I never know when he says stuff like that if he is upset because he WANTS to know thw WHY as well or because he doesn't know the WHY (or doesn't want to share it anyway) and he is tired of me asking.

Which i really did not ask him anyway.

He has had well let's just say male issues ever since he was sick right after the A and that is waht started the whole conversation at all.

And i did ask him what he thought about me being upset about him knowing where his female co-worker lived.

He said that he felt that i was taking it too far for him to not even be able to talk to other females.

I tried to explain to him that i think there is a difference in talking to a co-worker of the opposite sex about work related things and sharing where each other lives is not work related.

I tried to tell him that even though i have been at my company for 12 years and he has been at his company for less than one year he already knows more about a female co-worker than i do about any of my male co-workers.

I am just really sick and tired of all of this and i think he is too. I asked him if he thought it was best if we went our own ways and he said he didn't know.

And maybe he is right. Maybe you are right.

If he doesn't understand the series of steps that occurred and boundaries that were crossed how does anyone know?

You are then left to protect yourself either by leaving or trying to get him to put some boundaries in place for him or to just trust him. The option of leaving is really the only option. The other two will just not work for you as you are finding out. Or, he could choose to participate in recovery. He controls this, not you.

Again, what may be trivial for him is hugely important to you.

Until he/you understand this basic fact about each other, it is hard to follow any recovery plan.

I have about come to the conclusion that we really never had the same thoughts on what a marriage "should be" and i know i will never switch to his opinion and i do not thin he will switch to mine.

And unfortunately on this issue i don't think there can be a middle ground because i feel he needs those boundaries in place for me to heal from his betrayal.

So here we are at an impasse again. Maybe June 1 needs to go back on the calendar (even though it has never really been taken off the calendar i just had been hoping since things have been going good for a little while).

Now the last two days he has acted like nothing is wrong at all. It just makes me crazy, we have this really good coversation and some things come out and we really never settled them and now it is like we did not even have the conversation.

Arrrrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!

SC,

Isn't this more about you than about him. Aren't you just letting him do it?

If it is important to you you have to make it known.

Just make sure you aren't disrespectful if you do. Its about you not him.

I really think it is about both of us.

I think we do not know how to communicate about relationship issues with each other without, LBs, AO, DJs, or getting defensive with one another.

I have thought a lot about this ever since you posted it.


I think this is something that he wants to know as much as me.

Maybe he truly does not remember things that happened. Maybe because it is easier to not remember them, maybe because he truly was very drunk during most of the A (he had been drinking heavily since his mother passed away about 6 months prior to the A), maybe because of the illness and proceeding surgery because he was so drugged up for all those months.

But i really think that he doesn't know "how or why" it happened either and it kind of scares him too.

Or maybe i am just trying to justify his not telling me much of anything about his A.


And you are correct here i do have three options for ME:

1. Just leave the marriage on June 1 as i have planned. This option definitely has it's pros and cons. The biggest pro is the i would not have the "emotional" stress that i have now with trying to recover our M by myself.

However with this option it still leaves me in the same predicament i am in now, which is not still not knowing the why or how and leaving a M that i just spent 25 years building and the last 2 years "fighting" my [censored] off for with an H that loves me and i love him.

2. Just trust him. This option i think only has cons, i can not think of any pros to "just trusting" someone who does not have "good boundaries" and has already crossed what ones he did have in place.

However you do have to take into account the fact that he got his head out of his [censored] fairly quickly and the A was not a long lived one (didn't make it any less painful though), he is remorseful, i believe he truly loves me, and he was faithful for 23 years.

Even with all that this option still does not have any pros!!!

3. Trying to get him to put boundaries in place. This option is the most practical one and would solve option #1 and option #2. However as we all know i can not "make" him do anything.

With this option i could "lessen" what "i" need those boundaries to be for me to feel "safe" however if i do that am i really just settling? I don't know and this is the hardest part of all of this for me.



I agree with you here as well.

As far as continuing the coversation from that night, when it ended, it ended with him feeling "attacked" once again. I seem to manage to do that alot and i am not sure why/how but i wish i knew how to communicate with him better so that conversations do not feel this way to him.

So since he felt attacked i did not want to push for it to continue the next day. So i guess that it is my fault for just dropping it as well since it was/is important to our relationship not just to me. And i say that only because he brought the relationship conversation up to begin with so i am guessing that he felt it was important as well.

Is there any alcoholism in either of your families?

Even if there isn't it would benefit YOU to attend Al-anon meetings.


Yes, you have options. You have power over YOUR situation.


