DoubleBarrel

I am wondering if some of you are dealing with the fallout from a spouse who has quit drinking and is in recovery.

What happened?
Are you still together?
How did you cope with the changes that accompanied their new lifestyle?
What did you do to get over the past, and what does that look like?

I would really appreciate the insight.

Ifeelcrazy

Im still deep in the sh$! and I can not even begin to tell you the sobriety pain I am feeling in my heart. Others will be able to give you better down the road than I....good luck and hold on tight.

CarryOn

Met & married while he was sober; over eight years into our marriage he relapsed. About a year into his relapse I started counseling & started pushing him to quit. Kicked him out of the house in March. He quit drinking (after several attempts) in May.

Yes, but still living separately.

Still working on it. It is more of a return to our previous lifestyle, so that is actually more comfortable to me. I try to stay focused on my recovery (counseling, AlAnon, spending time w/ friends & family, etc.)

Talk about it - I feel a need for him to at least acknowledge the way he behaved. His actions are probably the most important thing right now - attending meetings, counseling sessions, follow through on what he says he will do, etc. The more open & communicative he is the more I feel comfortable trusting him.

We've discussed that our marriage & the way we related to one another needs to change. We're trying to figure out what we want that to look like. Our plan is to start some marriage counseling in the next few months to discuss the issues in our relationship & him moving home.

Good luck to you & yours.

DoubleBarrel

Carryon, did you feel a great deal of resentment or anger, or when you kicked him out, was it detaching with love as some call it.

What kind of things does he tell you that are helpful?

Thanks for the feedback. Means a lot.

ETA, did you or do you think alanon is helpful for dealing with a non drinking alcoholic?

Mags1

Hi DB, my h doesn't talk about things so I have come to SR . But I would love those answers from my husband because it must be different for him also, of course since stopped drinking. For now, we continue and the plus side I have a lot more sober hours, I hope he likes this too. I'm looking forward to seeing more replies on your comments.

Loopydays

Hi DB-
Like Mags, my RAH isn't into talking about things- so it's often difficult to see where we are in our recoveries-

What happened? He quit due to an intervention, life had become unmanageable. Did he want to quit for himself- I still don't know 15 months later. First 12 months were terrible- emotions everywhere. He went to AA, I went to Al Anon-

Are we still together? We live in the same house, we can be friendly- emotionally, spiritually probably not BUT we have a family, home, animals that we share- for the most part we trundle along.

How do we cope with changes with new lifestyle? With difficulty, my RAH lost his business, so now he's home 24/7- that is hard as it is, he was never home before, gone from 8-8.
I find i need to get away as often as possible.the more independent I become, the more unsettled he is- its a codependent nightmare at the moment.

What did we do to get over the past? I can only post my part- 15 months later of almost 3 meetings a week, twice meeting sponsor, al Anon members- I can now say that I can now detach with love and compassion, my anger is slowly been rewritten by calmness.
You asked was Al Anon beneficial- yes, it has given me tools to cope, to be more forgiving- without it I would have thrown out my partner in the early stages of recovery in pure anger- now if we separate, it will be because I choose to go.

I still wish that my RAH could come clean about how he truly feels, but hey that's expectations at its highest.
What does it look like? Uncertainty - I am at a place now where I need to stand still- I am getting ready to make decisions that are not affected by how I feel about the past, but where I want to be in the future- and at the moment I am uncertain as to whether I want to remain where I am- only time will tell.

All I can say is that the way I see it, my RAH has always been the love of my life, alcohol was his- now he's not drinking, it's still difficult for me to know where I stand now-
Somebody here posted a great link to a talk on vulnerability- it is mind blowing. It opened up the question to me, after living with alcoholism for all my life, can I trust myself to be vulnerable? And could my husband? If we both could, now that would be amazing....

I wish you love and light in your journey of recovery

fluffyflea

[


Alanon is very helpful dealing with a non-drinking alcoholic.




B][/B]

sunshine27

Hi DB -

I am dealing with fallout. RAH stopped drinking over two months ago. He has been cold and distant. Going to two - three meetings a day and trying to keep himself busy which is good. His anger and resentment is still there though. After a big fight last week we decided to separate for a while.

It's been really hard. Some days I feel like that was unfair to him because he had an anger slip-up. Some days I don't want him around because I shouldn't have to fear coming home to a sad, angry house.

