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Old 09-25-2019, 11:26 PM
  # 41 (permalink)  
Grungehead
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: NC
Posts: 1,763
I'm glad you were able to get sober newhope and have seen some things improve. My experience was that there was a lot of damage done to my relationship with my girlfriend...then wife while drinking, and while sobriety seemed to help with some of our problems with the relationship it didn't fix everything. I came to realize that in some ways she was as sick as me in her co-dependence. When the booze was removed from the equation we started clashing about other issues that never came up during my drinking. Ultimately we ended up parting ways (luckily we hadn't had kids yet).

I know a lot of couples that have done great once the alcoholic one got sober, and I know others that have done great when both parties got into recovery or therapy. But it seems that if one party gets into recovery and the other is stuck in the past things often don't work out. Wishing the best for you moving forward.

Edit to add one more thing: Regardless of what happens in your relationship it's my experience that if you don't deal with the resentments it's going to be difficult to stay sober in the long run. I'm speaking from personal experience on this topic. I have had a couple of long stretches of sobriety (6+ and 7 years) and ended up relapsing over resentments I couldn't let go of.

I now have over 6 years sober again and this time I worked the steps with an AA sponsor, as one of the keys in the steps is identifying and ridding ourselves of resentments. My only regret is that I avoiding doing the steps for over 23 years (in and out of AA) and suffered a lot of needless misery due to my stubbornness. Not trying to sound preachy here but I would definitely work on overcoming your resentments by any means that works best for you.
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