shinebright7

Yesterday I told my husband that I am not willing to live with an active addict not in recovery. It was a bold move that just became the next obvious step for me to take.

I felt a lot of security in it and strength. Also a sense of loving detachment as I stuck to my guns as he made all sorts of promises and said nice things.

I told him I don't care what you do, go ahead and keep using, but you need to know this before you consider coming home.

So it turns out that last night he went to his first voluntary AA meeting. He said he is not willing to lose his wife. Then he went to the 2nd one right after that one. He said he felt better, but I didn't jump up and down and get all excited. I am not going to focus on him and his meetings. I didn't even ask him about them.

He said he plans on going to meetings tonight too. They have a great schedule of them where he is. So good for him.

Then he texts me this morning saying that he might come home this weekend or Monday...and I am feeling sick to my stomach.

I have not determined to myself or said to him what I mean when I say I won't live with an active addict who is not in recovery...

What does being in recovery mean? I have not gotten clear about that with myself or with him.

If he goes to meetings yesterday, today, tomorrow, friday, maybe even over the weekend, he could be considered to be in recovery on one hand...

But on another hand, it's not enough to just go to the meetings. I see that too.

He still has things to figure out with his mom, but his sister is flying down to help for a few days so he can have a break then he will need to go back down to help more.

So that's what we're looking at here...the potential of him coming back for a week or so (after being gone for a little over 3 weeks) so he can have a break from the drama there before going back into it.

I know I am going to continue with my Al Anon meetings.

But I really don't like the feeling I'm having right now of being scared and nervous to see my husband or talk to him. Not that I'm afraid of HIM, I'm afraid of my "stuff" getting triggered and not being able to keep being loving and detached. I'm afraid of letting myself be hurt.

I'm afraid of seeing his beautiful face and falling in love with him and making love to him and falling into a pattern as if nothing is wrong. And I'm afraid of him coming back and the possibility of it just being a lot of discussions and maybe arguments or other uncomfortable stuff.

Oh, and clearly I am afraid of saying that I think he should just stay down there and not come back because I don't feel safe yet and in order for me to have someone in my bed, they need to have been in recovery for at least ______ amount of time. (This is the one that I am really afraid of.)

<Sigh>

Okay friends, can you help me see myself and this situation more clearly? Thank you for your support. xo

hello-kitty

I would take a wait and see approach to whether or not he is truly in recovery. Recovery takes more than one AA meeting. It sounds a bit too easy doesn't it? You say "No More" and he says "OK I'm done". Lots of addicts go to one AA meeting to get their sig other off their back so they can start using again. More will be revealed I'm sure.

dasiydoc

I am trying to look at my boundaries and create them based on a risk/reward method. What is the Risk of Creating this Boundary? What is the Reward of Creating this boundary? What is the Risk of not creating this boundary? What is the Reward of Not creating this boundary?

I dont think anyone can define it for you Shinebright, or tell you what lengths of time to set on things for yourself. Think about what you are afraid of, think about what you are not afraid of, think about why you are afraid.

Anyway that is what I am trying to do and Im finding it helpful.

Whatsit

I think you need to go with your feelings, shinebright. If it does not feel right to you, it's okay to say "I'm not ready yet."

Being in a relationship with an addict is damaging. You need time to recover, too, and he certainly owes you that.

Besides, nobody changes in just a week or two. It's a lot of work and takes a long time.

AnvilheadII

nobody says you HAVE to share a bed...or HAVE to have sex.....

you are as strong as you allow yourself to be. if you wanna cave upon seeing him, you will. if you want to stand firm within the safe circle of your boundaries, you will.

this isn't about him.........even tho it may seem that way. this is about you.

trust me, I absolutely adore hank. to me he is the most gorgeous magnificent man EVER upon the earth. man those laser beam blue eyes, that Wisconsin accent, that absolutely perfectly carved...um, jaw. but when it comes to my sanity, my serenity, MY Life? pffft, it matters not. we've been together 11 years now...met on my birthday. been thru some rough patches - ha, that's a gentle way of putting it. today we own a home together, on a small private lake - it's like Nat Geo out our window. the Packer Superbowl Banner still hangs from a standing floor lamp. we have two wonderfully annoying dogs. life is good.

but I still have an evacuation plan. I will still leave rather be subject to active addiction again. I went down that road once with him, picking up a nasty crack addiction along the way....I simply cannot and will not go down that road again. he ain't THAT cute!!!

shinebright7

I am not feeling very strong at all right now.

