PohsFriend

When I joined up a little over two years ago there were times when I got very depressed visiting these boards. I was still of the "I can solve her problem" mindset back then (Open rectum, insert head) and knew very little. Over that first year folks here taught me a great deal. One thing that scared the hell out of me was that it seemed as though there were few if any spouses of alcoholics here who were happy and the ones who were had found happiness by leaving the alcoholic they loved. That uhm, sucked.

One day I had an epiphany - that's like a regular piphany except that it's online for those who aren't technical - it occurred to me that the reason there weren't many happily married spouses of long sober alcoholics on the board was that they had moved on from the boards and back into life.

I drop in now and then for two reasons, the first is that I understand that despite the fact that my wife will have been 15 months without a sip this weekend and 12/26 will mark two years since she chose to live (2 small but terrifying slips 9 months into year 1) ...the odds that she will have a relapse one day are still decent but not probable and also because I remember how depressing it was when there seemed to be little if any hope and those hanging on by their fingernails need to know that is not true sometimes.

Our bouncing (now standing, walking and crashing) baby boy had his first birthday last month and has never seen his mom drunk. He probably has 150 meetings under his belt .....er, diaper tape though as a preventive measure.

Mama bear is doing well and we are doing well. The drama level dropped gradually around here, recovery isn't easy and the recoveree is dealing with all the sh1t that made them drink without the numbing effects of alcohol and with the knowledge that they did all of the things they did to hit rock bottom. That has to suck. But we've moved forward and she has moved forward. I've watched her mature in AA to her present state where serenity is winning the war over anxiety and contentment is the norm. Our son isn't wild about loud noises because our home is quiet and peaceful and filled with laughter and love.

Our problems are normal married people problems. I took a new job in April and it's a big one so I have worked 70 hour weeks since then but I work from home an average of 3-4 days per week and try to keep my business travel to day trips when I need to see clients. It is odd to have lunch in LA then be home one day before having lunch in miami the next day but the blessing and curse of a career like mine is that I get to decide my schedule and I am a bit of a workaholic so I guess the good news is that I decide which 16 hours of the day I will work and most days I'm in my home office on back to back calls for ten hours. She brings me coffee, I get up, stretch, kiss her and wrestle with mini-me for a few minutes then go back to work. I said we have normal problems - guys who work like me are going to have a pouting wife now and then but that's because she's human, not because she is an alcoholic. It's important to keep in mind that after the rollercoaster stops you are still dealing with an emotional, flawed and imperfect spouse JUST LIKE THEY ARE!

She's had an up and down week - 3 of her sponsor's sponsees have relapsed recently and she's scared. She loves them but can't be there for them when they drink or use and - I love this - the reason she's upset is because having done the steps and done 4-5 meetings every week and her nightly meditation and inventory she is worried that not wanting to be around the drama is selfish. I told her no, selfish is only caring about yourself. Protecting yourself from harm is self-preservation and that's OK.

She's the girl who made me understand all those guys who see a beautiful woman and lose their mind - I still stare at her and think "Seriously? I get to be married to HER? ....wow!" and for reasons I can't explain she seems to feel the same. She's embraced being a mommy and a wife and she loves to make something handmade for her AA friends on 'birthday night'. We hosted those in her group with no place to go on Thanksgiving for the second year in a row and had 20-25 for dinner and it was lovely. She may have a new addiction - baking. Ah yes, my former swimsuit model traded the bikini for an apron and is in search of the perfect cookie this week. I giggle, she laughs, we're dorks.. life is wonderful. Thank God I work like I do - my next post might be titled 'How the hell can a stand mixer cost $500?" I pretend to mind, she pretends to to be contrite and then stuffs a cookie in my mouth to shut me up and we take turns blowing on the little guy's belly until he laughs.

OK, when is he going to get to the point?

...I did. You just read about my life and it is boring, blessedly so, it is quiet and serene and I work too much and need to lose 20 pounds and have a long list of to-do's over the holidays. My life is quiet, happy, content.

