I appreciated your column in today’s Mercury about having and sustaining a relationship with an alcoholic.

I was married for 28 years.  We met when we were both students.  He was the life and soul of the party, whereas I am fairly shy, and so I was able to enjoy a great social life without much being demanded of me, as he took the limelight.  We married after we had both graduated, moved away from our home towns,  and by the time our second baby was born he was out drinking most nights, often returning home  well after midnight.  During my second stay at the maternity hospital, he didn’t even visit me every day as he was either hungover or drinking.  Things deteriorated rapidly, and I didn’t have the courage to leave, so I stayed and mopped up the pieces of our social life whenever he was downright rude to people, or fell asleep in a drunken stupor during dinner parties.

I didn’t have the courage to tell my friends and tried to make light of what was happening at home.  When he told me he would be home for dinner I believed him….then the disappointment….food in the warming drawer…going to bed….waking in the small hours of the morning and blindly panicking  when I realised his side of the bed was still empty….the terrible fear that he would kill or maim someone in a drunken driving accident….soothing the children when he      shouted at them in the early mornings when they ran into our room to start the new day….  phoning the police stations, hospitals, mortuary regularly at 3am to find out if there had been an accident……and I remained so obedient, phoning his office in the mornings to say his fictitious virus was making him ill so he would only arrive at work later that day.  I was the stereotypical enabler.  I was sure that if I could be a perfect wife he would want to come home to me instead of staying out drinking.  I even bought alcohol to tempt him to do his drinking at home!

After 10 years of marriage something snapped in me when, after a particularly bad night, he told me to make the usual phonecall to the office, and I stood up to him and told him to call them himself.  He said he couldn’t.  I refused to do it, and finally he acknowledged that he had “a bit of a problem” and I found the number for Alcoholics Anonymous and watched him as he called them and set up an appointment to be twelve-stepped.

The AA people were wonderfully supportive of him, and he started spending every evening at a meeting – he managed to find meetings all over Johannesburg so that he had one every night.  And he stopped drinking.  BUT – before he would make that call to AA he told me that he would do it on condition that “Nobody must ever know about it – not my parents, or your parents, or anyone else at all”.  It was impossible for me to attend AlAnon meetings because he wouldn’t give me money for a babysitter and I wasn’t working and earning any for myself.  So I had to try to cope with this very changed man on my own, and I just didn’t manage very well.

The sober man was so unlike the man I had married that I hardly recognised him.  He now had another stick to wield: whenever I tried to talk to him about how I was feeling about both his drinking in the past, or his new sober persona, he reminded me that he had made a huge effort and was finding it all dreadfully stressful, and that if I insisted on talking about such things it would probably drive him back to drinking again.  I appreciated the effort he was making and understood how difficult it was for him, but I was crying out for help myself and getting none.  Instead of drinking, his addictive personality found outlets in one craze after another:  collecting stamps until the housekeeping money was being spend on special issues, stamp auctions etc; guns – he collected a huge range of guns and spent every free minute making bullets, practising at the driving range and hunting.  From his family background of no religion at all, he became almost fanatical in attending services, bible studies and leading the family in prayer at home twice a day, and banning any magazines or music from the home that weren’t religion based.  Each one of these, and his other, crazes lasted for a couple of years at most before being completely dropped for something else.  Keeping up with him was exhausting.

We drifted further and further apart.  I had no friends left and was in such a state of constant stress that my blood pressure became dangerously high.  I went against his wishes and found a job, and so earned money which I used to go for counselling with SANCA.  In the end after much wise counsel from them, I decided to leave the marriage and start a new life for myself.  Our children were both post-graduates and no longer living at home.  The divorce was pretty  hurtful and I moved away and have lived alone for the past 12 years, building up my self-esteem which had been completely eroded, enjoying wonderful supportive friendships and working.  He has remarried and is drinking again.

So: the point of this rather long-winded letter is to say that alcholism is not easy to cope with, the change from a drinking to a sober person doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the problems – a new set can arise.

Thank you for all the wisdom in your daily columns, which I always read.

Kind regards

1. You want to stay in the relationship and you want to be married.
2. You have a support network outside of your immediate family where you can talk about anything you want to talk about.
3. The alcoholic has admitted he or she has a problem with alcohol and appears motivated to be rid of the disease.
4. He or she is committed to a legitimate recovery program and is part of a community of men and women who are ardently engaged in managing and beating the disease.

Reasons to leave (1 out of 4 suffices):

1. You are exhausted with trying to keep life together and you no longer have the energy to sustain life for more than yourself and your children.
2. Your trust reserves are depleted and you no longer want to be married.
3. You are expected to lie for your spouse as a result of his or her drinking.
4. You are regularly subjected to abuse of any kind.
5. You and your children are subjected to excessive drinking and all that accompanies the life of a drunk.