We got into it last night on texts and I was not detached with love anymore.

I was attached with love and I was detached with anger.

It went all over the place.

I was sick with upset last night. I feel sick and exhausted this morning.

I am so mixed up and just want to cry all day.

All this on top of the fact that I am taking a steroid that really messes with my hormones and moods so I am especially a mess right now. Ugh.

I just want to feel peaceful and happy and in love with my life like I did before all this crap started happening in our relationship.

I really SUCK at being in relationships because I am so codependent and messed up in that area.

I lose myself completely every time.

Have never had a healthy relationship. Ever.

Any chance of that ended when I was in 3rd grade and wound up having a messed up relationship with my dad because he decided he was going to use me to help him get some of his adult needs met. GRRRRR.

I feel like I would be better off single forever.

Really down in the dumps right now. I know I'll pick myself up out of it at some point.

I'm going to an Al Anon meeting in 5 hours and right now I'm going to help my friend dig her truck out of the snow that piled up around it while she was out of town during the storm.

Maybe I'll kick some snow piles and get some frustration out too.

ShootingStar1

ShineBright, I feel for you right now. It is so hard to be so in love with someone who isn't necessarily good for you right now.

How about subtracting him from the equation entirely for a moment? If you think about you, just you, right now, only at this moment, what do you want?

From your posts,

• You haven't asked him to come back yet.
• You don't feel comfortable with him in your home yet.
• You feel very concerned that you will cave in to him.
• You feel very concerned that you are co-dependent and haven't yet learned what a healthy relationship is.
• You are not sure that his initial actions of connecting with AA show that he is really recovering yet.
• You are identifying that stuff in your past has hurt you emotionally and affects you being able to have healthy relationships
• You are very upset at the thought of having him home right now

I don't think you've mentioned any positives about having him come home right now.

One of the hardest things for me to learn since I left my abusive alcoholic husband last July is that it is okay for me to see my life through MY eyes and make decisions that are best for me. For me, being co-dependent meant first, seeing the situation through my AH's eyes, not mine, and second, feeling that I was obligated to take care of his needs first, not mine.

It is okay to say "I'm not ready. I am pleased with your path toward recovery, but it is early days yet, and I need to see a sustained commitment to recovery on your part for us to live together again."

Good luck, sorry about all that snow to shovel!

ShootingStar1

Whatsit

Gentle hug, shinebright; you have been through horrible things, you really have.

You're not alone; keep going to al-anon. You can take all the time you need to heal. Learn to love yourself.

You didn't deserve what your dad did, and nobody has the right to ever treat you like crap again. Nobody.

shinebright7

Thank you for loving me. I really need some comforting right now. I feel so small and scared and sad. And alone in my community because I do not want to tell any of my friends what I am going through. I want to fly to my mom and cry in her lap. : (

My husband does not know that it was my dad that affected me so strongly when I was younger because I actually after years of working through it have gotten to where my dad and I can share space together if we see each other and I did not want my husband to hate my dad and have their relationship strained in that way. (My ex knew it was my dad and when they got into the same space it was not a pretty scene.)

So I have kept that from my husband and he just thinks it was a family friend who abused me. But now that my husband has retriggered all my trust and betrayal issues -- that were also worsened through other relationships as I grew up, my husband is getting the full unleashing of my PTSD type freaking out and rage that only comes out when I am in intimate relationships and have been triggered....and he's just not going to "get it" because he's not me and doesn't feel what I'm feeling and hasn't been through the years of crap that i've been through trying to get over this stuff that happened to me.

And he doesn't get that I was so happy to finally be with a wonderful man where I totally opened my heart to him and trusted him and loved him so openly...and then what that feels like to have him sneak around my back and betray me and lie to me. HE DOES NOT GET IT!

Shooting star, your list was very calming to read. I see that you're right - there are no positives in my mind about him coming home. Only worry and fear and discomfort and not feeling sure of myself at all.

I am just here by myself right now and I don't even really feel safe and secure because all this stuff is being triggered inside me. No physical threat, I just mean in general I am not feeling a sense of security in myself and my life. Then to consider having him in my space on top of this already tender space I'm in does not feel good to think about right now.

I am afraid of him getting mad at me and yelling at me if I tell him I am not ready for him to come back. But then what's the worst that could happen after that? He could blow up my phone with texts or messages, but oh well, right?

He is far away right now. Maybe he would come home anyway though.