I'm married to an alcoholic. She may relapse tomorrow. Then again, she probably won't and you can't drive a drunk to sobriety but you can damned sure drive a person in recovery to want a drink if you see them as an alcoholic first and a person second. I don't look for bottles or smell her breath and I don't need to. I'm sure there are some out there right now thinking "Ha, he's still naive... she's probably been sneaking drinks for two years and he doesn't know it!". I had someone say that recently and would have laughed at them were I not so sad for them. You see, they don't understand what I have come to understand - there is no need to search because if my wife could sneak drinks and keep it together I would never have come here. Seeing people relapse scares her - that's a healthy person in there. The recovering alcoholic who isn't terrified of a relapse hasn't turned the corner yet. She is terrified of making that mistake and losing me and baby boy and all she has worked for. I hold her and comfort her and provide as much peace and comfort as I can and thank her for all she has done to get well and just love her. Will she relapse one day? Maybe. Will I still be around or will the cancer I had a few years ago take another shot and win ? I don't think about either - not a damned thing to be done about it so why think about it. I used to be here every day when I was thinking about it because the fear and terror and rollercoaster of living with the active form of that disease is hell. Now? I spend an extra $100/month on an extra insurance policy. If she trips the world won't stop. I'll pack her a bag, take her to the best treatment center around and I have a policy that will pay for the treatment and a nanny for a month and I'll watch her get a third 24 hour, 30 day, 90 day and six month chip, a second one year chip and the insurance policy is there and we'll deal. We went thru hell once and we don't want to ever again but at least we know the road back now so it scares me less.

What am I doing about it? Going to bed. Getting up tomorrow morning, changing the baby, kissing the wife, making the coffee then stumbling down to the home office where another 12 hour day of calls and clients and fire drills with my dogs sleeping on my feet will begin because my life, you see, is pretty boring but very blessed and filled with love and the sounds of what must be a gold plated mixer and a laughing toddler and that $*&^$@ Bubble Guppies music.

Will drop in to bore you in 4-5 months I hope, If i don't then I love you guys but I forgot my login and password this time and I might forget the URL next time because, well, there may be a day when i need to be here - lots - but then again there may not be and I'll just remember a lot of kind and hurting souls who were there for me at a dark time in my life who I pray for and wish the best to.

There were two keys for me...
1. I saw what years of living with active alcoholism does to people and made a decision - I loved my wife too much to watch her die. It was around 715 days ago when she refused to go to a hospital and I dropped her drunk, crying and furious at her brothers house and told her that if she sobered up I wanted her back but otherwise I was done.
2. A full year later I figured out the obvious. I can't fix her disease, it's her disease, not mine. She figures that **** out, my job is to provide love and kindness and tranquility and pay the bills and we both respect the other's hard work. She insisted that I go to Al-anon because she got full of higher power high and mighty syndrome for a bit but I don't like al-anon meetings much - I'd rather wait for an open AA meeting and hang with the recovering drunks because I have fun with them - go figure. Since I wouldn't do that she wanted me to see her psychiatrist because I must need something... he said I was tired but self aware, pretty healthy and to see him if I got down but otherwise tell her he checked me over good and I am close enough to sane so she was a little sheepish and shrugged and that was that. Long way of saying that I chose not to be with an active alcoholic and I chose not to spend time on a disease I don't have and can't control so OK, she's got a disease that's in remission so... what exactly? Nothing I can fix and she doesn't need fixing. She's doing everything right, she's a devoted wife, mother, friend, partner, lover... and she's sweet and kind. I'll take that and be thankful - she saved herself and spends her free time working on being a better person and a healthier one and serving others ...my life, as I mentioned, is kinda boring.

Here's to uneventful tranquility - it's a beautiful thing to be at peace and I hope you find it and hold onto it.

wegle

Wow PohsFriend

Thank you sooooooooo much!

