jmartin

My AW recently relapsed one month out of rehab. Since then she has been sober (or at least, professes so, I have no reason to doubt it). The past two weeks she has been out of town visiting her family.

I have discovered - while she was in rehab, and the past few weeks as she has been traveling - that my time alone has been like oxygen, I feel so much happier and more peaceful while she is gone. It is such a welcome relief from the swirl of stress and drama that she seems to gather around herself, and I really have a hard time not being affected by it.

She is returning here later this week, and I realize that I am dreading her return. She can turn even normal daily life into stressful melodrama, and while I am working at it, it is very difficult for me to detach from it and not get stressed myself, if nothing else just from watching her spin toward a relapse. I posted about her recent health scare leading to her post-rehab relapse, where she convinced herself she had cancer, turned out to be nothing serious. Meanwhile, she has accepted a new job after being out of work these past few months, and her mother is coming to stay with us for a few weeks in August.

Her mom is fine, I don't mind her visiting, but usually her visits are high-stress times for AW, as both of them can be somewhat passive-aggressive. So put that on top of her starting a new job around the same time. I really want to have an open mind, but it is hard for me to not see this as a recipe for a miserable few weeks, even if she manages not to relapse. I am thinking seriously about taking a vacation of my own during that time just so I am not in the middle of it.

I am really working on trying to detach. I think I am pretty good about not trying to fix her situation, not interfere in her recovery, not trying to control or manipulate her. But there is a fine line between empathy and making her stress my own that I have trouble avoiding. Somehow, she has learned to amplify and escalate her stresses into drama, and I find this very difficult to be around. It has taken me years to realize that when she is in this mode, she will not seek solutions or try to relieve the stress, which is hard for me to be around, I tend to get drawn in. The viral video "It's not about the Nail" really hit home for me, so I know this is pretty common) but it is hard for me to laugh very hard when I see where it leads for AW.

Anyway, the thing I have realized is even if she is not in relapse, I find it very difficult to maintain my detachment and serenity around her. She has admitted that much of the time, she is full of fear, and her low self-esteem and social anxiety make it very difficult for her to seek help even when she knows she needs to, and this has become part of her isolating/relapse pattern. I know I am powerless, and while I have been sympathetic, the thing I am discovering is that I am more aware of how it is affecting me. I see the potential relapse pattern, she denies it up until the moment she relapses. She can't seem to use the tools she has learned in AA and rehab to help herself.

We are in counseling, I am trying my best, but it is so hard for me to have much hope for improvement, it seems little different than when she first admitted to me that she was an alcoholic almost ten years ago. I fully embrace the concept of not doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome, I have told her that I feel that is what we are doing, and I am not sure whether I am past the point of no return. I need to change something, just don't have any bright ideas what to do. Maybe just being more aware of it will help me not get drawn in to the insanity?