Courtesy

My Al-Anon book, "One Day at a Time", finally came in the mail. The daily entries are short, which is good because it will give me enough time to read them each day and bad in that I wanted a lot of help all at once. To read a bunch and then for things to just be magically fixed. Unfortunatley, reality doesn't work this way and neither does the book.

The entry for today, June 7th, is about courtesy. Courtesy as "an expression of love, warm concern for the other person's comfort." So I decided to provide more courtesy to my husband today - I decided to be especially courteous before our conversation this evening. While he was out running errands I dressed myself up in some lingerie (what the hell!, right?) and then when he asked if I was ready to talk I told him was ready and that he should come back to the bedroom. He was surprised at my appearance. And I told him that we were still going to talk, but that I thought we should make love first.

I don't know if this is what Al-Anon would recommend, but I thought it might ease tensions and open hearts a bit, and I think it did (simultaneous orgasm a cheesy love song that happened to come up on Pandora didn't hurt either).

After making love we had a nice long talk on the front porch and he agreed to doing 90 meetings in 90 days. I feel good about our conversation - and should even feel good about the outcome. But the truth is that he is taking this step because he sees it as a condition of our marriage, not because he really wants to quit drinking. He still does not really want to quit drinking. In fact, after our talk he asked if he could have one last beer. Ugh! I thought, why!!!??? But instead of saying that I said, "If that's what you want." And when he asked if I would like anything, I told him I'd have whatever he was having. The honesty here is better than the lies, hiding the drinking, to be sure. But I am still disappointed that that is what he wanted. Baby steps, I guess. Now we'll just have to see how the next three months go.

It is so hard to tell when I am enabling, when I am standing my ground, and when I am being supportive of some type of recovery. Just knowing where you stand is the hardest aspect of this process.