Your story has honestly just brought tears to my eyes. I am in the very first stages of admitting that my husband is an alcoholic and reading on here has been helpful but also terribly scary. Seeing most people happy because they left their partners. I love my husband terribly and can't begin to think of a life without him.

Your story inspires me that there is a chance that he can decide to get better and we can have the healthy happy life that we/I want. I know it will be hard and possibly a long road but at this moment in time it's a road I want to go down.

Thank you again. xx

Yancy

Ditto. You just described my life. My wife relapsed after over ten years of sobriety. I learned from her first treatment and recovery that she has a disease and I chose to weather the storm. After five years of addiction in relapse she has been clean and sober for two years now. It was worth the wait. Granted, it was very hard on me. My two adult children who live with us were practicing their addiction, too. So I stood by them all. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. No doubt those five years of addiction x 3 wore me down. I'm an old Airborne guy. Ask a paratrooper "how far" and the answer always is "all the way". So, I made that choice. To see them thru to the end, whatever that was. Five years of insanity took its' toll on me, physically, mentally, and emotionally. My recovery is just beginning. Was it worth it? For me it was. I'd do it all over again.

Lulu39

You said it.

It's blessing and a curse.

Money changes everything.

It makes a difference.

ShootingStar1

PohsFriend, what a delight to hear from you and to hear how enviably boring true recovery is!

Please bear with my typing errors - not auto-correct for me, just one handed typing from enexpected (& successful) shoulder rotator cuff surgery last week.

Having had the privilege of sharing PohsFriend company 18 months ago as we both dealt with alcoholic spouses, I'd like to add a bit of an editorial to what PofsFriend wrote about his wife's successful recovery and the survival and "thrival" of their marriage, as seen by admiring observer fom a distance. PF, excuse me for telling your story, and please correct me when I need it. (don't woory about the spelling. I can't fathom how so few fingers canhit so many wrong keys...)

There are 2 things that I learned from Pf's journey that seem bedrock important to me.

1.

ShootingStar1

OOPs hit post somehow too soon Here is what I meant to write:

PohsFriend, what a delight to hear from you and to hear how enviably boring true recovery is!

Please bear with my typing errors - not auto-correct for me, just one handed typing from enexpected (& successful) shoulder rotator cuff surgery last week.

Having had the privilege of sharing PohsFriend company 18 months ago as we both dealt with alcoholic spouses, I'd like to add a bit of an editorial to what PofsFriend wrote about his wife's successful recovery and the survival and "thrival" of their marriage, as seen by admiring observer fom a distance. PF, excuse me for telling your story, and please correct me when I need it. (don't woory about the spelling. I can't fathom how so few fingers canhit so many wrong keys...)

There are 3 things that I learned from Pf's journey that seem bedrock important to me.

1. PF's wife wanted with all her heart to recover and keep her life with her husband and new born son. She wanted to be a safe and loving mother. She moved heaven and earth in her commitment to herself to recover.

2 PF was extraordinarily clear about his boundary: he would not live with an alcoholic and neither would his son. One drink meant relapse and she woyld not b e in the house again until she re-committed and went to detox and rehab and proved her sobriety.

3. Having declared that boundary, PF was tenacious and unwavering. His wife knew that goal post would never move. That then gave him and her the space and will to create as supportive environment as possible for her to do what she had to do: commit to sobriety and do the work to get sober and stay sober. It just wasn't a discussion point. All energy went to creating a successful marriage and family.

It had and has nothing whatsoever to do with money.

It has everything in the world to do with clear unmoveable boundaries and the will to make the best life possible.

Alcoholism never became the focus of this marriage; recovery and love did.

Some of us aren't so lucky in having an alcoholic spouse or partner or loved one who can make this ultimate and irrevocable commitment to sobriety. If they can't or won't, we can't do it for them. You can't fix a marriage one-handed.

I have to wonder - and believe - however, that PohsFriend's clarity and immense resolution about what he would and would not live with had to make a difference. The consequences of relapse were real, severe, and inevitable. Maybe the clearer we are about that, the more chance of our partner hearing the message.

