Wamama48

This has been going on since shortly after he quit drinking, about 6 weeks ago....I can't even be in the same room with him. My body gets so tense, I breath faster, I have an overwhelming desire to leave the room. And when I think about him just getting within 5 feet of me, or touching me, I get an involuntary muscle spasm from my shoulders to my knees. Like what happens to you when a loud sound scares you and you jump. He is very respectful and stays a distance away, or if we are passing in the hallway he is careful not to touch me. There's never been any violence or abuse, and for some reason, not know why this is happening bothers me. Its a very big thing for me, I feel like its something I need to figure out, and confrot it in the healing process. Has this happened to anyone else? Did you ever figure out why?

Seren

Well, I've never been abused. My ex-husband wasn't an alcoholic, but he did have an affair and divorced me. Then, during all the chaos he was causing, he decided he wanted to crawl back into bed with me....I couldn't stand the thought at that point.

I think for woman, physical attraction is more than just appearances. For me, a man has to open my mind to him and I have to trust him completely before anything else can happen. If there is a lot of negative emotion or history with someone, that is a huge brick wall.

Considering your history with him, it isn't surprising to me that you are bothered by any approach he makes.

Wamama48

Edited to add.....Not touching in a se*ual way, just general, routine stuff (picking up a pen sitting beside me, brushing arms as we walk pat each other etc.)

Seren

Oh I know you mean personal space kind of stuff. And again, still don't like someone in my personal space I don't feel I can trust or with whom I have had a lot of negative emotional issues.

Wamama48

Wow, did your ex-husband possess an actual working brain when he decided he wanted to crawl back into bed with you?! I'm just sitting here shaking my head. And I agree, if a woman doesn't trust a man 100%, there cant be anything genuine in the relationship. For most women, they cant even fall in love with a man if they dont trust him. So trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship. And my trust has been broken, shattered. I don't trust him at all.

OpheliaKatz

Trust is one thing. It's important to have trust. Okay... scratch that. Trust is everything. For me, the other thing that caused me to feel revulsion (if you can call it that), is that when he was "sober" I was instinctively waiting for the next relapse. It felt like the calm before the storm. Or the dead space before some horrible mental breakdown. So I would get so tense, I would need to take pain killers to untangle the muscle knot in my neck.

Not sure if that information helps. My ex did eventually become abusive.

I think the betrayal of trust is enough to make you not want to be around someone.

biminiblue

Yeah, I understand that feeling.

It would be great if you could find a way to get some physical space between you - even if it's just a temporary separation. Have you thought about how you might get a separate living space while you get past this?

I don't know, when I've gotten to that point in the past it meant I was done. Sometimes it took a while longer to actually make the move.

It seems to be an instinctual protective defense.

Sailorgirl57

Maybe your body is trying to say something to your heart and brain—maybe his recovery comes too late. The damage is done. You need to get out.

TropicalWinter

I think it's very important to listen to what your body is telling you. I would also encourage you to be VERY gentle with yourself in this process - IMO, this is not something that you need to "confront" as much as it is something that you need to work through and heal from.

Using the word "confront," to me, pits you against yourself. Changing the language a little bit can help you focus inward.

Treat yourself with gentleness and compassion. I agree that some physical distance to heal would be ideal.

FireSprite

This is a straight-up response to trauma - it doesn't have to be physical trauma for us to be affected in Very Big Ways.

For me, this diminished in relation to my increase in self-care & recovery. It was a slow-starting, uphill War (fought on many fronts, lol) but the healthier I became, the less affected I was in these kinds of ways.

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/p...cal-trauma.htm

https://www.sidran.org/resources/for...ogical-trauma/

aliciagr

whats interesting to me is your saying it only started after he stopped drinking. So prior to this, being around him didnt evoke these emotions.

There were times I felt like that but it started when my husband was drinking. And it didnt just go away once he stopped because there had been damage done to us as a couple, and my own sense of security in the relationship, in just in sharing the same spaces. I had to work through those things before I felt safe and able to trust him AND MYSELF again.

What kind of emotional changes have you felt since he stopped besides this? In looking at some of your recent posts, one of the themes I see is an uncomfortable feeling he will start up again. So maybe this repulsion is a safety mechanism of the mind? If you were in a heightened state when he was actively drinking and then its gone. The brain and body have to adapt. The brain may be saying no, stay away.This is unfamiliar, what I see wont last.

I may not be explaining this clearly, but I had this issue too, just slightly different time frame.

Smarie78

This is a VERY common reaction toward addicted loved ones. I've written about it myself many times;

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...no-libido.html (No libido)

My theory is that we get so broken down by the disease right along with them, that we manifest all of our hurt and pain and anger internally, and it comes out in the form of total rejection toward the object of our misery, or the one who caused us all the misery. Even if your qualifier is in recovery and you feel like you should be "ok", I sometimes believe that all the damage that has been done can still take its toll. Even when my qualifier was attempting recovery, I felt turned off by him. It just came out of the blue. I would shriek when he touched me. Normally, when we sit next to eachother we cuddle, even in a non-sexual way, and even that I couldn't stand anymore. When we passed eachother normally I'd give a good squeeze and even that I felt a wall between us. One I wanted there. He was a very physically attractive man and I still found him as handsome as since before all the mess, but the truth is that I was so full of hurt and anger and resentment that I didn't want him to touch me or be next to me. It made me sick. I loved him but he hurt me so much that my body just shut down completely, my libido certainly. But even my body. I didn't want to hold his hand even. He was like a livewire to me.

