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Old 01-24-2011, 11:51 AM
  # 23 (permalink)  
skg
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Mgm, AL
Posts: 1,000
I haven't read all the posts, so please forgive me if I'm repeating someone else. Having said that, my wife is untreated, too. The first few weeks were just plain chaos because my head was all over the place, and I put EVERYTHING behind my meetings and my recovery. I acted out alot in meetings, but I stayed sober.
I asked her to give me time, and we were at such odds that it wasn't hard not to see her--except when she wanted to gloat (a hollow cry). I needed space, so I went to AA meetings, and I learned that she was sick, too, and that alcoholism is a family disease. I learned that her reactions were, at least in part, due to my actions. I learned that we got where we were over years of alcoholic behaviour and we weren't going to fix it overnight. I learned that she was acting out of fear and that the me she knew was a quantifiable person--the new me was a virtual unknown entity. That threatened her beyond admission. Fear. FEAR. FEAR.
Today I know that what I don't do out of love, I do out of fear. It's been almost four years of struggles, very little intimacy, and a LOT of change. She drinks some, but we're attending her church once again, and this weekend she expressed a desire to talk about God and biblical things. As I grow, she grows (just as when I drank, she withered). It's a partnership.
The questions early on are not the same as they are after a year of sobriety. You walked together (I presume) into the woods 5 miles, it'll take 5 miles to get out. Call a truce (ask him to do the same) for a year, and work the program. You'll be amazed at how much different things are a year from now. There is no short cut to this sobriety business, and that is especially true with our relationships.
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