“If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative! Know when to close the account.

~Christie williams~

Definition: “One that gives.”

Okay, that makes sense, right?

How about the definition of “Give”… yep… this is more like it.

Merriam Webster is on fire with this:

“to make present of”… “to grant or bestow by formal action”… “to accord or yield to another”… “to put into possession of another for his or her use”… “to commit to another as a trust or responsibility and usually for a expressed reason”… “to transfer from one’s authority or custody”… “to execute or deliver”… “to convey to another”…”to offer to the action of another”… “to provide by way of entertainment”… “to care to the extent of”…. and the list goes on and on.

Give. How much do we “give” on a daily basis?

Or better yet… how much do you ALLOW someone to take that you offer?

Yes I said it… WHAT YOU OFFER!

I’m so guilty of this. Someone will bring me a problem and I offer to fix it. I overextend myself constantly; financially, emotionally, physically and mentally.

Yes it brings me joy to help fix, give, solve and make everything right with the world for someone else. Those feelings are short lived to “give” if you aren’t able to “receive” in return.

Children and partners of alcoholics & addicts are so used to giving. We give in as a child because choice isn’t really given; we don’t even have the ability to comprehend that their is a choice in the first place. I wasn’t given a choice to say “NO” when riding in a big green pickle of a station wagon while my father drank beer; wondering if we would make it home safely; watching intently as my mother gripped the door and seeing the overall dismay painted on her face.

As an adult I do have the choice… to give or not to give. Why do children and partners of alcoholics/addicts not understand that we have a choice? Because of what we learned in our young development years; go along to get along, always smile, be respectful, don’t talk back, follow orders and fall in line.

Or perhaps what we learned was the easy way to cope with the trauma of being a partner to an alcoholic/addict. How to keep the peace, diffuse situations before they escalate, make constant sacrifices, buy the beer or drugs for them so they stop throwing an abusive and narcissistic fit, give them the money to go away so you can have just a few moments of peace or my favorite… bargaining.

I have been guilty of bargaining what I give. “I’ll give you this is you stop doing this.” How did that work for you? I know it never worked for me!

It didn’t stop me from trying to create a “giver” reward based system for the alcoholic/addict in my life. I can tell you personally… that deal with the devil… you will not win.

No amount of giving or bargaining will change what that person CHOOSES to do when they can continue to get all they want from you.

I’m recently divorced from an alcoholic. It took me the last three years of the marriage to come to the conclusion that no amount of love given, empathy, money, time, compassion, trips to rehab, hospitalizations, begging, bargaining and non stop giving would get my husband to stop drinking.

I had nothing left to give. I was completely broken; financially, emotionally, mentally and physically. It was time to stop giving. It was time to save myself; abandon ship, run as far and as fast as I could in the other direction, remove my son completely from this man’s life and his abusive behavior.

As I look back on the events of September 2020; the day plays in my mind like a movie. A woman gets a call from her husband, he is out of control, yelling and slurring his words, threatening to end his own life and others, he’s hallucinating, creating false narratives of text messages and conversations that NEVER happened, hanging up the phone, calling back, yelling some more, more threats, he needs help and she cannot give him the help he needs.

What I did give him that day… did save his life but ended our marriage. I contacted crisis intervention, relayed his medical diagnosis of end stage liver disease and cancer, explained his bouts of losing consciousness when he drinks, his inability for his body and liver to tolerate alcohol of any amount due to his disease and the threats he was making.

He was picked up and taken to inpatient mental health care. I received a call that evening from the nurse stating his BAC was .295 and had I not made the decision to have my husband committed against his will then I would have been planning a funeral. Of course I was already planning a funeral, a death of our marriage and planning for the day when he would drink his last drop.

I stopped giving that day.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21220-hepatic-encephalopathy

Click to access alcoholic_liver_disease.pdf