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4/14 Interactive Board: Codependent Partners

3/23 Interactive Board: He's Changing... I'm Not...

3/1 Interactive Board: D/s Lifestyle

1/14 Interactive Board: My Purrrfect Husband

12/12 Interactive Board: What if He Could Have Changed?

10/23 Interactive Board: Quandary Revisited

8/24 Interactive Board: Quandary! What's Going On?

7/20: Dr. Irene on cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness

6/12 Interactive Board: Unintentional Abuse

11/7 Interactive Board: Is This Abusive?

12/29 Interactive Board: There Goes the Wife...

11/4 Interactive Board: A New Me!

10/8 Interactive Board: Seeming Impossibility

9/8 Interactive Board: My Ex MisTreats Our Son

5/1 Interactive Board: I feel Dead - Towards Him

4/26 Interactive Board: Why is This So Hard?

4/19 Interactive Board: I Lost My Love...

4/7 Interactive Board: Too Guilty!

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From: Roberta
To: <drirene@drirene.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 1998 3:44 AM
Subject: what do I do?


My husband puts his job first.  I have an asthmatic child who has been referred to an allergist and pulmonologist.  My husband drinks and takes over-the-counter sleeping pills.  He is so under the influence that he wets the bed, sofa, lazy boy, or wherever he chooses to pass out. I clean it up.  His chair reeks of urine. He never helps with the child.


He takes little interest in his condition.  He is into pornography on the satellite, internet, or magazines.  When I am up in the middle of the night with our child, he screams at me to make it stop.  Our son's
crying agitates him, and he yells at me to make it stop.  He has no idea how much medication the child needs and has very little patience with him. 

In other words, I can not leave my child with him.  I am the sole care-giver.  I am a school teacher as well.  One morning I asked my husband just to call my principal for me and he fussed at me and said that I needed to go to work.  Our son's temp. was 106 degrees.  He was lethargic and slept most of the morning.  When I took him to the pediatrician we had to go for X-rays because he thought my son had pneumonia.  I experienced this alone.  I admitted my son to the hospital on two occasions alone.  When my husband did come to the hospital, he was preoccupied with work.  He left me on one occasion to take my son home alone.  I am a very independent person.  Normally, I would not need so much emotional support.  This respiratory situation has drained me. His medical records are so poor that a life insurance agency recently rejected him.

I feel like a victim, but I don't want to play one.  My husband promised to go to the pulmonologist with us to get family history, and then forgot.  He stood me up for the one year well-care checkup. I don't know what to do.  I don't know if I am ignoring my husband
because I am so preoccupied with my son's asthma or if I am in a neglectful situation. My husband's dad is verbally abusive to his mother.  He is getting more and more to me.  He is very angry, even punched two holes in the upstairs bedrooms.  He is getting very insecure and questions/accuses me of having an affair.  He is so far off-base.  I am spending so much time caring for my son.

I have no one that I care to share this with.  Will you please respond and advise me? Am I in an abusive situation? I have a Ph.D. in Marital Therapy.  I may have read too much.  Please respond. I need someone.

Dear Roberta,

Why are you caretaking this man? I don't know whether or not he is abusive, but he is an addict - and he is dragging you and your kids down. Go directly to ALANON. Do not pass "go," do not collect $200. Today. OK? May God bless you and yours.     -Dr. Irene