I am in a rental place and they don't know that he lives with me because he has a felony so he is not on the lease so I do not want to draw attention to anything by asking them to change the locks, but I could put a 2x4 on the floor between the door and the stairs so that it could not open if he came back against my wishes. (That was his idea to get a 2x4 like that one time anyway just for safety since his mom's place had been broken into.)

So i guess nothing terrible can happen really. He would get pissed. Think I don't love him. Think I don't believe in him and his recovery. Tell me I'm being cold. Yell at me. Beg me. And maybe fly back anyway without my blessings.

He will be wise not to make a scene since he doesn't want our friends knowing what's going on with his addiction stuff -- and I do have my best friend who lives a few buildings over. And my sister lives 30 minutes away. And right now neither of them know about our dealings with addiction.

I'm in a way worse way right now than I would like to be with this retriggering stuff. And I would like to be able to sort it out from the moodiness I'm having with the prednisone, but I can't right now. I'm moody from that and I"m also dealing with my addict husband and we're in the period where he's not using right this moment, and he's been to 3 AA meetings in two days and he wants to come home to get a break from the 3.5 week drama he's been in with his mom before he has to go back and keep dealing with it. He wants to see me and be the best husband he can be.

And I want that too, but i am also seriously wounded right now. He does not know how to help me when I am in this sad scared place. I don't even really know how to help me when I'm feeling so tender and exposed and retriggered sometimes, but I do know that I need to do whatever I can to make myself feel safer and more secure.

Trying to think of the words I can use in my text to him since I still don't wan to be on the phone with him.

Maybe something like:

I am really going through a difficult and painful emotional time right now. Worse than I would like to admit. I'm triggered from a lot of past stuff that is really making me feel scared and unsafe. I need more space and time to get through this stuff, so I am not ready for you to come home this weekend. I know it may seem cold to you and that I don't care. I hope you can understand and respect my wishes. I'm in a very serious emotional situation right now and I need to do everything I can to help myself feel better. Ultimately this is for the best, babe. I love you.

So wordy. Blah.

Maybe:

Babe, I'm sorry I am not ready for you to come home this weekend. I am going too much trauma related stuff right now and I am on the verge of a breakdown. I don't expect you to understand, but I know that I have to take care of myself and I can not have you here right now. Please know I would not be saying this if I was not feeling like I was in a crisis situation. I am not doing well and I can not add to my stress right now. I need to feel better first.

Oh, I don't know right now...

And I could just say it more abruptly:

Sorry babe. I'm not ready for you to come home yet. I am feeling too raw and I need to get myself feeling better and stronger before we get together again. Please don't contact me by text or email or phone until the end of the month. I don't expect you to understand, but if you are serious about wanting to be the best husband you can be, then you will respect me in this way.

Even setting all these boundaries makes me feel unsafe because there must be something "dangerous" that I need protection from so I feel even more unsafe ya know what i mean?

Pffffft.

And then what even if i did tell him not to come?

I try to make myself feel safe? I keep going to Al Anon, I go no contact. I read my new book Codependent No More that came in. I wind up feeling like a zombie around my friends because they're all talking about their dogs and their trips and their work and these things that are "normal" and I'm thinking about pain and trauma and drugs and betrayal and my addict husband.

<sigh>

I'm gonna go lay down before my Al Anon meeting. My face hurts from thinking and pouting.

Thank you again for your gentle love and support. It is soothing me even though I am still in angst. I appreciate your reaching out. xo

Whatsit

Only you can decide what to do, shinebright, but I bet there are other places he can go to get a break from his mom. He's a guy, after all; he can pitch a tent in the woods, ya know?

All those things you'd like to say to him: I have an idea (and it's something I read elsewhere). Write them down, one at a time, maybe one each day, and the dispose of each one, one at a time. Put in the trash, bury it, stuff it in the knot of a tree, burn it in a safe manner, shred it. The physical act of disposal really does help us get rid of our own toxic waste.

Sharing the toxic waste with the addicts in our lives does not help them or us, it just keeps the cycle going.

shinebright7

Thank you friend. I am at my meeting now and it's going to start soon. I am safe and feeling a little more relaxed. xo

Whatsit

You're welcome. You're due for some peace and quiet and time for yourself.

allforcnm

Shinebright,

I had read this thread just before seeing your post. It is not exactly the same situation as yours, but it sure does sound like in some ways "the inner child" is really calling out to you right now just like Weasels did.... I just thought you might like to see his post.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...them-work.html