When I got sober, there were a lot of changes in the first two years. I REALLY thought that hubby and I were headed for divorce. He DID NOT like the "new me" and things were tense. **What he admitted later was that once I got better, his feelings and sucky life he could no longer pin on me....that HIS problem was in the mirror.**
Long story short, we finally agreed to each go to individual therapy and couples counseling. We did this for over a year. For us, each party had to work and change and in the end, we rekindled our friendship, romance, and now are better than ever. BUT, I realize that not every couple ends up this way. Of the people in my "peer group" (we came into AA at around the same time), I am the only one still married. I also MUST advocate STRONG SPONSORSHIP. My sponsor was integral in me being open-minded and willing to work through the fear...by doing the 12 steps.
Another thing is that time takes time. At first, during the hard times, I thought there was no way that "HE was going to change, blahblah." In the end, I was doing the work to change ME. He could take the journey with me or not. We had two children, so I definitely had skin in the game. BUT "we have kids" was not going to make me stay if we weren't going to work. I was NOT going to model that dysfunction for my kids to copy later in their own relationships.
The counselor told hubby and I that we had set up a "parent-child" type of relationship, where I was the kid and he was the parent. Doesn't make for a healthy dyad. It is not an equal partnership. Only if we were BOTH willing to change A LOT were we going to work.
We celebrated 16 years of marriage on Aug 2nd. He is my best friend and I really admire him for being willing to look in the mirror and make the changes that were necessary for us to be a successful couple. We laugh when we do our "marriage inventory" and talk about the "crazy times" and how our defects were out of control....we were defects looking for character!!
The steps really helped sort out this situation for us....once we were both honest, open-minded, and willing.