It didn't work for me. My then alcoholic porn addicted narcissictic abusive husband would not listen He did not believe I would leave; when I left, he did not believe I would stay gone; when I lived on my own, he could not believe that I could make it on my own; when I said I would divorce him, he did not think I would really sign him out of my life. I was clear, and I told him that once that bell was rung, I couldn't un-ring it. And I haven't though it has cost me great heartache to leave and lose the good parts of that tumultuous marriage, and the sum of the loss still increases for me each day. When he, now moderating his drinking and penitent about his behavior, writes that he would come and help me with my shoulder in a heartbeat, I cry but I don't give him my address. And I just set up a make-shift art studio in my dining room to try to teach myself to draw left handed. Life goes on, goes forward.

PF,I hope you don't mind me writing this; I feel strongly that the success of your marriage despite alcoholism is an incredible credit to the immense commitment you and your wife made to each other, and each of you, to yourselves. It needs both parts to work.

So I think PohsFriend's story is an incredible heart warming path to success that can and should be celebrated by all of us. And if you can convince your alcoholic that this is what it takes to succeed together and stay together, I'd say go for it with your heart and soul.

ShootingStar1

lillamy

I have missed you and your sense of humor and your stubborn love and your wit and I'm so happy for you and happy that you've got better things going on than hanging out here.

Lots of love to you and your family. Thank you for providing the hope we so rarely see.

Stung

Ah. This is refreshing and inspiring and hope inducing. My AH is on day 4/90 into his consecutive AA meetings and I hope to return to a blissfully simple life like yours, in the near future. I long for the boring and mundane, knowing that it far and away trumps the drama and uncertainty that alcoholism brings into a family, especially a family with small children. Congratulations to you and your wife!

PohsFriend

Aw shux star.. I read her that and she said "you can't go around enabling us and not having boundaries and expect us to get well. We're sick. There wasn't anything about 'I love you but I won't watch you die' that left wiggle room".

We're laying in bed watching x factor - she just got home from a cooking class with some of her sobriety sisters as she calls them - such a party animal that one is. We've still got tough challenges like knowing we shoulda made bambam start sleeping in his room back in July when we moved to a house that had another bedroom downstairs specifically for that reason but we like to stare at him and snuggle him too much.

Money doesn't have anything to do with recovery. Five Aa meetings per week is like 10 bucks per week and back when she was bouncing off the bottom I wasn't sure I could go back to my career and was prepared to take a 150k pay cut if I had to. I was poor in grad school and poor again when she started recovery... Ok not poor but broke but that didn't matter. I know how to make money but it requires oxygen and the thought of life without her forces the air out of my lungs and I can't breathe so that would be bad :-)

I even nauseate myself with that smarmy crap. I was never the head over heels babbling idiot over some woman until about a year after we 'met' through conference calls and emails at work and then one day we met for real at the office when she stepped off the elevator and that was it, done, over. Didn't matter that the executive handbook's guidance on female subordinates starts out 'thou shalt not', I was done. I stayed the hell away from her, would not let her on my projects because there was no way in hell I wanted her with me walking on the beach at night in SoCal. I got her on that one the day I left lol. But eventually she didn't work for me and not holding her didn't work for me either so alcoholism may be one cunning, malicious, heartless, hateful sonofabitch but it ran into something it couldn't kill - us. Gonna turn off the iPad, roll over and kiss my sober wife now, hang in there guys.

Booo

I needed to hear a Christmas miracle right about now
I pray for boredom nightly.
What an incredible testament to your wife, and then to you. What a lovely way to live and thrive. I wish you a thousand more years of happiness, to begin with.

m1k3

Way to go dude! Keep stopping by, it's good to hear from you again. And congrats on your wife for working a recovery, it is a blessing.

BTW, even though I one of those who moved away from my AW I have to agree happiness can be found again.

