Stung

I know that some of you have been burned much, much worse than I have been by my spouse, but I think at the end of the day if our spouses came back to us sober, healed, coherent, responsible, reliable, remorseful and overall normal we'd probably all take them back.

But, how do you repair the collateral damage that they've caused during this addiction phase? For instance, the friends and family that believed THEIR lies, do you repair those relationships? Is that even possible? Are other people just more forgiving than I am? Because I don't ever want to see any of my inlaws again after this, and ditto for the friends who have basically sided with him. I feel like my losses are much greater than just my best friend/husband.

Whiterhino24

when you find out how to work through the repair let me know I will need the advice to try to repair my marriage. I am glad that you are at least thinking about it.

Lewis73

i think about this a lot....she hasnt gone yet! but i still think what would have to happen for her to come back???

how do i overcome the cheating, the lies.....i do so right now by blaming myself for so much in the past - but that cant be healthy. she'd have to be almost begging for forgivness before i really belived she was sorry....her family are on my side, but in a way thats just as bad. they have not helped as they dont know how....so they just cut her out - how on earth do we fix that? and my family.....she hates them, because they are my family - thats all! and her friends think i'm an evil bully threatening her with taking our kids away.....my sons best mate, his mother thinks the police should be involved due to the threats she tells people i made!!!! how do you deal with that.

i used to think a new relationship would be so hard to make fit with a life that already has kids in it....wouldnt it be easier to get back with the old than make a new fit.....now, i'd love to try fitting someone new in - it cant possibly be worse than this

Seren

If I had a husband who was an alcoholic and he had spent at least one-year working a program clean and sober the whole time, then....and only then would I begin to even consider having a relationship with him again. At that is just the beginning to consider stage.

I think for me it would come down to the fact that even if he has proven for a year (or more) that he is working a solid recovery, would I ever trust him again? I don't know. With Alcoholism, there is always a chance of relapse. I think I would have to have a very long talk with myself about whether or not I could ever be comfortable with that.

What do you think the answer is for you?

Hammer

True . . . but . . . .

THAT is a mighty big IF right there.

But sure, IF that were the case, likely so.

Generally -- "sober, healed, coherent, responsible, reliable, remorseful and overall normal" (all that and a bag of chips, as were) is rarely If Ever the case.

Just "Better" or "A Lot Better Than Things Have Been" is usually closer to the case.

Little concerned for you as you seem to worrying ahead (but I do the same thing, so please understand I am not scolding you at all on that).

Having worried this all ahead, as well, here is what I found . . . IF THEY fully work THEIR program AND WE fully work OUR program, then things MAY work out well.

But for the part YOU can do anything about -- like I have mentioned THAT is YOU working your program. Not worrying about Future Him. Worrying about Future Him will cause you to take your focus off of YOU working YOUR program.


Just my experience . . . .

Still working some of that out, because the scope of her lies are so wide. The kids have mostly learned to blow it off, I think her AA gossip girls are avoiding her nonsense, and the folks who may be silly enough to press the matter -- such as the Enabler / Severe Codie that is her mom.

When her mom gets into any nonsense directed my way, she now gets the -- "Your daughter appears to have a mental illness, which tends to manifest itself in addictions. Since she has been back from Rehab, Compulsive Lying seems to be one of her addictions."

Pretty much enrages her mom, but she is not stupid, knows it is true, and her own father had some similar mental illness. (some of the this stuff has a high inherited component.)

As far as dealing directly with the A -- For my part after the 1 year back date (Dec 8) I simply call her on lies when I hear them whatever and say "That is a lie, Please get help for Compulsive Lying, it can be another addiction, you will likely need a strong local sponsor, really work the program, and get competent (therapy-type) help."

Makes her mad (really mad), but not much she can do/say about it, as it is the likely the same nearly word-for-word advice she would be giving her (addiction therapist) clients.

Stung

Seren, my husband is constantly talking about "our" future and I was thinking to myself, even if he came back even better than he was when I married him (as hammer had suggested in a previous post, door 3c I believe) I would still have to tell him "okay, we can be together but you have to leave your parents, siblings and best friends at the door." And thats not healthy either. His friends and family have basically treated me and by extension our daughters like trash these past few months and they can all F themselves. I don't know WHY it is so hard for me to tell AH to go F off too. This man has treated me like absolute putrid garbage WHILE I was pregnant with our second baby AND right after I had her and just about daily since then. Then he has discredited me to our friends and his family and those assholes actually believe him. WTF?! F them. I don't even want those relationships back, but he probably does and how unhealthy is it for me to tell a healthy, sober, normal AH "hey, F your family and friends and keep them far away from me and my daughters. They treated us like crap when I reached out to them. You can keep them, but I don't want them in our lives." I mean, that's almost as screwed up as it was last week when my house was crazy town central, right?

