Well we had another good weekend without him being "friendly" with anyone so i think he may have FINALLY got that this was/is a boundary issue.

Now i just need for him to realize the same about his female co-workers and i think that would go a long way in building back my trust.

LG/TJD

I am just wondering since neither of you have replied if the two of you still believe that my H's drinking is an issue.

I know that me and my children are the only ones that it really concerns, but i am curious to know what the two of you think.

SC

Still Crazy,
ALl of these sentences that you've typed describe myself, my husband, and our family. My husband is a great dad. He willingly gave up any chance of a career to be the primary caregiver of our children.

My oldest had been to more states and seen more sights by age 3 than I had by age 21.

We also enjoy the outdoors throughout our relationship.

My husband is a recoverying addict.

Both my husband and I are good parents. But, frankly at times, we've been less than desirable people and less than desirable spouses.

Does your husband drink to escape? To deal with feelings? Is it his coping mechanism for stress? Have you read the book "The 7 Levels of Intimacy" by Kelly? Does your husband avoid non-sexual intimacy with you?

My parents were also good parents in the sense that they supported me, attended all my functions, always put my needs before theirs, etc. However, my parents took it too far, and I was in an enmeshed and unhealhty relationship with them. So, yes, good that they were involved, but not so good that I ended up spending the better part of my early twenties to early thirties in therapy because of them.

SC:

I don't know if you know this, but I'm a CPA. I love this place, and can't stay away. but I do have work to do....

I'll be back....

Please look into Al-Anon chapters in your area.

You are the child of alcoholics, and you are married to one. That gives you a frame of reference that is off kilter.

Al-Anon can help.

LG

My H has been a less than a desirable person or spouse or father when he "rages".


I do not know why my H drinks, that is a question you would have to ask him i suppose.

I have not read that book.

He does NOT avoid non-sexual intimacy with me. We are each other's best friends and know everything about each other and spend every minute we are not at work together doing something.

He has never hung out at bars (except during the A), he does not do "guys night out", he does not go fishing or hunting or anything with the "guys". We are together if we are not at work.



My parents did NOT attend ANY of my functions, not one, i was in track for four years and i had a lot of acedemic awards and they never went to one thing that i can remeber except my graduation (i was their baby and the only of their six children who graduated from High School).

My mother was like me and did not drink and my father worked a lot so he did not get home until later in the evening and that is when he would have his couple of drinks. However my father was the one who did things with me, NOT my mother.

I LOVED my parents and thought they were GREAT parents and i miss them terribly since thye have died. I do not have any issues or need therapy for my upbringing. I had a GREAT childhood, i can not remeber my parents ever doing anything that i HATED.

I TRULY believe there is a difference in "alcoholics" per se. Like the ENIL, he lives to find the next beer, nothing else, that is all his life revolves around.

There was a woman who used to be a co-worker of mine and once she had that first drink she had to drink until she was wasted EVERY single time she took that first drink.

There are people who hang out in bars all the time and do get "[censored]-faced" and come home and beat their spouses and their kids or sexually abuse them or kill someone on their way home from drinking.

To me this is when alcohol is a PROBLEM and it CONTROLS your life. My H is NOT like that at all, in any way shape or form.

Actually i do remember NOW that you are a CPA, i am surprised you have time to post at all right now. I dread filing my taxes this year because i OWE darn it!!!!

I was not a child of alcoholic(s). My mother did not drink alcohol same as me.

No, THIS is the question you need to ask him. Rather than asking mb folks if your husband is an alcoholic.

I do not care why my H drinks. I have stated many times that i believe my H is an alcoholic because he drinks every day. I also believe that his drinking has not been a "problem".

The MB folks are telling me that it is a problem.

So i am asking them with my explanation of my H's drinking do they STILL consider it a problem.

I value the advice i get here and if they think it is a problem then i want to look into further as i do NOT think it is a problem and never have thought it was a problem.

I want to be convinced however and you are right that is not what MBers are here for.

So i guess since i do not think it is a problem then i will just continue to think it and go about my recovery as i have been.

And things have been improving FINALLY!!!

I specifically remember one Al-Anon meeting.

There was a young woman there. Probably 26-27 years old. I didn't know her history but you got the sense she was in a tough relationship.

She had pulled herself away from her boyfriend who was an alcoholic. She was starting to think and see things in a different way but wasn't quite there yet.

She talked about how her former boyfriend had called her and asked to meet her for a dinner - a date.

She said yes.

As she was driving to dinner something sidetracked her and she called her boyfriend and told him that she was going to be late. He said that would be ok.

