Mowing the lawn is huge - good for you! I was so very self centered, egotistical and absent from reality = delusional - that it simply takes continued time and patience to have hope of reconciliation. Some relationships may be a casualty of drinking, some a causality of sobriety.
Around 7-8 months I was having coffee with my wife of 32 years one morning. I had hit another milestone and prodding for some sort of "atta bouy". I made a statement like - well, things are a lot better right???? She laughed and replied - you are so much worse now than when you were drinking!!
I was crushed of course. The truth was my ego was so flippin enlarged I was impossible to live with. I only though I was humbled.......what a laugh. I became highly resentful at her attitude - I am the hunter! I am the provider, the keeper of the flame!! Now I am sober keeper of the flame - Why can't you see and acknowledge that!?!?
I am at 16 months - yesterday I sent her a text. I love you dear. About 15 minutes passed and she responded - Are you leaving?? She thought maybe this was a goodbye........I'm starting to think she'd miss me?!?
Last night we held hands as we watched TV together. We were children when we met, now adults. Some emotional maturity in our relationship is finally occurring as it was smothered by booze for many, many years.
There's a passage in the book I read as part of a program of recovery;
The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, "Don't see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowin'?"
Time and space - it's really up to them if what we destroyed can be repaired.
We keep working on us.......and we keep mowing the grass!!!
Thanks for the post, friend - glad you're here.