How quickly is it obvious when they relapse?
Didn't think I would be back on here in this state again, but I have fears my partner will relapse back into drinking.
He has done a good job of quitting for two months now. He wasn't able to make his appointment with his therapist last week, but thankfully he has one booked for Wednesday.
There have been absolutely no signs that he will start "drinking" again, but he did break a promise to me on the weekend about taking drugs. I realise this means he's not sober, and I have spoken to him about this now. I sincerely hope he will speak with his therapist about it, but I am afraid he won't. I can't push it.
We fought about this as I had done everything to regain faith in him again in those two months, and was quite successful. But the arguments resembled those we had when he was drinking so much I was left with that awful deep depression, nausea, chest pain, etc that I only recently realised I lived with every single day he drank (the depression was minimal, but the physical signs of stress were relentless). The relief since he quit was amazing.
But I felt it again on Friday night. Our argument even got back to him accusing me of pushing him to do these things. I thought he had moved beyond such irrational thinking. Clearly I was wrong. I can't have been wrong about his progress in terms of drinking. He is not the sort of person to be capable of putting on a convincing act for these two months, and I know him well enough to know when he's lying.
I realise this probably goes against recovery, but I spoke with him about this in a quieter moment, and he has agreed that the best thing to do is to throw the rest of his drugs in the fire when he gets home from work today. I am trying to see this as a symbol of the end of this crap.
As I said above, he is not a good liar, but perhaps I also avoid noticing things. I have a feeling that I would know pretty quickly if he fell off the booze wagon, but I was hoping others out there could provide some kind of insight into how quickly you became aware that your partner had relapsed? Did anyone have no idea at all? I realise most "normal" people could easily hide the fact that they'd been drinking if they really wanted to, but the nature of the addict would probably make it pretty obvious, pretty quickly.