In time, should he stick to his recovery and you continue to heal....I imagine things will improve. Right now I believe you are coping with trauma from the effects of his alcoholism. Trauma can make us very afraid and resistant to the object of our trauma, in this case, the addict. Perhaps work with a therapist in trying to come to terms with this. But I don't believe anything is unusual here. It makes perfect sense to me.

Sleepyhollo

whats interesting to me is your saying it only started after he stopped drinking. So prior to this, being around him didnt evoke these emotions.

This is what happened to me too. I think for me it had a lot to do with the fact that now the cat was out of the bag and I no longer had to pretend everything was fine.
No one knew my RAH was an alcoholic except me pretty much. He hid it well and I enabled and covere for him. Our intimate life had been basically me going through the motions and doing my wifely duties every so often. I tried to avoid it as much as possible. He would usually be interested at 2 or 3 in the morning when I'm just trying to get some sleep. At that point if I wake up I'm gonna have a hard time falling asleep. Him not so much because he usually would've just gotten back to bed from drinking so iphe wouldn't pass out. I honestly don't remember the last time when I was really interested in him physically. It has been a long time. We haven't properly kissed in many many years and I haven't wanted to for a long time because alcohol breath (and just walking into the bedroom at night and have the room smell like alcohol is a real turn on...). That and his preference for porno "because he is a visual person" and blaming his decrease in libido on his age (at that point he was in his late 40s and I think it had everything to do with his alcohol use) has been a turn off for a long time. I had brought up the porno thing before and even though I know to some degree that is normal for a guy (or girl) I felt like it was interfering with us when I was still interested. Then I had my kid and just quit caring because I needed all the sleep I could get and was busy with her. I loved vacations because she would be in our room and so did not need to worry about being intimate. And it has been downhill from there. Once he went to rehab it was almost like a switch flipped because now I could let my emotion s go. I did not want any physical contact at all. All of a sudden it almost made me physically ill. It has been 1.5 years and I still cringe at any physical contact, even just an innocent grabbing my arm or touching my back when he introduced me to someone. After he came back from rehab he wanted to stay in the same room/bed. A couple of times he put his arm around me despite my telling him not to touch me (he says he doesn't remember but he went to the bathroom so was more or less awake and came back in bed then out his arm around me). Since then he puts a pillow between us.
So I get it, and I also get why she may not have had that feeling before. I wasn't necessarily repulsed before he went to rehab but I also did not enjoy. Once I was "allowed" to show my feelings (because had been master at hiding my feelings and bottling up everything inside me to keep everybody else happy) I think the flood gates opened to a certain extent (because I still have a hard time expressing my feelings or being ok with how I feel even if it might hurt others ) and I finally had the guts to say don't touch me and that it was ok for me to not want to be touched.
I really don't know that I can get past that. I have zero desire to be touched by him and after 1.5 years of sobriety that has not changed despite the fact that he is doing really well in his recovery and has changed a lot. I dont think that it a good sign. I know some people somehow do get past that but I feel that too much damage has been done over a long period of time. The hurt runs deep. Sometimes (oftentimes) I feel like I just need to be single so I can really focus on me and figuring out who I am and what I want. I haven't been unattached since I was 18. Went from one bad marriage into relationship with my RAH. But I'm also scared of having to go through a divorce again and putting my kid through that. And I want to be damn sure that whatever decision I end up making that it is what is best for me in the long run and right now I guess I still have a lot to work through as far as healing is concerned (it has been a slow process what can I say). My therapist recently said that if we had split a year ago I probably would not have done all the work I have to work on healing and work on myself and would've been prone to finding another dysfunctional relationship. Rinse and repeat...and I do want to get out of that cycle.

Smarie78

^^^ totally THIS. He use to say I wasn't attracted to him anymore but he never quite understood that negative emotional baggage he gave me is the quickest way to cool off the horomones.

hopeful4

I firmly believe there is a switch in your head that once it's flipped, it's flipped. I became almost sickened by my XAH even when he was not drinking for long periods of time. My mind just could not turn back or away from all the hurt and emotional damage.

aliciagr

This is what happened to me too. I think for me it had a lot to do with the fact that now the cat was out of the bag and I no longer had to pretend everything was fine.

Thanks Sleepyhollo this makes sense. Especially if a person has stuffed those emotions for a long time. The flood gates open and what had been somewhat suppressed now is a raw emotion.

Oh man, the stinky odor of alcohol, and the stinky odor of my husband. EWWW I get nauseous thinking of it. And the huge drunken mess, and how sticky it gets after it dries. I felt like our house needed one of those crime scene cleanup crews after his last binge.

Wamama48

Exactly! Waiting for the relapse, you and I are on the same page in the same book. You hit the nail on the head.

Wamama48

I have explored every option for me to get some space. That would help a LOT. Its not doable right now. I have told him how much I need for him to leave, he wont. No where to go, he thinks if he just stays away from me thats good blah blah blah. I told him Im seeing your true colors now.

Wamama48

My body and my brain seem to be trying to tell me something, maybe Im not listening?

Wamama48

I didnt think of it that way. How do you treat yourself gently?
I have no idea.