TTOSBT

Wow Barb, isn't THAT the truth!
I learned a whole heck of a lot from my mother. The most important being that I could be a closet drunk as long as I was functional and "looked good". No one taught me that there was so much more to life.

Mle-I loved your share. Very powerful. I cringed imagining my husband doing that. But now I wish he had. I still can not believe that I thought that I was okay to drive my daughter in the car. As alcoholics, our thinking is I impaired even when we are not drunk.

houston,
As far as AA goes, is your wife working a recovery program? That means a lot more than showing up at meetings. Does she have a Big Book, does she read it, does she call women in the program, have a sponsor, volunteer? Honestly, actions speak so much louder than words and she has to want this for HER. I had so much guilt and shame over what I put my husband and kids through but I was the only one that could save me. My husband has very little to do with my recovery, he has his own. He attends Al-anon and sees a therapist once a week. We are both making great progress and it feels good.

Keep sharing, being honest, vigilant in regards to the kids, and try some Al-anon meetings. I wish you the VERY best.

mle-sober

In my situation, which sounds similar to Houston's wife possibly, I agreed to having and using the breathylizer test because I wanted him to trust me. She is saying she's in recovery. She is saying she's attending AA. But he suspects her of drinking.

There is nothing wrong with him asking her if she would mind agreeing to help build trust in her initial recovery by occassionally taking a breath test if she's planning on driving and he's worried about her having been drinking.

She might be relieved to have such a test in the house. If she's not drinking and she's having the stress of him constantly suspecting her, a breath test could diffuse the situation. She might happily agree to such a thing.

If she doesn't agree, it doesn't necessarily mean she's drinking. But I would say it's a strong indicator.

Likewise, if she does agree, it's a pretty potent indicator that she's either searching for recovery or actively in recovery. It is important that he not abuse that agreement and that he only use it for those times where she's about to drive, I'd think. It's also important that as she demonstrates her recovery, he demonstrates that his trust is growing also and stops using it at some point.

After I was sober, my husband still had a hard time trusting me, understandably. But we needed to rebuild trust and I recognized that I was responsible for a large part of that. I was so relieved to have something that proved my innocence when he was obviously worried and anxious. I sometimes got out the breath test and did it in front of him just to help him even when he didn't request it. Because I could see in his body language that he was anxious.

At the same time, I had a sponsor, I was working the steps (he could see me reading the Big Book) and I was logging in here multiple times a day. I showed him the site so he could see what I was working on and why it was important to me.

My marriage is so important to me that when I realized how horribly off-road I'd gone, I searched for whatever ways I could find which would help me be utterly transparent to him. And I've been doing that ever since. We are slowly healing.

I respect the idea that the spouse shouldn't have to monitor or watch the A. But in the very beginning, I think for trust to begin to build, transparency, honesty and absolute forthrightness is so important, that sometimes, it might look like the spouse is trying to control but really the two partners are just trying to get back on the same page.

And where you have a chance to intervene in a situation where your A-spouse says they aren't drinking and they want to drive your children somewhere, but you suspect them of drinking, you should intervene.