ÈThis is going to sound harsh, but you need to start cutting ties with the people around you who aren’t letting you change yourself into a better person. Alcoholics who want to genuinely get better, or if you want to change a general habit, you have to restructure your life and end up changing your life around.
That includes removing people from your life who sabotage you or try to down your efforts to better yourself. Hard, but in the end, you’ll see how easier your life is. These downers are just baggage and just a problem in your life. They are in fact, part of the problem and will remain so.
That they aren’t encouraging you to better yourself is a huge red flag and something that you need to think long and hard over. They’ll keep you from making your life better.È
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You are right. It’s not harsh... it’s reality.
Do I choose life and my liver, or .... but removing my husband is tough.
He’s just really strange; he claims to want me to be healthy, yet he criticizes me and makes me feel small at every opportunity.
Anyway, I need to adhere to my previous post. I have to get to bed, but then I see people like you who take the time to respond, and I want to do the same.
Take care.... J.
There's your answer in your own words. You have an entire world out there very capable of making you feel small. Your true friends are the people who make you feel big. Good luck!
Yeah, I’ve been there; I am not divorced and never married, but thing is, that I’ve begun cutting people out.
.....”he claims to want me to be healthy, yet he criticizes me and makes me feel small at every opportunity”....
You may very well have exhausted his limits....family members and spouses struggle as much if not more than those with an alcoholic problem. The alcoholic tends to return to the bottle to ease his issues, family members and spouses don’t. Rather ‘they endure’ and ‘suffer’, time and again, the next round of conflicts, or the woe is me moments, and all that entails that which alcoholics bring to the family unit thru their behavior....and you never know what you’re going to get.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame family for they generally are doing what they know to help...including being tough at times....until they are simply exhausted of the entire situation. They listen lovingly only to find what’s said is never carried out....and the massive excuses why the drinking began again...wash and repeat becomes the norm.
It’s an interesting thing to sit in a meeting with alcoholics discussing their issues of life. It’s not long before you recognize they don’t deal with anything more than most people have to face and deal with in life. For whatever their reasoning is they handle it through drinking....and sometimes rather than do the hard work to get past what leads them to drink, as most people do, ‘they escape’ that by drinking until at one point or another their body demands it.
Family members see this happening...see the steps...and eventually realize no matter what form their “support” takes it’s not working to help the individual.
At this point the alcholic needs to seek help outside the family....when it’s straining everyone. Better before this but that usually isn’t the case.
I don’t believe there’s much your husband can do at this point, and you shouldn’t expect more. The ball is in your court to change your behavior, not his.
Do what you must to straighten yourself out...and then make decisions on your marriage. But IMO he’s stayed with you thus far...and that speaks volumes of his commitment to the marriage itself. ....even if it might be hard for him to show you his love...and I’m not so sure you’d identify it if he did.