I need to tell my husband to F off but it is so difficult for so many reasons. It makes me wonder what's wrong with me?! He keeps hitting me with "I love you. I'm sorry" and it's like he doesn't even know what he's sorry for. Hell, he probably can't even remember most of it! Why can't I just tell him to go away and stay away and that he should be mourning the loss of me. Then I wouldn't have to mourn him because I could pat myself on the back for finding some self respect. What is wrong with me?

Dear Lord,

If you read the Internet, please heal my heart and my mind. Please give me the strength to tell my scumbag husband to stay away from me. And God, when all of my wounds are healed and my divorce is finalized, please send me a GOOD man, a really good one with a normal mother, because so help me, if you ever put another addict or mama's boy in my path, I'm drop kicking him into the ocean.

Amen.

Hammer

ROTFL.

You are not quite up to the -- GOD! YOU BETTER KILL HIM/HER FIRST (because if God does not kill them, you just might ) Prayers, but well on your way.

Maybe try this sort of popular, one, too?

=========

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

[note: that would be your A, his family, friends and all the rest]

The courage to change the things I can,

[note: that would be you, as you are willing and able]

And wisdom to know the difference.

[note: and that comes by God's Grace.]

========

All the joking aside.

I really do admire you standing up for yourself and the kids.

YOU are a Very Good example to. me.

Thank you.

marie1960

Hypothetically, if reconciliation occurs how do you repair the damage done? (stung)

I had to stop putting the cart in front of the horse.

I had to slow down, get real and address my issues.

I needed a firm foundation.

Decision making was much easier, when I actually understood , what the hell I was trying to decide.

keeping the focus on yourself will allow you to make healthy choices in the future.

Stung

That's a nice compliment. Thank you.

Stung

Marie, I think I need counseling to do that. And a babysitter.

MissFixit

i agree with not putting the cart before the horse.

the biggest thing that has helped me emotionally heal post relationship (and can be done where you are now) is trying to figure out why you made the choice to enter into said relationship and why you have stayed. not asking you to spell it out on SR, but really what appealed to you about this relationship/man? did you suspend your value system? did you get defensive when you felt things might be off and someone else pointed that out? did you slowly make choices that you weren't totally comfortable with in order to stay in relationship and tell yourself it was okay or would get better?

you don't need to answer any of that, but those are questions i had to get REAL about for my own forward emotional growth.

counseling helps this process.

PohsFriend

It depends on what reconciliation means to you and to them. If they are working a program they will get - eventually - to the part where they make amends to those they have injured.

Friends and family who were part of the problem or who they lied to? They need to hear the truth or need to be out of the picture.

Everyone has to figure that out for themselves. There are things that I look back on and realize that I would rather just drop. The person who did those things is gone and the person in her place can't fix it and I'd rather they focus on spending their energy on our future and not on our past.

I don't think some debts can be paid, they have to be forgiven. In any case if my wife asked me "What can I do today to make up for ______" there is only one answer, two words: Stay. Sober.

...and she has and she's focused on being a better wife, mother and person every day.

That's what I prayed for. She makes up for past actions with each positive one and for a time I resented that I was the only one she never 'formally' made amends to until I realized I did not want her to. I don't want to tell her the things she doesn't remember and would have to get over. She's sober, she's devoted to me and our toddler and her recovery and to sponsoring and guiding others to reclaim their life.

So before she offered the apologies and asked about amends I told her I forgive her, period, and drew a line that we agreed not to venture across in our past and we started over at 0-0. She's sober... not just dry... sober and we are making steady progress individually and jointly toward building the future we want for ourselves, our son and one another. Nothing else, and no one else, gets in the way of that.

No amends for the past will make you as happy as a good future, I suggest focusing there.

