by Toast » Thu May 24, 2012 4:11 pm
Hi Jen,
There is a saying that if you let someone go and they come back to you then its meant to be.
We can let our partners go emotionally by not buying into the emotional blackmail some of us suffer when we 1st get sober. It’s been my experience that they soon get fed up with staying negative and come back to a more positive outlook on life.
After all we alcoholics know more than most that having a 'tit for tat' mentality gets you no where. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
In my case i blackmailed myself with guilt and shame about things that happened to my family when i was ' out of it' with booze. My wife and 2 young kids suffered some terrible ridicule in this small (minded?) community where we still live.
And yes there were a lot of faults on my partner's side and things i wasn't happy about but instead of confronting them as i would today i just used then as an excuse to drink. Being an alcoholic the last thing i wanted was a perfect partner otherwise i may have run out of excuses. So in the end i had my wife as sick as me because somehow i managed to convince her it was 'mostly' her fault. In the end even i believed that old chestnut!
I don’t know where I’m going with this but just to say tonight we had our son, his wife and 2 lovely kids as well as my daughters 2 kids here for dinner out on the back porch in the very rare brilliant sunshine. After dinner the garden hose came out and everyone got a good soaking from the kids (or domestic terrorist's as we often call them!)
After i all quietened down i took some time out to look at my wife holding our 8 month old granddaughter, singing songs to her and making her smile and i thought, what a picture, 2 people who are meant to be together bonding for life. She must have done that with our own 2 kids, where was i when all that nice stuff was going on back then?
You won't need 3 guesses to answer that one.
God Bless