Don't know about you but I have found that that dark night of the soul has helped me become a better person. I am stronger, saner and more content than I have ever been in my life. It's not all sunshine and puppy dogs but that's ok too.

Your friend,

Hammer

PF -- stayed prayed up.

Not on you for that, but I did not track it in there. The cautions about humility (trust me, I know) are not be taken lightly. Wiser folks tell me the whole AA 12 step model is a path to HP/God and from what I follow The Lord Gives and Takes Away.

When and if the relapse hits it will not likely be the war you are prepared for.

Your wife is wise to want to you to be familiar and functional with Alanon.

PohsFriend

Not a lack of humility hammer, I've been through her worst days and those came at a time when I shouldn't have been there anyway according to my oncologist. I see him yearly, he scratches his head, I tell a couple cancer jokes and go on.

I think alanon is wonderful if someone chooses it, I'm not interested, perhaps some day I will be but I choose to spend my time on other pursuits of my choosing and an alcoholic demanding their spouse go to alannon is about as helpful as the nonnie telling an alcoholic how to work their program.

I've made changes for the better but what works for her isn't what I feel that I need and when she leaves for meetings I have solo time with bambam.

I think the key for us was learning not to try to control things and play tug of war. I dropped the rope and I'm happy - neither of us does well with demands.

One size fits one. Honestly if I had listened to any or all of the warnings I would have missed this and I'd rather roll the dice because it was worth it, win or lose.

MissFixit

hi pohs friend

since it is christmastime, i feel like the grinch for writing this in your thread, but i second what hammer wrote.

i can tell that you love your wife so much and you are totally devoted and in love with her and that is WONDERFUL. she is a very lucky woman to have a man so devoted to her and forgiving of her.

BUT, if she does relapse i highly doubt it would be in a way that you would expect. you have a child now and that changes the dynamic and the risks. most of us who experienced a partner who relapsed NEVER thought in a million years that the relapse would unfold in the way it did. the disease is progressive and so are the relapses.

hugs and enjoy that baby

Anna

I have followed your posts from the beginning and I am so glad that you came back and posted your peaceful and happy situation. It's so great to hear a success story.

I am a recovering alcoholic with 13 years of recovery and I am proof that there is hope. I have a great life and my greatest joy is being a grandmother. I do not live in fear of relapse. I am not smug enough to say it would never happen, but, it isn't something I worry about.

I do hope you return in several months with another update.

alphaomega

This. Is. Exquisite.

My God. Thank you.

Upsetnneedhelp

I will quote some of the best wisdom I have heard her. You said you should "look at the person first and the alcoholic second." The labeling that many folks here do puts pressure on the alcoholic and causes resentments. We are all Gods children and that gets lost sometimes. There is more to a person than a alcoholic or addict who needs endless treatment, meetings, therapy ect....

Rosiepetal

Thank you so much for taking the time to share that wonderful story.
I could feel the love in your home & I am very happy that things are going so well.
As I am in a relationship with a RABF almost 1 year sober I can relate to some of your comments & I also appreciate them.
Hugs.

PohsFriend

We had the relapse. She tripped twice while pregnant.

The night my son was born I dug around in my office for the bottle of bourbon I hid months before for her sake and found it gone and talk about not expecting it... I was terrified and devastated and it took time to get over that.

Thankfully BamBam was fine and the relapse was hidden from me until two months after it occurred.

Three of her close friends in recovery have relapsed recently.

Her sponsee did not relapse today - why the hell not I have no idea because over the weekend her kids got hold of some bad drugs and one is in the morgue and two others were in the hospital.

Frankly I think a lot of the barriers to recovery exist in those who will never allow the alcoholic to forget what they've done and need to remind them what could happen in the future. We know what could happen, she works her program, I have pre-planned for the worst to the extent that I can and so my question would be what else? Worry about it? Remind her of how miserable the bad days were?

