Expert: Joseph Lee O. - 4/29/2008

Question
Hi.  I stumbled upon this website accidentally...or probably by divine appointment.  Anyway, I'm wondering if you have any encouragement or advice for me.  I struggle with intense feelings of anger towards my ex-husband.  I'm happily remarried to a wonderful man but share three kids with my former husband, who is a chronic alcoholic, not seeking support for his disease and who almost died from pancreatitis/severe DT's two years ago.  His family is very wealthy, unhealthy and in denial, enabling him to continue his lifestyle.  He is also remarried, with an infant son, blah blah blah...I do pretty well overall, particularly when I pay attention to my own co-dependency issues, and of course Al-Anon has helped a lot, but I feel like I am going CRAZY when my ex and I talk...could his brain be completely mush?  He will say things to me and then five seconds later, deny saying them...verbally abuse me...attack me.  So much of it has to do with his controlling family; they want all of my kids to attend private schools that they pay for, etc...
    What can I say to myself, or how can I help myself, when my former husband continually insists on brutalizing me?  We usually have a major blowout at points of change:  when our son needed evaluation for ADD, etc...I've tried to temper some of the craziness by having our communication in the presence of a third party, but even that gets distorted once we walk away from the counselor.

I  just don't want to waste my energy with anger and unforgiveness.  It makes me tired.

Thanks for your time.  and God bless your journey.

Answer
Greetings to you, TJ.

You have written:

>> I struggle with intense feelings of anger towards my ex-husband.

First, he is a very sick man.  That does not excuse his behaviour, of course, yet his overall dilemma does at least explain it.  Physically, he is a wreck and he likely knows that.  Emotionally, he is, at best, a cripple.  Mentally, he is in need of much spiritual transformation if his mind is to ever function rightly at all.  Filled with his own anger and tears (self-pity), he is driven by fear and self-delusion.  He knows alcohol is not his problem, yet he likely knows he can live neither with it or without it.  As self-imposed as it might be, at least in part, alcoholism is one of the most devastating conditions anyone might ever have:

“An illness of this sort - and we have come to believe it an illness - involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can.  If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt.  But no so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life.  It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's.  It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents - anyone can increase the list.
“We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are, or who may be affected.  There are many.” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, page 18)

“We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness.  Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
“We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones.  Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men [who can drink without harming everyone] ...” (page 30)

“...suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” (page 44)

>> His family is very wealthy, unhealthy and in denial, enabling him to continue his lifestyle ...

Spiritually-sick people do all kinds of things related to “quality of life”, as they perceive it.  

>> I do pretty well overall, particularly when I pay attention to my own co-dependency issues ...

We could have quite a discussion about that!  Human beings were created “co-dependent”, as such, or inter-dependent.  We need each other.  Self-reliance is the opposite of “co-dependence”, and switching to that is like jumping from a foundered ship that is not actually sinking.  The Twelve Steps are about our learning to live in *right* co-dependent fellowship and worship in place of our natural depravity.

>> ... and of course Al-Anon has helped a lot ...

Neither A.A. nor Al-Anon is “the program”.  The Steps are “the program”, and that program can *only* be found here:

“... the first portion of this volume [‘Alcoholics Anonymous’, the book], describing the [original] A.A. recovery program [how to actually take the Twelve Steps], has been left untouched in the course of revisions made for both the second and the third editions.” (Preface to third Edition)

Do you have a copy?!

>> ... but I feel like I am going CRAZY when my ex and I talk...could his brain be completely mush?  He will say things to me and then five seconds later, deny saying them...verbally abuse me...attack me.

As a vital organ within his body, his physical brain might be well on its way to becoming “mush” in about the same way a cucumber can become a pickle, but his mind is completely dysfunctional for the reasons I have mentioned above.

>> So much of it has to do with his controlling family; they want all of my [children] to attend private schools that they pay for, etc...

Aside from home-schooling, which is best, almost anything is better than public (government) schools.

>> What can I say to myself, or how can I help myself, when my former husband continually insists on brutalizing me?

“If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.  The grouch and the brainstorm [self-management] were not for us ... these things are poison.
“We turned back to the [resentment] list [made at the beginning of Step Four], for it held the key to the future.  We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle.  We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us.  In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill.  How could we escape?  We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how?  We could not wish them away ...
“This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.  We asked G-d to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.  When a person offended we said to ourselves [quite silently], ‘This is a sick man.  How can I be helpful to him?  G-d save me from being angry.  Thy will be done.’
“We avoid retaliation or argument.  We wouldn't treat sick people that way.  If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful.  We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least G-d will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one.” (pages 66-67)

>> We usually have a major blowout at points of change ...

Sometimes even like two self-will-run-riots banging heads?!

>> I've tried to temper some of the craziness by having our communication in the presence of a third party, but even that gets distorted once we walk away from the counselor.

Sure, for you are dealing with a very sick man in every sense of that word.

>> I just don't want to waste my energy with anger and unforgiveness.  It makes me tired.

My own experience is identical ... and the only version of *the* solution that has ever made sense and proved effective for me is contained only in “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book.

Please know you are always welcomed to write,

Joseph Lee O.
Email: leejosepho@hotmail.com
Forum: http://xsorbit28.com/users5/restored/ (new)