My husband's behavior should make me want to support, love, and be affectionate with him. I do not feel that way towards him right now. That's where I am at this point. One of the most painful things I have been through in my life and I have know idea what to do next to try to bring us back together in a loving and healthy way.

ichabod

I've been married for almost 21 years. RAH is in his 4th year of recovery. Though an alcoholic for 35 years or so, he was very highly functional (I know some here hate that term) for all but the last few years he was drinking. He was spiraling downhill fast and I was nearing the end of my rope. He went into AA (again, had made many half-assed attempts over the years), took it seriously this time, and has been doing extraordinarily well for the last several years.

The first year of his sobriety was very hard on our marriage, and I think much of that was because of me. In my head, he was going to quit drinking and suddenly me and our relationship would be the most important thing and we were going to skip off into the sunset together. As it was, he was an anxious bundle of goo and when he wasn't at AA he was freaking out over every little thing and clinging to me for support because he had no clue how to handle his emotions. There was no romance or sex. I was irritated with him and distanced myself as much as I could.

The worst of it was over in 6 or 9 months I think. He was seeing a therapist and went on a low dose of Paxil and it helped to even out his emotions. Once the anxiety was under control, our relationship began to improve. In those days, he was going to AA almost every day but it started to taper off to where it is now, 3 days a week. At first, he was obsessed with AA. If he wasn't there or being clingy he was reading his books and talking to his sponsor and working the steps. Our lives did kind of revolve around his schedule. Want to go out to dinner? Sorry, I need to go to my meeting. I should have been more understanding but at the time I just felt slighted. That went away with time.

After that first year, I think I naturally began to trust him more. At first, of course, I figured he was sneaking drinks and lying about where he was like he had in the past but after a period of time passed and there was no indication he was full of poo, I started to let my guard down and THAT's when we started to get closer. I had to work on me and letting go of the past.

How are things now? Good, the best they have ever been. Our only child is in college and when he left last year I think that brought DH and I even closer. We spend a lot of time traveling and just being together and I get the sense that he lavishes me with attention to try to make up for the years I got none. He has commented that he doesn't know why I stayed but that he's really glad I did.

Life isn't perfect, but I am very content. I think he'd say the same thing.

ShootingStar1

What happened?
Are you still together?
How did you cope with the changes that accompanied their new lifestyle?
What did you do to get over the past, and what does that look like?

By the end, at almost 20 years of marriage, my husband was an alcoholic, porn addicted, rageful, and verbally and emotionally abusive, with frequent black-outs and threats of suicide. I had succumbed and lost most of myself to this dysfunctional relationship and I let him control and isolate me. I fled on July 4, 2012 when the fraud squad called me and I learned that he had charged $1200 on my credit card for porn women. My story is in the sticky "What is Abuse?" at the top of the Friends and Families forum index page.

I filed for divorce. He sent me untenable spreadsheet after spreadsheet with divorce financial proposals in which he got the house and I got the timeshares, no value there. I had filed for fault-divorce because of his refusal to negotiate fairly, and had to write what happened in the divorce Interrogatory responses. Writing that was like opening the emotional flood gates for me, and I wrote the truth of what I had endured. It was so raw and difficult and true that my attorney and psychiatrist had trouble reading it.

The fall and winter were terrible for me, with deep depression, walking pneumonia, and yet I began to heal. I found my art again. I began to find myself again in the peace of living alone without the chaotic rage and upheaval that living with my husband had presented. I saw my psychiatrist weekly and he raised the anti-depressant medication dose. I went to some Alanon meetings, but mostly I came to SR and wrote here and read. My grown children were fabulous emotional supports.

I realized that I also suffered from PTSD. I began to realize that my family of origin had been very similar in dysfunction to the latter parts of my marriage, and I came to understand why my husband's behavior had initially seemed okay, then tolerable, then just somehow, my fate.

I began to reclaim my own life, my own soul. And I began to see my own role in the dysfunction. How I had thought it was my job to stick by my husband, for better and for worse. How I thought that his problems were mostly serious medical conditions when in retrospect, those medical conditions were mainly either aggravated by alcoholism or caused by it. How my acquiescence to his abuse emboldened him and diminished me. How my attempts to, in my mind, "take care of him", were actually trying to control him and make him do it my way.

I had as little contact with my STBXAH as possible, and when I did, I went into another bout of depression and anxiety. I had the Court seal my new address because I was afraid of my husband who had, at 69 years old, in the ER with a BAL of .329, required 8 guards to restrain him.

By the spring, I had begun to recover. I finally really understood what "my life had become unmanageable" meant, and I began to understand what my Higher Power and was able more and more to turn over the control of my life to my HP. When I did, the results were amazing. When I took back control, the worrying, anxiety, restlessness and fear came back full force. When I let go again, I found more and more peace and trusted in my future.

