Old 01-31-2011, 07:05 PM
  # 20 (permalink)  
Cyranoak
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 2,052
Shellcrusher...

...I'm older than you but our stories are very similar. Without getting into mine, I'd like to share a couple of things.

The first is that when all this is said and done you will still have your son as I have my daughter. It doesn't make the pain go away for me, but I'm thankful for her every single day.

The second is that there is no time of the day or night your son is safe with her. I'm not doing the tough-love thing here, but I really want you to understand that. My wife, while drunk, set fire to our house (a real fire, as in $80,000 of damage to the house kind of fire). Had our daughter been upstairs she would not have survived. Thank God she was outside playing. Wife also had three separate car accidents with our daughter in the car; each could have been the end for them both. I did nothing after the car accidents because I was pathetic, but after the fire I did divorce her and move out.

The third is that I could have solved my problem with my wife in my early 30s but I didn't have the stones to simply divorce her and move on. What a huge, huge mistake. I'm on the wrong side of my 40s now, with 50 rapidly approaching, and will never get the years back that I could have had with a healthy woman (or on my own). I can't put in words how much I regret and resent this. What a waste.

Full disclosure, after two years apart my wife and I reconciled because I foolishly trusted she had found sobriety. We did it all over again, including relapse and separation, but this time with healthy boundaries in place for me and my daughter to be somewhat safe. Now, after yet another recovery center, but this time with her fully engaged in AA, she is going on 7 months of sobriety. It may stick, it may not, but the last 7 months have been great. However, I spend at least a little part of each day worrying she will relapse again.

This is not the life I wanted for myself.

Take what you want and leave the rest.

Cyranoak
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