It sounds like your oldest has really taken time to understand his mother’s alcoholism and disordered behaviors and why you continued to protect her even though it was so unhealthy.

A therapist I had told me to watch a series called “Mad Men” and the series took place in my parents generation. I found it and watched an episode and found it very triggering. We changed from cable to streaming to save money and I found it again and ended up watching the entire series. There was a lot of alcoholism in my parents generation and it was normalized. Women were devalued in a normalized way as well. When I was growing up I did see a lot of alcohol consumption and I thought that was just something adults did.

I get angry that it was normalized because I failed to see important red flags that ended up causing me a lot of emotional pain. I also get very disgusted when I come across an alcoholic/addict hypocrite. These individuals are high drama, attention seeking, victim mentality yet they are right in there drinking and drugging themselves. Seriously, why don’t they just admit they choose other addicts because they themselves have a problem?

They won’t, you know why? Because they are addicted to the high of the drama, drama, drama. And don’t even try to call them out, they will rage and have a melt down and call you an abuser. It’s very possible it’s borderline personality disorder with the narcissistic behavior patterns of an alcoholic/addict. The so called love is not a normal healthy love. Instead it’s all about the drama and feeling lost without it.