In the meantime, my husband had evidently been undergoing his own changes. He told me that he had stopped drinking after I left for a while. Then he had a serious relationship with a woman that broke up because of his drinking. He had refused to stop drinking and she left him. So he again moderated his drinking and thought about going back to her.

His occasional e-mails to me became more rational. We finally in April arrived at a reasonable divorce settlement. The final meeting with the lawyers started with him in a terrible rage, but I was able to persuade him to stay at the table (all those years of dealing with his anger gave me skills), and we got through it. He astonished the lawyers by asking me out to lunch to celebrate, which they had never seen before, and we went.

By June, we were spending time together as we prepared our house for sale. I would drive the 3 hrs RT to the house, and we worked together. That was one thing that we had always done well together. His dry sense of humor had emerged again, and much of my fear had dissipated. He was still drinking a bit, but it seemed under control.

Everyone else in my life told me not to go to the house, not to see him, not to work side by side with him. Most times when I went, I had another bout of grief when I got home. I guess I just needed to know what had happened to us, who we really were. I was compelled to go and work that out for myself, no matter the pain.

He told me that he had finally stopped drinking so much when he finally understood from the Interrogatory I wrote for the divorce how much damage I had suffered from his drinking. He told me he never wanted to do anything like that to anyone ever again. He apologized and said that he thought he just went crazy for a while and that wasn't who he really was. His acknowledgement and validation of what I had suffered meant the world to me.

He asked me to come back to him.

But I couldn't. I thought long and hard about it, and parts of me wanted to very much, but I couldn't. His vile words to me berating me and calling me frigid and telling me to watch porn to see what real women did had done so much damage that I didn't know how to surmount that and ever become truly intimate and vulnerable with him again. He wrote me later that it broke his heart to see me cry when he asked me to return.

I just couldn't get there. The roots of his rage were still there, and he had not truly stopped drinking. At my age, 62, if I returned and it did not work out, I would not have enough time to try to recover financially and be self-sufficient. It wasn't that I didn't forgive him. It was that I couldn't recover with him deeply enough to trust him with my heart again.

So I kept on my own path. I bought a little house in a town by the ocean that I love. I walk on the beach with my little dog and I stop and chat with people as she runs by. I have found my art again, and am working out viable ways to support myself. On my own, I am peaceful and very happy, contented most of the time. I am finding friends, and I am building a new life. My grown children, who my XAH, their step-father, had badly alienated, now feel free to come to my home again, and I see my new twin grandchildren often.

My XAH and I occasionally exchange e-mails and phone calls about selling the joint house and such. We can still make each other laugh. But sometimes his rage still surfaces, and I know I can't go back. I would all too quickly slide back into old patterns that, I believe, still exist for him.

I still feel grief, a terrible feeling of loss of what we had when we first married, of the good times, the laughter, of the potential for what I had hoped our life, our retirement, would be. I still miss the good times, and there were many. I just can't make that come true again.

I am finding myself elsewhere now, running a major art conference, taking drawing classes, going back to my roots as a management consultant and helping artists find their strategic directions. So what I have gained is my self, my independence, my competence, my capacity to give back to the world.

What I - we - have lost is still huge. I keep thinking of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem:

Spring and Fall:

to a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

And, life goes on. Tomorrow the carpenters and electricians will come to work on converting my new attic to my studio. The creative part of me will come to life, soon, again, after so many years dormant. All I do is trust God and move forward day by day.

ShootingStar1

hopeful4

My husband has been in recovery for three years.

What happened: I let him come home right after rehab (huge mistake). He was clean for abut 8 months then slowly has relapsed more and more. I say this because it is quite common in recovery, relapse over and over. He is more of a binge drinker I would say, so it is not constant every day but it's progressing.

Are you still together: Barely. I have advised him, our counselor, his family and my family that if he continues to drink it is his choice and he will have to leave. I told the counselor I can see it is like a gorilla on my back I continue to carry around and I have to get it off one way or another.

How do I cope with the changes: Even when he's clean it is a difficult process. There were lots of raw feelings and getting to know each other again. We both attend Celebrate Recovery and he became active in our church band which does provide more family time which is good to do those things together. The more family time together you can spend the better off you will be.

How to get over the past: I wish I could say. I am still there. Trust is earned, unfortunately my husband has not earned mine with his actions. I have learned words mean literally nothing. I would say it will come in time by their actions if they truly want recovery. If not, their actions will show you that quite quickly also.

Good Luck and God Bless!

DoubleBarrel

Thanks so much for the replies. Your honesty and willingness to share with me are astonishing.

