Things are hard enough when they’re perfect.
But they are even harder when they’re not.
My husband and I did not have a good morning. Actually, the morning was fine. But then I asked him to help me clean something up, he made a bigger mess with it, I got frustrated, he walked away, and I was left to clean up the mess.
I told him he needed to come back and help me clean up the mess that he made (in an attempt to clean up) and he said he would. But he didn’t, I did it myself.
That led to a whole big fight filled with bullshit that was so completely unnecessary all because he didn’t want to communicate or show up and he shut down instead.
Things didn’t get better, my anxiety spiraled out of control, and all I wanted was for things to be immediately better. The longer things went on without being immediately, perfectly better…the worse my anxiety got, the more out of control of myself I felt.
And the more the urge to drink to solve all of my problems became completely unbearable.
It is hard for me to be sober on a good day. But days like today, days where there is tension and anxiety and a lack of the most basic thing I need to function – love…it’s just fucking impossible.
It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good feeling this way, knowing things are bad, and knowing my brain has a broken, fucked up way of dealing with it.
I know that drinking isn’t the answer. And it’s what leads me to be in so much fucking trouble. But it sure does feel like the solution when things feel bad and out of control.
Our personalities are literally polar opposites when it comes to this.
I need it better RIGHT NOW. And I can’t move on until that happens. And if it doesn’t happen, then I continue to escalate internally into a ball of fucking anxiety and irritability, to which my problems can ONLY be solved by loved or alcohol. (Love or alcohol, but not neither. It always comes back to that.)
My husband is the complete opposite. He wants to distance himself, go away, avoid it, not address it, and come back later when he’s feeling better….at which point I feel 2 million times worse and am like a time bomb ready to explode.
So….it’s REALLY something we need to work on, and have been trying to work on, for years now.
I try to communicate my needs in those times, and I tell him that I need this to be better before it gets worse. But I also hate it when it feels forced, so I know I’m putting him in a losing situation.
This morning, when things didn’t get better, I could feel myself beginning to feel out of control. And I told him how I felt, and that “this is exactly the thing that makes me want to drink”. At that point, he told me he loved me and gave me a long hug.
I don’t know if I believe him, and I don’t know if I feel better. The anxiety has gone down, but I’m left feeling so fucking broken and sad. Like I just want to break down and cry…except I can’t, because I don’t do that.
I’m not going to drink. Not right now. At least…I don’t think so. I want to be stronger and better. And I want to prove to myself that I don’t need to run to alcohol the second things go wrong.
Things will go wrong in my life more often than they will go right. That’s just a fact that I need to deal with and accept.
But I have to be stronger…and I have to be better.
So, today, I will try to be better. At least for now…for this minute…I will try.
Here’s a thought – maybe his urge to cope by avoiding and your urge to cope by drinking aren’t actually opposites. Maybe they both come down to avoiding. Because “problems can ONLY be solved by loved or alcohol” isn’t actually true for the alcohol part; it avoids the problem now and pushes it into the future.
Yeah, that’s true. But I only want the alcohol after it didn’t feel better right away. And I use that to deal with the lingering anxiety. Which, yes, is just avoidance.
He wants to distance himself, go away, avoid it, not address it, and come back later when he’s feeling better….at which point I feel 2 million times worse and am like a time bomb ready to explode.
This is a common theme in my marriage as well. Mitch tends to explode upfront — laying all of his frustration and anger out on the table — while I’m calm and trying to talk to him in rational tones. He then walks away from it, leaving me feeling unseen and unheard. By the time he’s calmed down enough to have a practical conversation, those feelings of loneliness have been bottled under pressure and I explode. This leads Mitch to say things like, “Look at how you’re behaving right now,” which makes me feel crazy… and even angrier.
It’s hard when you have opposing needs in these types of situations. Often, when things reach a boiling point, I just want Mitch to leave me the hell alone and to hug me through it. (A frustrating characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder.)
I think it’s amazing that you were able to subdue the desire to drink, and to see it as a problem rather than a solution. That took strength and courage, my beautiful friend.
It’s definitely frustrating, and honestly, it’s my biggest trigger for drinking. When we’re not “perfect” and there’s tension.
I totally understand wanting him to leave you alone AND hugging you through it. I have those moments too, but usually I wish he just could make it better right then and there.
I didn’t drink. And I’m a little proud of myself for it. Because I REALLY fucking wanted to.
I think you should be very proud of that decision, Girl! 🤩