sober. She will hear that repeated often in AA meetings.
It will be up to her whether she takes it to heart or not.

So, I guess I am counseling patience. It's a commodity I had little of in the beginning. But it would have served me greatly. I hope you can find it in yourself.

Tru

I am sorry but I really have to laugh at my own expense.

My wife has been stalled on step three for quite some time now. Her sponsor is getting a little agitated I can tell. My FWW has had many reasons for not being able to complete it. Supposedly this Friday she is going to go see her sponsor and complete step three.

She has been in the program since 1.1.06. I have been patient but it is now running very very thin.

I will not be in a relationship with someone that refuses to take responsibility for their actions. What this usually means is I become responsible for them. I have enough work fixing what I screw up I don't need to fix hers as well.

Thank you for your insight.

This board is the only thing that has kept me sane.

She is abusing the "disease" concept as a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD. And has probably got away with it in the past. She can call her drunkenness a baloney sandwich, but it still means she is RESPONSIBLE and ACCOUNTABLE for her CHOICES. She made the choice to have an affair. No one made that for her. Ask her if she has ever been told she owes an AMENDS to those she has harmed? AA does not use the "disease" concept to avoid accountability for our crimes and she should not be doing this. I hope she is not one of those who just is constitutionally incapable of being honest with herself.

I hope you are telling her that all her excuses and her bullcrap and just that, excuses and BULLCRAP. Otherwise, she will be emboldened into believing she has you fooled.



Wow, that is fairly good bullcrap and a good way to shut you up. Does it work for her? If you sit there silently, I would say YES, it does work for her.

As far as the amends yes she knows this. Thats why IMHO she always seems to stall out on step 3. This is the thrid go around in AA and so far step 1 and 2 came fast and furious and step 3 just sat there.

Yes she is good at bullcrap, misdirection and contridicting arguments. Someone has on their signature. "Never argue with an idiot they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

I have waited for her to get sober before starting MC again. I cannot reason with this women. She is so darn convincing I really started to question my own sanity.

During our last conversation where she finally admitted the truth I said I couldn't believe you have put me through this for three years now. She said well they have been horible for me too. So she is comparing her situation with mine. She has actually said she has been on pins and needles because she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well the other shoe was me discovering or figuring out more lies. When I said it must be hard trying to hide these things from me hoping I wouldn't find out and I would worry about the other shoe dropping too. She then turned it around on me again.

I don't remember exactly how but It was my fault for not going into the future and forgetting the past without knowing what I was trying to forget. I told her when I looked at her I saw a liar why wouldn't I be angry at that.

Hello again HL,

Here I am not 'pi$$ing off'! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

My H and I are going away for the weekend, so I thought I'd touch base with you, since it will be a few days before I can check in again.

I know you're not an Al-Anon fan, but I came across a reading that made me think of you...

From the Courage to Change book - page 189.

"I thought that in every conflict, in every confrontation, someone was invariably at fault. It was essential to assign blame and I would stew for hours weighing the evidence. I became a chronic scorekeeper. Because I approached every situation with this attitude, I was consumed by guilt and anger. Defensive and anxious, I made sure my own back was always covered.

Al-Anon helps me understand that disputes come up even when everyone is doing their best. Obsessively reviewing everyone's behavior focuses my attention where it doesn't belong and keeps me too busy to have any serenity. Instead, I can consider the part I have played. If I have made mistakes, I am free to make amends.

Today I know that conflict is not necessarily an indication that someone is wrong. Difficulties may just arise. Sometimes people simply disagree.

Todays reminder:

Today I accept that each life has it's share of conflict. It is not my job to document every such incident. Instead of wringing my hands and pointing my finger, I can consider the possibility that everything is happening exactly as it should. Sometimes, blame is just an excuse to keep busy so that I don't have to feel the discomfort of my powerlessness.

The mind grows by what it feeds on."

After I found out about my H's A I was also an 'intent scorekeeper'. I spent months researching details and playing the 'he said - she said' game.

It wasn't until I made a decision to stop obsessing about details and focus on the fact that the A happened and we needed to find a way to overcome it, that a true recovery began for my H and I.

For him, every time I asked questions about details he felt the answers would hurt me. He fought with the urge to lie thinking it would spare me pain. Once I stopped asking for details he could be more open with me because he felt we were moving forward instead of dwelling on, or living in the past.

It wasn't that I was making him less accountable, but that we were providing eachother with an atmosphere focused less on hurting and more on healing.

I hope some of that can be usefull to you.

Take care.

Banyak,

Thank you for your follow up. I really appreciate the passages you quoted.

It is not that I am not a fan of AA or Al Anon.

I think more then anything I projected my frustration about the programs based on my FWW interpretation of what she was hearing. Enough said about that.

"After I found out about my H's A I was also an 'intent scorekeeper'. I spent months researching details and playing the 'he said - she said' game."

The funny thing is I had your same philosophy of sorts in the dynamic or our relationship. Beleive it or not my FWW was the scorekeeper. LOL.

"It wasn't until I made a decision to stop obsessing about details and focus on the fact that the A happened and we needed to find a way to overcome it"

I was not obsessing on the details as much as I knew my FWW was lying to me. My FWW was not discrete at all. The details were there. I has spoken to my Family during discovery, my kids new and I even spoke to the OM. If I was obsessing on anything it was the fact that given what I knew I knew she was lying. There were reasons other then her not wanting to hurt me that she hid the truth.

The triggers we hit caused me to resent the fact that she was lying to me. Nothing more nothing less. I also knew that we had other issues that played into this. The more time she spent with OM the less time she spent with her family and friends. This made her assertation that her family was so important to her. (In her mind)

This was a huge bone of contention from the start. I could understand the A but I couldn't understand how she dismissed her family and missed her friends wedding. I knew she minimized what happend to protect that.

I am not dillusional but it is hard to hear from someone that she was not going to miss her friends wedding then go back and miss the wedding to be with OM. So she denied seeing him that night. Which I knew was a lie. So I was not going to be lied to because she didn't want me to know thats why she missed the wedding.

Her lies were to protect herself and they were not to the betterment of our marriage.

Just an update.

FWW has been on step 3 forever now.

Keeps saying she is to busy to complete the work.

She made arrangements for the kids to be picked up from school today so she could go do step 3 with her sponsor.

Here is the email she wrote me when she wanted to go to IKEA today.

"I was going to meet with sponsor to do my 3rd step but I haven’t had a chance to do the writing that goes with it because of the past very busy week. We are going to reschedule for a week or so from now."

Hmmm she is attending less meetings now too. Not because of me but because of our busy schedule. She attended meetings come ****** or high water before no matter what. If she couldn't make the late meeting she went to rush hour.

Not talking with sponsor as much either.

She has been once this week.

I am starting to worry that this is where her work stopped on the other two occasions.

Why would someone avoid getting past step 3 guys. Step 4 means personal responsibility right? Moral inventory?

Ok getting worried about this now.