I am having a lot of problems with my wife of over 15 years.

She is totally unable to talk. I actually am willing to discuss anything at all, but she completely shuts down.

She is furiously angry with me all the time, and perhaps at herself as well.

I am trying to hang in there, and give her time, and understanding, but honestly, I am so far from the person that I once was, that it is really hard to tolerate the anger, the sarcasm, belittling comments, and cold shoulder or silent treatment. I walk on eggshells for fear of stirring up this pot of rage.

Just wondering all these things because I am the RAH in this scenario, and it sounds almost like the script I read here has flipped.

I am trying to get her to go to therapy, and I am really confused about how much of this is my own doing, and what I deserve to go through, versus at what point its just really unhealthy for me and my continued sobriety.

All I really want, is for someone to be nice to me. Sadly that seems to be too tall of an order today.

I am grateful for so many things. That is what gets me through each day.

Florence

I really appreciate ShootingStar's post. This topic is meaty enough I could write a book about it.

The short version is that he tried to get and stay sober, over and over again, and I went crazy with the anxiety of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it did! Over and over again. By the time of his last relapse, when I finally called it quits, there was no sex, no talking, no give and take. He helped around the house a little, but that was it, and me asking more was "nagging." I was trying to have a marriage with a tree stump. He still struggled with jobs, making money, and providing for himself. He was lying to me about whether he was sober, and I was always on the lookout for proof that I wasn't crazy and it was happening. He wanted to quit drinking -- no, he wanted the uncomfortable, embarrassing consequences to stop, but not to quit drinking. So he went further underground, and I lost myself trying to find out whether or not my gut feelings were right.

So, really the crux of the story is that I'm much healthier not living with an alcoholic. I have set boundaries that I no longer want to spend my time with people who need to be high to get through life. It's not about being judgey, it's about how depressed, sad, and anxious it makes me feel. I can't go through my life that way.

And in true "more will be revealed" fashion, since all of us codies fear that we leave and they go on to be happy and healthy without us, I watched and waited to see what would happen next. He moved on to his parents, who will support him indefinitely while he plays the same "I'm sober(ish!)" games. He is unemployed now going on a year with no prospects and no plans. He's doing very little differently than he was on the relapse merry-go-round he was with me. And true to form, if you point that out, he will rein down all the nasty, terrible, awful things he can think of right on your head, and soothe himself with a secret drink. So I don't bother. We are nice to each other when we see each other, and I make sure that is rare for my own sake.

I am sad. This is not the man I loved and married. But this new version is also a grown man capable of a lot of things and not my responsibility. If he wants to ruin his life or spend it in his parents basement pretending he's healthy, I'm sorry for him, but I will not go down with him.

Florence

Two things: Does she go to Al-Anon? Do you?

You may be a "double winner."

hopeful4

I will admit I have ALOT of anger. It is a mountain I chip away at and even if my husband remains sober there is so much "water under the bridge" that I am not sure I will ever get over the things that have happened. The difference is I will not allow that anger to overtake my life, and it sounds like anger and resentment, for whatever reason, are eating up your wife.

I will say going to counseling yesterday together was good. It allowed us to both be very honest in a very constructive environment.

CarryOn

When I kicked him out it was detachment with numbness. It certainly did not feel loving, and I wasn't angry at that time. I was very sad & hurt. I kicked him out because I didn't want to come home to a liar every day & I didn't want the anxiety I was feeling from living with an A. The resentment & anger came later for me. I really had to lower my expectations of him...and I'm trying to drop expectations altogether.

The things he tells me that are helpful...that he is attending his meetings & counseling appointments. He'll mention a topic that was discussed & how it applies to him or to us...it tells me he is paying attention & the ideas are seeping in. When he remembers something that is going on in my life from day day & asks me about it. These things, though seemingly little, tell me that he is paying attention to what I say, to my wants & needs.

He will also talk a little more now about his upbringing which is incredibly difficult for him. His father was an A & his mother a raging codependent, possibly an A.

Something else that was helpful for us - him telling me to drop the attitude & suspicions. Yes, it is hard not to be suspicious (RAH travels for work a LOT), but it really doesn't help either one of us when I get in my own head & decide he has done something wrong or hold the past against him, which translates into having a negative attitude when talking with him. So, if I want to have a healthy relationship with him, I have to make the effort to treat him the way I want to be treated - with love, honesty & respect. Starting a conversation with a negative attitude does not allow that.

Yes, AlAnon is very helpful. PERIOD. It is helpful for any relationship or situation - see step 12: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs". AlAnon is about us, not our qualifiers.