So, she arrives for dinner about 30 minutes late. And he had a beer. Actually a couple. He told her that he was so nervous waiting for her that he decided to have a beer to calm his nerves.

You should have heard her. She felt so good that he was nervous to see her. That she was important enough to him that he was nervous. You could her the excitement in her voice.

Then, the side of her that was just starting to see it in a different way started reflecting about how dumb she was to feel excited about his nervousness and that he decided to drink a couple of beers to calm his nerves. You could hear the tone of her voice and the cadence of her speech change. It became softer and slower.

Then, she just sat there with a blank stare.......frozen.....lost in her own thoughts.......with a group of people there quietly listening.

She was struggling with her feelings and the logic of the situation. The beer - the feeling of being important. She was still stuck but getting closer to seeing that drinking beer to calm himself was destructive and how her own feelings of needing to feel important clouded her views.....

It was very eye opening for me. To see how one's brain can really screw with oneself. How it was so obvious to the rest of us and for her it this enormous struggle that is going on within her.

SC,

Why are you playing games with LG's words?

Why did you decide to do this and look for a way out instead of addressing the message?

You have stated that your father was an alcoholic. That makes you a child of an alcoholic.

I was not trying to play games with LGs words.

I was clarifying that my mother did not drink.

And my father had a couple of drinks per evening until he got sick when i was a senior in high school (TB). Then he quit smoking cigarettes and quit drinking on a daily basis. He would just have a drink every now and then until he passed away.

So once again i did not feel that my father was in ANY WAY a bad father or that his drinking interfered with his life or our relationship. He never said a mean word to me. He and my mother would have words but it was more my mother than my father. She was not very nice to him and he took it most of the time but occasionally he would say something back to her. And he yelled at my brothers a few times for things WHEN THEY WERE BAD.

He always took me places on the weekends. It was just me and him because my mom did not want to go with us and all of my other siblings had moved out and lived on their own by then. I LOVED my dad, i was a daddy's little girl for sure and my brother's that are closest in age to me would tell you the same thing .

I guess i just see things differntly than you and LG and it will take a lot of convincing for me to believe that my H's drinking is that BIG of an issue in our M.

If it were i think it would have taken less than 23 years for it to have surfaced.

From this


To this


SC, you are very inconsistent in what you are saying. How can a person go from being an alcoholic to just having a couple of drinks every evening. I have no idea what your intentions are but it is extremely confusing and inconsistent.

As well as my H is an alcoholic but it doesn't effect us but something bad happened once and now he drinks NA beer. Why would he change to NA beer if it has no effects on anyone?

The information you provide doesn't add up.

Okay i am sorry that i am confusing you.

I use the term "alcoholic" with my dad and my H because "I" think that if you have even one alcoholic beverage an a DAILY BASIS then you are an "alcoholic". That is why i asked you what would be considered a social drinker. Both my H and my dad are/were social drinkers on an EVERY DAY basis.

My dad had a couple of drinks EVERY DAY of his life until my senior year in high school. My H has a couple of beers EVERY DAY of his life and more than a couple on occasion.

The reason he switched to NA was because of "that night" with our YDD because on that night he was EXTREMELY DRUNK and HE felt HORRIBLE for it and HE thought (and i did too that night) it was because he was so DRUNK.

He actually quit drinking at all for a while (about 3 months or so) and then went to the NA beer which he still drinks a couple of them EVERY DAY of his life.

So in my termonology they are/were both "alcoholics". However i do not believe that either of them let their alcohol CONTROL their lives. And to me there is a difference. Maybe you would not consider either of them an "alcoholic".

So, a couple of beers is 2. 2 per day is 14 per week....H drank so much that he ruined his relationship with his YDD probably forever and it scared him so much that he realized he can't control his drinking so he now drinks NA beer periodically....He is an alcoholic but he has control over it......I have to tell you that I can't believe I am having this discussion.

I am sorry.

Okay i will rephrase everything to include the time during my our M that alcohol DID CONTROL my H IMO.

The rest of the years of our M, i feel that he just had a couple of beers in the evening to relax after a long hard day as he has always had a pretty physical job and it did not seem to me to make any difference in our life what so ever.

The ENIL lived with us from March 2003 through Nov 2006 and then his drinking was a problem, it was also a problem in the beginning of recovery.

When the ENIL first moved in my H was drinking his usual couple of beers an evening and probably a 6 pack through out a weekend day. Gradually throughout the time that he spent drinking and hanging out with the ENIL (instead of his wife and children) his daily consumption started growing then after his mother passed away it grew even more. By the time he had the A he was drinking on average 6-8 beers daily (all after work) and around 15-18 on a weekend day.