MissFixit

hi

i have to respectfully disagree about living with someone who doesn't make amends for their past bad behavior. FOR ME (not anyone else) i could not live with myself and be cool with someone who didn't acknowledge or apologize for the hurt and pain they caused. i do not think that someone needs to be emotionally beaten everyday for hurt they caused in the past, but just a blanket "i forgive you" and without acknowledgement on their end for what they actually did is not something that i could (in a healthy way in the long term) live with. just my opinion.

m1k3

I would not take her back no matter how long she had been sober, how strong of a recovery she worked, not even if she had a choir of Angels behind her singing about how wonderful she is.

There is nothing she can do to undo the damage, to apologize for the damage, to make amends for the damage.

I don't hate her, I have forgiven her but I will never reconcile with her. I believe that there is still a part of me that loves her but that doesn't change anything.

Your friend,

Stung

MissFix, mostly because of our kids. If we didn't have kids, had I not recently had a baby, I would have been long gone when things turned bad. Being pregnant pretty much had me stuck, having just had a baby and a 2 year old made me feel stuck. Before it was just him more or less chipping away at himself and taking me down with him. When he brought our daughter into the mix last Sunday, I hit my boiling point. Mama bear came out.

With time to reflect, his behavior has been disgusting. I moseyed over to the alcoholics board last night where there was a post about how the drunk version of an alcoholic isn't their "real self" and they all agree its not who they are, but I disagree. I've been drunk. I don't become a different person or have a different personality, it just lowers your inhibitions and removes your filter of what you know to be acceptable to do and say (much like a toddler who hits someone, only they're tiny, new people who don't know better. Adults, even very drunk ones know better.) With that in mind, my husband is not a good guy, he thinks and feels some really bad things and when he's drunk he doesn't them hold back.

Poh, I really enjoy your story because it is happy. But I looked under the "success stories" stickie thinking I'd see many more stories like yours and to my surprise, there are none. I'm very happy that things have worked out for you so well, but I think you and your wife are a statistical outlier. I think you're the Babe Ruth of this board. I mean that in the nicest way possible.

formyboys

Man, for so long I begged/prayed for this hypothetical situation to happen...literally on the floor sobbing begging for this, with no thought as to how I would handle it, just bring him back ......ugg

The thought of that now is so overwhelming it makes me sick to my stomach...although I still want the fantasy, im realizing more and more how impossible that is on so many levels.

Florence

1) At some point I reluctantly reconciled believing that he was properly sorry. As it turns out, I hadn't yet learned the difference between regret and self-pity. Whatever he felt towards me wasn't "sorry." Ultimately, I think all the "sober, healed, coherent, responsible, reliable, remorseful and overall normal" is a Lifetime movie. The reality is that addiction usually doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens in a system of dysfunction, and in order for "sober, healed, coherent, responsible, reliable, remorseful and overall normal" to happen, the entirety of the sick system also has to be healed. The likelihood of that, and of me being able to survive it as an anxious codependent, is so small, and the anxiety would probably make me pop like a balloon. I know some people are able to heal together, but knowing myself and my experiences, I can't imagine a situation where a codependent and addict heal together under the same roof, especially not me. A good deal of my crazy is being in close proximity to someone else's crazy.

2) What Mike said. The sheer insanity and emotional unreliability of his behavior towards me is and was so completely unacceptable. There is no reconciliation.

Seren

Stung Whenever you are ready to do what you think is best, you will know.

There are happy endings between couples, but I think for couples in which the alcoholic and spouse are both working good recovery programs, well, they are just out living a happy life! Most of them don't come back and post here because they no longer feel the need for this place--which is a good thing

I think Poh's story is amazing to many of us here because he is one of the only ones to come back and share his experience. There are a couple of members who post in the F&F of Substance Abusers forum who are working on and staying in their marriages--their spouses are working at recovery.

I think successful and happy marriages with alcoholics require commitment, hard work on the part of both, and acceptance--acceptance of the fact that recovery is a lifelong process and acceptance of the fact that relapse is always a possibility.

And this last bit, in my experience, is helpful whether or not alcoholism has ever been part of the picture....neither member of the couple can keep beating the other one up for mistakes made in the past. If mistakes were made and progress to change is happening, it's important to let go of the past. If you can't, then it's not fair to the other person, and it's painful and stressful to you.

atalose

NO - not knowing what I know today about relapse I would not go back.

I will never put my hope and dreams into the hands of anyone who’s best coping skills and decisions are to drink/drug away life as it comes at them.

When the solution to this mental illness disease is solely left up to the addict/alcoholic who’s spent the better part of their adult lives drinking/drugging - No I don’t have allot of faith.