I can't drive her to sobriety any more than a doctor can heal a broken bone. I can provide an environment where the fears, doubts and scars of times long past are mitigated by consistency, love, support, forgiveness and acceptance. I can't tell you why alcoholics drink but I can tell you why they don't. They don't drink to drown out the happiness and joy in their hearts or to drive the serenity from their mind.

It's not a weight I have to carry but I have my own mistakes and regrets to deal with in life and at some point we let murderers out of jail and tell them they are forgiven and they get a second chance.

I don't think the question I should be asking is when or whether or how she will relapse. She was sober today. Given that she had her meeting, performed her service work, did her meditation and added another brick to the foundation of sobriety she's built over the past two years I would bet heavily that she'll be sober again tomorrow and the day after but that's not certain.

The only thing certain is what's behind us. Learning from it and using the lessons of the past to guide our future is wise but I don't drive down the highway staring in the rearview mirror any more than than I look at my wife and see who she was when she was circling the drain.

If anyone can explain to me how it might benefit either of us for me to expect her to fail I am all ears but otherwise perhaps some would benefit from spending more time focusing on living and taking life as it comes to us rather than anticipating the worst.

I roll my eyes when people tell me that the disaster is inevitable because without going into much detail, my profession is all about anticipating, assessing and mitigating risks and there are two kinds of risks I teach clients to ignore. The first is the type that is certain to happen and not damaging enough to worry about (like trying to keep an eye on an alcoholic and recovery to ensure they are never exposed to alcohol) and the second type I call the meteor. Ask a dinosaur how to handle that one.

In the middle lie the risks I can mitigate. I can influence my wife's feeling of acceptance and security and help her to feel more secure. I can control my behavior and not keep alcohol in the house and choose to forego that which I would otherwise enjoy as an acknowledgment of my respect for her rather than complaining about how her disease dictates our social life and my behavior. I can spend the extra money on an insurance policy that I hope will turn out to be a complete waste of money but it is there and if she were to have a bad relapse, ie a return to addiction it would allow me to put her in the best hospital and hire a nanny for a month or so to lessen the impact of a crisis.

...and I can choose to accept that I can do no more than that and acknowledge that the rest is either beyond my control or a poor use of my energy.

In all of this there are three words I wrote that matter, the rest is fluff.

Three words.

I. Can. Choose.

It's a luxury that an addict doesn't have when confronted by their tormentor sometimes hence the first step in AA. I can't choose whether or not my wife is an alcoholic, I can't choose whether or not she will relapse one day and I can't choose the form that relapse might take. I can choose to accept that I've done what I need to do in order to have my life make sense to me because that's who it has to make sense to. So I've chosen to acknowledge the indisputable fact of her disease in context. I could die of cancer or one of my four flights this week can end in a fireball or yes, that meteor with my name on it could be racing my way.

Here's the thing.... Let's say that in X days, months and years she relapses and it is of the meteor variety - I lose her and she spirals out of control and that spiral ends in her death. "Wiser" folks might knowingly say they saw it coming for a decade or two or three and told me it would happen but I just didn't listen. Well... the disaster will be no better or worse due to my worrying about it. What will be better or worse is the time between now and the impact of that meteor which may never come.

I can choose to acknowledge it, accept that I've prepared as best I can and then place it in the drawer next to the insurance policy and shut the drawer and ignore that which i can't control... and so I do.

Last thought - if you spent your entire life around someone who was certain that you would eventually fail and prove to them that believing in you is a mistake then odds are you would prove them right. I'd rather expect the best and be disappointed some day then waste my life expecting the worst and being proven right. Right is lonely. I'd rather be happy.

Florence

I can't sign on, and I also feel like the Grinch for saying so. I hope everything turns out like you hope, I do.

I can say that in my house, the problem is not that I wasn't forgiving enough. The problem was that my AH was part of the 90% who relapse.

Those of us who cling to the hope that our partners are part of the 10%, more power to us. But let's not be naive. Work your programs, know the facts, pray, hope, love. But be smart. The miracle you get may not be the one you wanted.