Plan Derailed

The toughest part of being a spouse of a bi polar husband is that the illness creates a tolerance for what would be intolerable. I don't mean the final boundary, the one that you absolutely will not cross. I mean the ones that along the way you found out that were not really your boundaries, you just thought they were.

My dad was a high functioning alcoholic. I say that will all the love and respect a girl could have for her father. A credit to my mom is that I never knew that he had a drinking problem until I was an adult. He owned his own business, we had a beautiful house, he was very involved as a father, coached first me then my sister in tennis, went on to coach his grandchildren in soccer. He never raised his voice and was one of the toughest, most gentle men I ever had the privilege of knowing. As a teen ager I remember noticing that my dad was a very patterned man. He drank coffee every morning. Had milk with breakfast and dinner, unless we were out where he would order a Chablis. But after dinner, he would switch to a brown liquid with water over ice or beer. I was well trained. When he finished one beer, he would call my name and hold up the empty can, which was my signal to get him another one. One day I noticed that my mom didn't find this nearly as endearing as I did, but peacemaker that I am, I just laughed and told her it was fine.

With this being my childhood experience with an alcoholic, it was no wonder that I did not see the red flags in my husband. The first time I saw an issue, we were not even a couple yet. We were all drinking and having a blast but he got very loud and had no filter and was funny as he was trying to impress my cousins and win me over. He found out that night that I did not have any tolerance for foul language with my children in earshot. Ironically though, it was his response to my anger that smoothed the evening over and made me fall for him. He apologized so genuinely that admired his willingness to admit he was wrong and accepted the apology whole heartedly.

Through our marriage we had many encounters with alcohol overwhelming what should have been...from drunken gambling binges, to drunken gatherings with the foul behavior or verbage again, to a dui, to having to tell my kids their biological dad had died while he was drunk, to wrecking my daughters car and abandoning it, and then blaming one of the kids when the cops called about the car in a corn field, to making my oldest daughter drive a trailered boat after he was too drunk and hit a building bending the axle and then other times, disappearing overnight. He ruined my cousin's wedding for me, noticeably to others, by sneaking shots up at the bar and then getting belligerent about it when he was called on it. My son and nephew were planning on taking him back to the house so I could enjoy myself but I just left instead. At the same wedding, I took a sip of what I thought was his diet coke only to find that it had alcohol in it. Not a huge deal for most, but I made a covenant with God years ago to only drink wine, not liquor. The guilt I felt was unbearable for a long time.

We tried everything. He went to AA for a long while but then would think he could handle it again. We tried where he would only drink with me and would listen when I said enough, but that promoted sneaking. We tried where he would only drink wine because he didn't really like it as much, but that didn't work either. Some times we would have fun but it just wasn't something that we could count on.

But what is worse than him drinking, is his lying about it. To lie to me means that you think I am stupid enough to believe it. While there are times that I wish I was, I am not. So before you slur that you "haven't done anything wrong" and give me your entire evenings activities for the fourth time, please just know that I would rather that you tell me you messed up and had a drink, or too many drinks and let us deal with that together, than to deny having any and pretend that you can get away with it.

I see that I switched from he to you. The rawness of just having gone through it tonight after a so called AA meeting, the fact that distance will create the inability to prove it does not negate that all the signs were there and I have no doubt. The drinking is bad but the lying is worse. I guess time will tell whether he decides to hold fast or come clean. Either way we both know the truth.