Loving Recovering: They just don't get it!

Last weekend my husband's parents called to invite us out to dinner. Actually it felt more like a demand than an invite. You see they feel 'everyone' must celebrate their anniversary. They celebrate over an entire week, making sure everyone gets a chance to congratulate them appropriately.

So there we were out to dinner and it comes out in conversation that holy shit, it's been almost a whole year that my wonderful amazing husband has been sober. Well, I guess this strikes some chord in them because any mention of my husbands addiction seems to bring about this cold icy feeling from his parents. I start to shiver.

My husband's addiction,the "A" word, you see is an embarassment for his parents. I think my husband (and therefore myself) is an embarassment for them and my feeling is this is what gave him his great sense of low self esteem. I mention that it would be great to celebrate his one year anniversary. No reaction! Well, I wouldn't say 'no reaction' because I started to feel the cold wind blowing across the table. I was speaking the "A" word and in public yet!!!

There we were celebrating their wedding anniversary with the two most miserably married people I have ever met and they couldn't even give us ..............I don't know what but give us something, perhaps a nod, a smile, some acknowledgement that there is another anniversary worthy of celebrating. What I want to say to them is "Fuck you both". What I do is move on to another subject feeling hurt and even more hurt for my husband.

I feel like they won, as if this is some kind of competition as to who makes the rules regarding the "A" word. I'm the type of person you can hurt many times and I'll just keep thinking you don't truly mean it. But I've talked this over with other people (because I don't have a lot of confidence in my own judgement) and they seem to think that his parents are well aware that they are hurting him. So because I don't have it in me to tell them how I feel, I'm blogging this and since they would never read this I am going to be real brave and say it here.