Originally Posted by Kbagel199

Hi! My story may resonate with some of you and for others it may be new. I'm writing on here to gain perspective and maybe even some helpful advice. So my wife has an eating disorder and has been battling it for 16 years. She also recently (about a year) been heavily drinking by herself every night at home. We have been together for 3.5 years and married for 1.5 years. I did not know about the eating disorder, alcohol problem and the childhood abuse until after we were married. She was very good at hiding her purging and when I found out, she said she needed to start going back to her therapist (I didn't know she had one.) she started seeing her therapist and after about 5 months and a couple joint sessions with me, her therapist told her she wasn't seeing the progress she wanted and she was encouraging EDA and the 12 step program. I was very supportive of this. Aside from the strain of the eating disorder and alcohol our relationship was solid. Very engaging and loving and fun. So she started the 12 step recovery process 5 weeks ago and 3 meetings in a woman approached her about being her sponsor. I thought this was great, the woman is 20 years older than my wife with 8 years recovered and a lot of life experience under her belt. She's also was retired and very active with her husband (who is a recovered alcoholic that she met in AA) in all meetings. It's life consuming for them. My wife's journey started normal...she was attending 3 meetings a week and talking to her sponsor for a 15-20 minutes daily to check in and when she was struggling in a moment. She was very open with me about the process and we communicated about it. I was even invited to one of the meetings the first week and was singing it's praises afterward. I was expressing how proud I was of my wife and that I was honored to be able to support her. Pretty quickly I started to notice changes and not for the better. She was very secretive with the conversations and text messages with her sponsor. She stopped talking to me about anything recovery related. She even physically pulled away. The end of her 2nd week her meetings went from 3 to 6 and she would meet with her sponsor 2 hours before the meeting, go to the meeting with her sponsor and then spend 2 hours after the meetings with her sponsor. She wasn't getting home until 10 at night 6 nights a week. Then as soon as she would get home she would immediately call or start texting her sponsor for hours until she went to bed. I went to therapy to help learn how to support and communicate with her but nothing was helping. I started to see that this relationship she had with her sponsor was very codependent and was effecting our marriage. I tried talking to her about being open with me and using me as one of her support systems (per my therapist-she specializes in this). It was received with annoyance and anger (which is out of character for my wife. She is the sweetest human being I know.) I was worried. We went on vacation for a week and while we were on vacation she was speaking with her sponsor multiple times a day and for a total of 2-3 hours per day. She would do this out of ear shot from me too. This progressed and got worse when we got home. I noticed her taking calls outside in her car in the garage, texting secretly under the table and she wouldn't let her phone out of her sight (again, very uncharacteristic of her). She even took the phone in the bathroom with her to shower and would hide it. One night last week she did her normal routine...went to work then met her sponsor 2 hours before the meeting, then went to the meeting with her sponsor, then stayed for about 1.5 hours after the meeting with her sponsor and then came home. When she came home she announced to me that she was going to call her sponsor. After an hour on the phone she came back out of the room she closed herself up in and immediately started the secretive texting. I asked if there was a reason she was being sneaky with her phone and she immediately got defensive. Since this had started to get bad anything I said was either "controlling" or "codependent". Everything she said to me at that point were a bunch of buzz words that seemed to be getting fed to her. So later that night (she was 3 vodka cocktails deep) and refusing to come to bed because she wanted to be on her phone. I finally sat down and asked her what was going on. She said "I just want to be left alone in this moment." So I respected her whishes and left her alone. The next morning I found her on the phone with her sponsor and when she hung up (I didn't even get a chance to say good morning) she said, out of the blue, that she needed to be honest and she was lying to herself and she never loved me, not even on our wedding day, and that we were over. She followed it up with asking me to leave OUR home that we bought together. It seemed very rehearsed and she had zero emotion when saying this to me. Right after she had said what she wanted, she went into the garage and called her sponsor. I'm heartbroken, shocked and scared. All of this, this rapid, overnight change in her feelings and behavior towards me is NOT my wife. I'm at a complete loss. It has been a little over a week and we spoke briefly, twice last week and each time she was colder and more angry. I don't understand the anger at all. This was her decision and I never pushed. I asked for us to see someone and she refused saying it won't change her mind. We haven't spoken in almost a week and it seems she is going to file for divorce. I read horror stories about sponsors ruining marriages, I just never thought it would happen to mine. My wife was fragile and vulnerable and it seems like she's been completely taken advantage of and manipulated. It's like she was abducted by aliens. I apologize for the long post but I would appreciate any advice.