When he got sick (2 weeks after he came back from being with the OW) he did not drink at all (because he was too sick to drink) for quite a while during the 5 months he was out of work. He started drinking again towards the end of his physical recovery from the illness and surgery. By the time he went back to work he was back at his usual couple of beers a day.

Well as you can see by my signature the FOW was a co-worker and still worked there so needless to say neither of us were comfortable with him going back there anyway, but he had to at the time.

I was such a mess during that time because i had a "look out" for me and even though my H tried to avoid the OW she was still chasing him (my H told me about it as well).

I was upset with my H because he said he would not be "rude" to her by not speaking in their place of employment. So i am sure that i made his life hell while she was still there. And low and behold his drinking started increasing again. He finally turned her in to his HR department for sexual harrassment in July and she either quit or was fired shortly after he reported her. That is when our M recovery really started.

Things were difficult because as i have stated before he did not "remember" a lot of things about the A and it made it hard (not that all recoveries are not hard). I was not easy on him during this time and his drinking was going up again and he was around a 6 pack per night.

We discussed his drinking going up and we both agreed that he should try to start taming it down again, which he began immediately and it did calm down and was almost back to his couple of beers an evening when "that night" occurred.

Now I AM IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM TRYING TO COVER UP, LESSEN, MAKE EXCUSES, OR ANYTHING ELSE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT NIGHT. THIS WAS THE ONE AND ONLY TIME ANYTHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED AND IT WAS MY CHILD!!! That night was and still is the most horrible night of my life, i think even worse than D-Day and it will forever haunt me and make me wonder what i could have should have done differently.

As i said before it was Super Bowl Sunday (which during any BIG sporting event my H drinks a few more than usual anyway), it was one year after he came home (to the day), and the ENIL was there (and even now if the ENIL is there he drinks a couple more than he normally would). They were in the "man cave" and me and the kids were in the house. He owuld come in to use the bathroom and i could tell that he was getting pretty wasted and i told him he should slow down. Later that night i could see that he did not slow down and was in fact extremely drunk (which he had not done in some time prior).

Something was said that set him off and he started yelling and i do not even remember at who or what he was yelling about, but my YDD (as i also stated before) said something back to him in a nasty tone (ONCE AGAIN I AM NOT BLAMING MY DAUGHTER IT WAS NOT HER FAULT IT WAS HER DAD'S FAULT ENTIRELY) and that is when they both started yelling at each other. The whole time i was screaming at HIM to shut up and go upstairs and pass out.

Because he was so drunk he just started spouting off things that were MEAN to HER and that is when her brother started telling him to shut up and then things escalated even more. That is when i picked up the phone and told him i was calling the cops if he did not go upstairs RIGHT NOW AND DO NOT COME BACK DOWN. Which he did and then my kids both left in tears to spend the night with friends.

The next morning when i told my H what happened he was DEVESTATED and could not believe he had done such a thing and yes it did scare him as well as the rest of us. Like i said he had never done anything like that before.

Since that day he drinks NA beer while we are at home and if we go out he drinks a couple of real beers or a margarita or something like that with his dinner. Or if him and i are out alone we might stop at a club or something somewhere for him to have a couple of beers.

So it is NOW no longer a problem in my eyes as long as he stays at his couple of beers a day.

On Super Bowl Sunday this year he even said one year ago today is a day i wish i could erase.

I was talking to my freind here at work who knows about the A about the statement my H made that morning and she thought that all he meant was that he has "time" at work to think about it.

I was thinking that he was thinking about ED while at work because of other women at work.

That is what i mean about how i question everything since his A.

I did not ask him what he did mean but i am going to go with what my friend said she thought.

Things really are improving a little bit each week, maybe it is time, maybe it is that he is trying more now, maybe it is i am letting go a little more, i dunno but i do like the progress.

This is something i posted on another thread. My goodness it just seems silly that something so simple can cause such feelings in me.

Last night my FWH was upset about someone and he said he "hated" that person. He quickly changed his comment to say "hate is a strong word, i dislike that person, i do not "hate" anyone.

Well it triggered me because i do "hate" the FOW and i think he should too. Not necessarily about the A but all the BS she caused after it ended to me and to his children (she kept calling our home and making lewd comments to me and my children regarding what she had done with my H).

Once i was triggered, i was triggered and was actually pi$$ed off about the comment and thinking to myself all night long that he was an a$$ for not "hating" her. I am still kind of mad about it this morning.

I did tell him that it triggered me and he just rolled his eyes at me, which then in turn made it worse.

He probably hates himself too much to hate OW.