RAH was sober for 17 years, but never really in recovery. I see the same behavior patterns in him that I read or hear about from others with active A's. My RAH's behavior was not abusive, but he was living in shame, denial, isolation, etc. He was uncommunicative and not affectionate. I thought we were going through a phase...then he relapsed. My thinking & behavior was affected in the same ways as the other codependent family members, even though he was actively drinking for a short time. Maybe because of the relatively short period of active drinking I was better able to realize that our behaviors had changed so dramatically.

DB, from what you wrote, it sounds like your wife needs some help working through this - therapy, AlAnon, probably anything to help her start. Would she attend a therapy appointment with you? Is there a spiritual advisor she would talk to? Anger & resentment is normal in this situation. She does sound depressed too - I was and learned that depression is anger turned inward.

Both people in a relationship recovering from the effects of alcoholism need recovery - they need to recognize the past and decide if they are willing to do the work to have something better. I think if one is not willing to do the work (either the A or the partner) the relationship will not survive.

Like Florence said, I think I could write a book about it...I'll stop for now. Thank you for this thread & please let me know if you have more questions or would like more clarification.

CarryOn

Thought about a couple more things...

I went through the grieving process for our marriage. My priest is a RA himself and told me early on that our marriage, as I knew it, was over. After really working through things with my counselor & reviewing our relationship I knew he was right. Our marriage would have to be different to survive - I grieved for what we did have, what I thought we had, what we really had, what I wanted & hoped for us. It was awful. Eventually, I knew that I would be fine - whether we were together or not, and I now also know that I do still want to be with RAH.

When he was still drinking and for the first few months of his sobriety, it was incredibly difficult for us to have any substantial conversation - it was really only productive if we did that in the presence of an objective third party. His denial & anger coupled with my anger & resentment were highly flammable!

Florence

Right! And I thought of something else too. Even if he had gotten it together and hadn't done the relapse cycle, I thought that when he was done drinking that we would be on an upward trajectory. Like, there was no way it would stay bad. I had a lot of expectations of how things were going to go that didn't pan out. Like CarryOn, I realized that the old ways of being were over, but I was still miserable and sad, and my AH continued to dictate the house with his bad moods and threats of bad moods if I brought up uncomfortable subjects like money, budgeting, sex, and boundaries.

I really wanted to feel resolution and to feel safe and secure in the marriage with him. That didn't happen for a lot of reasons and it was a source of major pain and resentment. In order to get past that, I had to dive into the recovery process, including leaning on SR like it's my Al-Anon (we don't have many local meetings) and fully committing to individual counseling. These things together really helped me pull it together during that transition, and during my decision to leave the marriage, and now, now that we're divorcing.

Hammer

wow. Fully Understand that.

It does seem weird coming from the other side.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...t-me-well.html


Not to climb into your business, but you are fully working the program?

I mean really fully working the program? You understand? I am really asking not blaming, accusing or anything.

Just seems unimaginable.

I cannot imagine a (what-ever-you-call *us*) who would not fully worship that.

What happens that I see, is *we* see a lot of half-ass from the A side of things and we get POed. Not saying that is your case, at all, just saying how things look from our side that makes us get POed.

lillamy

I'm coming at this from a slightly different perspective.
My AXH didn't quit drinking until I left him.
By that time, he had crossed a couple of lines that meant it was impossible for me to go back to him. Ever. I've met him maybe three times outside of court since the day I walked out.

I can tell you this, though: When I walked out, it had been about 19 years since the first time I said "I'm concerned about your drinking" to him. If he had decided, oh, 15 years into our marriage, that he was going to rehab and get sober -- at a point where his alcoholism was bad but where he hadn't yet become abusive -- I would have been silent and pissed off and resentful.

Because I was miserable for so many years and there was so much built up anger and fury and resentment and I can totally see how if he all of a sudden had seen the light, part of me would have been ecstatic but the other part of me would have gone, "Yeah, so now that you're all sober and stuff, I'm just supposed to pretend like the last 15 years never happened? Really? You really think it's that easy?"

Another thing -- but this is me, not your wife -- is that if my AXH had gotten sober 15 years into our marriage, I would already have started thinking of leaving. And so his newfound sobriety would not be a source of joy for me -- it would feel like a burden, because... as a codie, it's hard enough to leave an actively drinking abusive alcoholic. I would not have been able to leave AXH if he had gotten sober earlier. And I would have resented him for that. I don't know if that makes any sense but... it's like you can't leave a person who's finally doing what you've asked them to please for the love of GOD do for 15 years... even if that's what you want. I can imagine that would have been very confusing to me.