I’m certainly not saying it can’t be done, it can I’ve scene it! I’ve witnessed people turn their entire lives around and are living productive healthy lives today.

BUT

I have also witnessed people pull themselves out of that deep dark hole, fight and claw their way back, work programs, go to rehab, counseling find jobs, reconcile with family and friends then one bad decision to drink/drug leads them right back down that hole and the family and friends hurt, disappointed and confused all over again and again and again.


For me personally I don’t want to spend YEARS waiting around to see if someone else “get’s it” if they stick to recovery or not…….I want to be happy TODAY. I want peace in my life TODAY. I only have 1 life to live, there are no do-overs it’s now or never and I am choosing NOW.

BoxinRotz

I'm going to disagree respectfully. Only because I've been drunk. I posted in that thread. I don't feel as though alcohol makes my husband's true feelings come out. It just makes him crazy once he hits his limit and that is going into a 2nd pint or a 5th of vodka. Once there, he is a monster. That is NOT who he is sober. When we drink, we don't drink to see how many bottles we can down so we don't experience the *spirits* they do or have. If we did drink like that, who are you or I to say we wouldn't turn into someone who became beligerant, angry, hostile, lie to protect our drink, blame others because our life sucks so bad, and verbally abuse anyone within eye sight? We don't know but I know my husband enough to say that he is not a diabolical monster when sober. He's quite the opposite and very quiet, loving and has a lot of patience.

As far as reconciling. I did not leave my husband after all he did. You are new here and I don't know if you know but he was on a hell ride and he got it. He totaled his motorcycle without a helmet and suffered massive head trauma, bleeding on the brain and lacerations among other things. He still drank after the accident and did not sober up until he was faced with brain surgery in Sept.

I forgave him. He can never, ever take back what he did. He has a lot of guilt and shame about it all from drinking, being a total fool, treating me badly and enduring that horrific accident. He is paying his dues and I have no business making his life worse because I want him to pay up for how I feel. When I forgave him, I had to let that go. He said he was sorry. He said he was wrong. He said, things will be different. I have to wait and see and I'm seeing.

I have seen him change. I am watching him heal, although slowly. We live a very peaceful life. It's the life I wanted all along when I first met him. I don't need to take 1 1/2 hours to get ready to go out to eat. I don't want to sit at a bar and go to concerts. I just want to go to work, come home and relax. That is our life. We used to get on the bike and go but that is gone now. We have a pool and that has essentially replaced the mini vacations/rides we took on the bike when he was sober (I wouldn't ride if I knew he was drunk).

As I said, my husband apologized. I accepted. When he tells me he tells everyone at work that I have been a good wife and partner to him by sticking by him, taking care of him and not leaving him at his ugliest, that is amends enough for me to know he has come a long way and we still have a long way to go. He was just talking to a guy last night who is having marital issues and how his wife wouldn't even take him to the hospital. My husband said, My wife is soooo good to me. She took care of me. Made sure I was at the drs and had all my pills done up and made me listen to drs orders. (Is everyone here laughing their a$$es off like I was?!)

I'm not going to sit here and say he'll never go back. He went back after 20 years. If and when he does go back, he will have to fight for his life again and I will have to fight for mine and PRAY that God will see us through. I love him deeply. It's not a fight I would like to fight but he is an alcoholic for life and I have accepted that more so after the accident and all I've been through. I feel that I've gained much insight into his alcoholism if it does happen again, I'll be better prepared to deal than I was the first time I stepped foot on this forum. He is a wonderful person and seeing him free of the demon is worth the time I have committed to him and promised when I married him. For better or worse and sickness and in health. He's my best friend stung.

As far as his mother and siblings go, they had been cut out before his accident. They are all alcoholics just like he is. His mother used to love me until I told her that we would end up at the funeral home if she kept giving him vodka when he came over. After that, I became a wretched bitch to her and surprise, surprise... if you could see my face, you'd know I don't give a rat's ass about hurting her drunk feelers or putting a damper on her fun-filled vodka binges with him. They all stopped calling a year before his accident. Then he's laid up and his sister is telling my step son she's calling the hospital. NOT! I blocked them. I have not received one call from his alcoholic mother. And he was the one who gave them up because she disrespected me to him when I wasn't there and he was probably drunk at the time.

It can work but you have to want it just as much as he does. You can forgive but you don't forget.

P.S. This is us. This is how we have moved on. Individual mileage may vary. This is working for us.