Yes, you can't make him do anything. He has to put the boundaries in place. You can't make him. You need to tell him how you feel. I, SC, feel unsafe. It is then up to him what he chooses to do or not do. You then reinforce your boundaries. I can't stay in an unsafe marriage. It hurts too much.

When most of us try to tell the other our feelings we end up using LB's, SD, DJ, AO's. That is the part you can control. The boundary you can control because it is about you and defining you and who you are.



I encourage you to think about this. Think about what you want and what you get and why? What is your part of this cycle? You can control and change that part.

Yes, his father and grandfather were alcoholics as was my father.And my H is one too, they were all what i call "functioning alcoholics".

My H goes to work everyday, his alcohol does not control his life, yet he drinks at least a couple of beers every night during the week and a few more than that on the weekends.

SC,

I really encourage you to attend Al-anon. Find a meeting for beginner's meeting and then attend a couple of different ones to find the meeting that best fits you.

I think it will help you as you will come to understand how alcohol is controlling your life.

Well i have always known that the alcohol played a big part in certain aspects with my relationship with my H. He has a quick temper anyway and he "rages" when he is mad or worried or pretty much any of his emotions except "happy" things. His temper is quicker when he has been drinking. He will go off into this "rage" and scream and yell like a maniac and "scare the crap" out of all of us and just as quickly be fine again.

I think that is sometimes the reason i have to pick and chose when i have relationship talks with him at all and also why sometimes i quit when he starts getting aggravated because i hate it when he "rages" like that. Although i will have to say that it has improved DRASTICALLY from when we first got together. I seriously was afraid to go anywhere with him in public because i never knew if he would get mad over something simple (at anyone not just me) and start his "raging"

But seriously, controlling my whole life. Maybe my whole relationship but i would think certainly not my whole life. I do not drink and never really have (a couple of drinks once or twice a year if i'm lucky) my H jokingly says that i am "a cheap date" because he doesn't have to buy alcohol for me whenever we go anywhere.

I have also used this to my advantage as far as our children go. My H is very good about not drinking and driving (except during his A, then he did it constantly) and my kids know that i do not drink so i always drive when we leave anywhere even if he has only had one beer. We tell them you should not ever drink and drive.

SC,

I encourage you to attend an Al-anon meeting. You will find other people just like you. Those who are living with alcoholics and children of alcoholics. Listen to their stories. Listen to their struggles. Listen to what is working for them. Just listen.

How predictable was your childhood with an alcoholic father? How did your mother handle it?

Actually i never really thought of my dad as an alcoholic until later in life (actually with my husband) i realized that technically he was one as well because he drank every day.

With my dad though i did not notice any difference in him whether he was drinking or not. My mom never said anything about my dad's drinking, ever that i can recall.

My parents had me way later in life and had basically already raised a family (my 3 older siblings are 20, 18, and 17 years older than i am, then i have 2 more siblings that are 8 and 6 years older than i am), so by the time i was old enough to remember things my parents were retired, people always thought they were my grandparents.

From the time my H's mother passed away (july 2006) until the day he got sick after the A ended (feb 2007) it was nothing for him to drink 8 or 10 beers a night on the week nights and about a case on the weekends.

During the A i think he was drinking even more because the OW was a drinker as well and they would hang out at the bar together.

During the time he was sick and after surgery he did not drink at all. When he started feeling better he started drinking again and when he went back to work (with the FOW still working there) and when our M recovery really started his drinking got bad again.

He got so drunk one night that he had a big blow up with our YDD and said some pretty nasty things to her. She left the house for a couple of weeks and stayed with friends. That actually scared him a little so ever since then he has been drinking a combination of NA beer and real beer.

But i have never really considered that it effected me that much.

I wonder how much alcohol contributed to the conditions that allowed the A to happen?

It really affects children alot. I'm sure it effected your H. I'm sure it probably effects your children. Maybe one of your children would be willing to goto Al-anon with you. Maybe your YDD as it will effect her relationships.

I am sure it contributed a lot to the conditions that led to the A because he could "get drunk" with her. He even told me this, he said he and she had "more in common" than him and i did because i do not drink.

It also contributed to the ENIL living there too because he was a drinker as well and it gave my H someone to "drink" with and i think is part of the reason (besides his mother passing away) that he satrted drinking more, because the ENIL is a TOTAL ALCOHOLIC, Alcohol is his life, he can not hold down a job or a place to live or anything else due to his alcohol.

I am sure it did have an effect on her and i did not like it at all, i actually threatened to call the cops on him that night if he did not go upstairs and go to sleep and keep his mouth shut (which he did).

My YDD left anyway, saying that she did not want to be around him. Both of my daughters took the A really hard anyway so he wasn't exactly her favorite person at the time already and then the things he said to her were really horrible.