1. Speak up for yourself – don’t allow anyone to speak for you.
2. Focus on the so-called big picture – look at the strengths you bring to the world around you.
3. Let your strengths guide you. You are unlikely to find long-term fulfillment in your life if you are neglecting or avoiding your talents.
4. Shift your focus off others (your spouse, children, in-laws, boss, employees) and anything others are doing or are not doing. Become an expert in your own behavior.
5. Govern yourself and not others.
6. Don’t spread unhelpful news or information about anyone. Monitor very closely what goes in your mouth (food and drink) and out of your mouth (words, texts, writing) as an exercise in establishing healthier boundaries.
7. Take full responsibility for yourself and stop blaming others for anything.
8. Be very generous.

I’d suggest you ease up and try to encourage your son to have a girlfriend. Try to get to know the girl yourself.

Your son will probably lie to you if you make telling the truth harder for him than it ought to be.

While I honor your role as a single mother and respect the powerful relationship that you have built with your son, I will remind you that his natural desire to grow and create relationships of his own will ultimately over-power even his dedication and commitment to you.

And when he does this, it will not make you less of a mother but it will reveal that you have indeed been a very good one.

Dating relationships are not set in stone. I applaud for recognizing that you want to see the world and do more with your life than life with him would have offered. The tensions you feel early in a relationship seldom go away.

Break contact. Tell him no more. Go to places and do things that reflect what you want in your future. It is hard, but you have to do it.

The friends you lost were probably not worth keeping.

You are perfectly capable of doing what is best for yourself and this is not selfish.

Men and women of (growing) integrity:

1.     They live lives where day-to-day actions reflect deeply held values and beliefs.

2.     They are who they say they are, and they are who they want to be.

3.     They tell the truth even when it is convenient to fabricate, yet, they are able to couch “harsh” truth in love and kindness without diluting it.

4.     They are able to discern when it is appropriate, as it often is, to remain silent. They know that not everything they think or know is worth saying or divulging.

5.     They can be trusted to do what is right and to keep their word.

6.     They can be as hard as nails when it comes to matters of honesty, yet compassionate and understanding when others fail.

7.     They value others beyond what others may be able to do for them.

8.     They listen, even when they are told something they’d rather not hear.

9.     They take full responsibility for their lives and blame no one for anything.

10.     They facilitate the growth of others expecting little or nothing in return.

Deploy it within you and it will open your wallet, your heart, and your eyes. It unleashes goodness within you. It unleashes kindness within those who witness your acts of generosity.

Give enough away and all kinds of opportunities will begin to open for others and for you.

Your eyes will be opened afresh.You will begin to see just how much you don’t need. You will see just how much stuff you stumble over day-to-day that you really could share. You will see that you have in plenty, what others really need.

Even if executed with impure motive, generosity remains a powerful force to encourage others. Pure motive or impure motive – give more, and give well.

When you give, if it is possible, give anonymously. Give pointedly, specifically. Give handsomely. Let your giving reflect your capacity to give. Don’t confuse tipping (although generous people always tip well) and call it generosity.

Generosity that costs little or costs nothing is not generosity at all.

Giving a man a suit you no longer use is not an act of generosity – giving him the suit you love and wear every day, is.

I do not mean into some other world of life after death, but rather the ability to peer into your future in order to plan something outstanding.

Your capacity to imagine is your innate and super-human ability to plan a great future, a future more satisfying than your past, a future more satisfying than your present, no matter how exciting each has been or might yet be. Deploying your imagination propels you into a more spiritual realm. It keeps men and women alive, gives needed zeal to communities, energizes, heals, excites, and rejuvenates.

Of course your imagination may have become jaded or shattered by loss, disappointment, and failure, but, given that you are still breathing, it is probably is not beyond rekindling. It can be resuscitated. While there is life there is hope. While there is hope there is the power to think great thoughts into daily actions and then watch them come into being.

The walking dead have stopped imagining. Their dreaming has ceased. Their high hopes have become limited to what is routine and possible, and they have stopped expecting much from life.

Every one of us has the human capacity to forgive.

While often a tall order, we have the power to forgive those who hurt us and hurt those whom we love.

This is a distinctly human edge. It is one of our human super-powers.

It frees the forgiver.

Of course this is not easy. Of course there are vulgar, violent acts committed among people.

Of course there are some acts so heinous that they can derail a victim’s life forever.

Yet even lesser transgressions among us seem difficult to forgive.

This is understandable. We like grudges. We have a natural, understandable urge to want to retaliate. It’s part survival. We think we gain some ground if we can hold onto anger or resentment, or even hate, for just a little longer. This is natural.

But we are supernatural. Yes, supernatural. Given time and space to regroup and to think, victims can deploy the power to forgive and forever escape the hold of the offender over the victimized.

Forgiving someone does not necessitate rekindling a relationship, or offering complete trust.

It means letting go, releasing the hurt, for the victim’s sake, not for the sake of the perpetrator.