allforcnm

Hi Chloe,
Im sorry to hear his brother is still actively using; I was hoping maybe he got into some type of treatment when your husband did. My heart goes out to you on that situation. I know it must be difficult for your husband also. Mine had to remove the friends from his life that were associated with his drug use. In his case, it was guys from work, so he asked for transfer to another project and another building. But that is still so much easier than dealing with a family member.

Yes, everything in our relationship was clouded by his addiction in some way, and even after he got into recovery, things related to recovery took on a disproportionate role in our lives for a while. That was necessary of course, but all the feelings and issues that come out during recovery (for both of us) made things tense in some ways, and often there was an elephant (or a herd of them) in the room; things we had not yet worked out during individual therapy or marriage counseling.

It sort of like an earthquake comes in and rattles your house, and when its done there are broken things and cracks in the walls. I think that was the first thing we had to do was look at the damage. The foundation had been shaken, but it was still strong, and we knew we could repair and rebuild the rest. So we just tried to remember all those things that we appreciated about each other, and like your doing started to slowly reconnect, and do things together just like your date nights.

When you talk about ‘anger’ and wanting to fight with him. I would ask is it over things that are in the past, or consequences your both dealing with because of the past, or new things that are causing problems? Have you talked about it with one of the therapist?

I had anger over lots of things in the past that he did, and to be honest I was also angry at myelf for things that I had done in response to things he did, but I was blaming him for my actions too. So a lot of those types things I worked out alone with my therapist. Sometimes I only wanted him to really understand and acknowledge how I had been hurt by his behavior. And once I felt that from him, it was on me to accept what happened and choose to forgive. Some things were just done and he could not go back and change it, so I had to think about what I expected him to do. Is that sort of where you are at right now? You have these feelings and they are sometimes very powerful (out of the blue) and you want to fight with him to release the pressure ?

Couple things that helped me were writing things down and putting my feelings on paper. Doing that made me think about things past and future, and it helped me keep moving forward.

Our marriage counselor also encouraged us to do various sharing’ activities. So in one - we would each take a turn and share what types of feelings we had experienced that day. Not in a confrontational way, but we would acknowledge if something made us feel closer, happy, loved, or angry, scared, confused & then briefly say why we felt that way. And if there was anything serious (or really positive) we were to write it down and discuss it later in front of the therapist. this helped us recognize patterns of behavior between each other, and how we responded and reacted based on the feelings we felt. It also helped us acknowledge good feelings in particular, and show appreciation if an effort was made in some way.

Also really important was that I tried to pull myself out of the addiction stuff. So just doing things with your kids, or working out on a regular basis, scrapbooking, having lunch with friends; whatever makes you feel good about yourself, boost your self esteem and gives you confidence. I took a hit in all those areas during my husbands active addiction period. In some ways now I see that I grew a lot during that time, but when I was caught up in it; I couldn’t see that, and it sort of left me feeling traumatized in a lot of ways.

Its nice to meet you Chloe. It helps me to hear about your situation also, so for coming here to SR.