It’s complicated so please bear with me. My wife agrees her dad is an alcoholic. She knows he was absent in her life growing up, and caused a lot of hurt and pain for her because she knew the drinking always came first – not her.
He pretty much always has a beer in hand, never completely trashed (around us at least). Her dads girlfriend recently made a comment about making this year more about family.
This concerned me, I found myself thinking some pretty negative thoughts about how they want to leech into our lives and onto our hard work (we’ve got our lives together) and that I would just not rather have them in our life. I don’t like the fact that I think this, because I’m usually a pretty caring person, and I find myself second guessing my “hard line in the sand” because I know its her DAD and after all he is part of the family.
Up until now, our relationship has been getting a little closer than it was (her and her dad didn’t speak or even send cards for many years). This is clearly because we had a son, and I think he realizes he messed up with her and wants to makeup for it. So he has been buying our grandson gifts, and took us out to dinner a few times, had Easter at their house (which I was out of town for).To me, I would kind of like to limit it to that, and even that is pushing it. I don’t want to be unreasonable here, and I know I need to take my wifes wants/ needs into this as well but now we are running into a situation where she arranged for them to babysit for us and the whole thing is making me REALLY uncomfortable – like my wife is allowing a serpent to sneak up on our child! I know thats a horrible image, but when she told me that is seriously what I thought. His girlfriend musta been surprised my wife allowed it too, because my wife told me she made the comment “dont worry, I REALLY AM A GOOD GRANDMOTHER”. I guess my view is if you need to say something like that, then you probably aren’t! (though perhaps she is just saying that she isn’t the perpetrator of the bad behavior and trying to distancing herself from him).
My wife’s dad also recently lost his wife (to alcoholism), which may have played a part in his change, but maybe I’m just cold person but I don’t think so. I should mention that my wife seems to fool herself into believing the problems between her and her dad were caused by his wife (the one who died). So I can see how she might want to try again with him with her not there, but I think we both know deep down that, while his late wife may have been very mean to her (my wife) as a child, HER DAD was the one who made the choice to not put a priority on his daughter (my wife).
I am torn, because it would be nice if they wanted to be in our life, but I do not want them in our life on THEIR terms of current lifestyle. And I DON’T want for my son to be negatively impacted by this – in any way shape or form AT ALL. My wife and I also agree that these is little to zero chance that her dad will change. I wish my wife were stronger, But I KNOW that she will not confront him about his drinking problem, for whatever reason she is scared. I think its because she knows that if forced to pick between us (HER) and the bottle, he will choose the bottle – and that would open up deep wounds from childhood for her.
So she seems content to receive them with open arms, thinking any positive change they make is good. I agree, but where we differ is that I feel like we need to set some kind of boundaries and limit our relationship with them until they change. And even if they do change, I’ve been around alcohol long enough that I know once someone is an alcoholic they can easily fall back especially when they’ve been into that lifestyle for 40+ years.
PLEASE HELP!!
What should we do? Do I need to be the ****** in this situation? Part of me says “MAN UP” and protect your son and I know that I will do that if I need to, as of now I’ve let her take charge of matters concerning her family and so have been the a nice guy around her dad and his girlfriend. However, if I do exchange words with him, I know it will probably get heated and I will wind up issuing him an ultimatum and then my wife will be mad at ME!
If it were up to me, I’d say “drop em”. Don’t need that in my life. But then again, would I be like that to my dad or mom? Probably not. So I need to be careful, I wish my wife would get the strength to see this situation for what it is, but in the meantime – what boundaries can and should be set without totally driving them out of our life? This is hard.
>>You wrote to much so I refuse to answer…..
Well PISS OFF then mate. It’s my family we’re talking about here and this could make or break it if I allow him to go with grandpa who drives drunk and kills my boy. Sorry to inconvenience you with a few paragraphs.
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You have all sorts of issues and anger here which are unrelated to these people’s abilities to grandparent/influence on your son, who will not be harmed by Grandpa being a bit beer-y. Don’t let them drive, and find something else to worry about.
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K, I can see how you would think this regarding my response to Jacks lazy, unthoughtful, non-answer. Maybe I overreacted to him, but consider that alcohol has been a problem for our family, we have put years of work into figuring out how to live with it, after having it nearly destroy our relationship (before our son). My appeal to yahoo answers may have been random, but at least I put some thought into explaining the situation so people could get as good a read on the situation as possible. Yes, Jacks answer bothered me, but please don’t mistake that for “anger unrelated to these people”.
The way I see it, they made decisions in life. They CHOSE to put themselves first and made a priority out of having fun. Even when it hurt other people. I’m sorry, but thats not the kind of behavior that one should expect out of family. To me, family means you can COUNT on them. That wouldn’t apply here, and about drinking and driving, you try taking away a drunks keys. Some will let you, some won’t.
My wifes mothers boyfriend has been there from the beginning, and is 1000X better grandpa, not to mention two great grandpas on my side (my dad and step dad). I should make it clear that if my dad or stepdad with the alcohol problem, I would step in in a heartbeat and tell them they can be a part of our family on our terms. Why is it wrong to want to protect your family from a hazard?
