bygdan

First off, I'd like to say my wife married a drunk. I just am. I was drunk when i met her, drunk when I asked her to marry me, drunk when we got married, drunk on the honeymoon, then drunk until 5/10/2011 when I asked for help and entered a facility. I am still sober today.

That being said. Less than six months after I got sober she cheated one me. Is that just the worst thing you've ever heard? I am having a hard time still a year later even trying to wrap my head around it.

I'm lost. It is a year since I've found out and I fell like I've wasted the last year of my life. Counseling isn't working. I'm scared. I'm scared people will think I'm a failure. We've kept it quiet. I just know if I ask for a divorce people will just assume its because I am a drunk, not because she isn't faithful. I also don't want to bad mouth her. She put up with a lot over the years. She also hasn't gotten help for herself. She is totally codependent. I'm rambling. Sorry.

lillamy

I'm sorry. That's got to hurt.

But let me tell you the story from my point of view, as the former wife of a drunk.

I left my husband. And then he got sober. And he couldn't for the life of him understand why, now that he was sober, I wouldn't come back?

The only thing I could tell him was basically this: I spent the better part of 20 years asking, begging, nagging, cajoling, threatening you to please, please, please get help because I love you... and at some point, I gave up. I got tired of being the emotional engine of our marriage and give and give and give and get slapped (literally or metaphorically) in return. And I hit a point where there was no going back. It was done. Over with.

I have also heard other spouses of alcoholics say that once their spouse got sober, they felt like they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. Because, you know, now he (or she) had finally done what they had asked for for X years. And what kind of a wife (or husband) would I be if I left him then? I've heard of people in that situation having affairs so that they would have an excuse to leave because taking on the whole "sure, you're sober, but sorry, that's not enough" discussion is too difficult.

Those are just my anecdotal thoughts. But what I can tell you for sure is that you can only take responsibility for your health and recovery. You can't make her choose recovery (or even realize that she needs recovery) any more than she could make you see it during the years before you found sobriety.

So, you know, we're not supposed to give advice here, but the one piece of advice we seem to be giving a lot is focus on your own recovery -- because you can't control what another human being chooses for themselves. And I really think that's pretty sound advice regardless of whether you're the recovering alcoholic or the recovering codependent.

And congratulations on your sobriety!!!

SadHeart

Understand one thing: you cheated on her too. Your mistress was alcohol. Your drinking hurt her as much as her cheating hurt you.

No, it's not the worst thing I've ever heard.

If you want her to forgive the things you did to her while you were drinking you have to forgive the things she's done too.

Why are you lost? What does that mean? Surely you are not basing your worth and self image on her fidelity? You should be basing it on what you know about yourself.

Surely your sobriety has value to you whether you are married or divorced, whether she cheated or not? How could a year of your life be wasted if it's been a sober year?

Do you think the years she spent with a drunk were wasted years for her? Do you think maybe she felt lost and confused while you were out-of-it with alcohol? Do you suppose she was scared all those years she had to cope with a chronic drunk? Do you know how hard it is to live with someone who has stopped drinking and is recovering? Perhaps it seems like hosannahs should be sung from the rooftops and she should be kissing the ground in gratitude for your sobriety, but it's just as hard to live with someone who's stopped drinking as it is to live with someone who's drinking. Read more here, you'll see it's a common theme.

What kind of counseling are you doing? Marital, addiction, or personal, or a combo? If you aren't doing personal therapy just on your issues alone, above the alcohol issues, you might want to consider it. It can help put things into perspective.

I'm curious that you are so worried about what people will think and that you place so much importance on who will take the blame and be considered a failure. Divorce is not a failure. People who love you will blame her no matter what you have done, and people who love her will blame you no matter what she's done. It's sort of how it works. People pick sides based on emotion, not facts.

Staying married if you want to be divorced just because you think people will think the 'wrong' thing about why you are divorcing is silly. Very few people care why other people divorce enough to put more than the shallowest of thought into it. You and she can both take out newpaper ads proclaiming the divorce is because of her cheating, not your drinking, and people will STILL think it's because of your drinking if that's what they want to think and it fits in with what they've observed of her and your dynamic. Do what you want, don't try to control what other people think by staying in a marriage that doesn't work for you. (I'm not saying you should stay or leave, just that you should have better reasons for either decision that worrying about what other people will think).

You seem to blame her for being 'totally' codependent and not getting help for herself. But how many years did it take before you got help for yourself? If it took you ten years to get help for yourself, maybe you could reserve judgement on her until ten years from now. You can use that time instead to work on yourself and how you want to rebuild your life, with or without her.

Jfanagle

bygdan,

I lost my wife, also due to her infidelity after I got sober with almost a year under my belt. At three years sober I had a grandson born with HLHS, basically half of a heart. My youngest daughter was abused by an adult church leader and impregnated at 16. We arranged for a private adoption and she is doing great 10 years later and my grandson after 3 operations just turned 10 years old.

13 years later I am still sober and the world keeps surprising me, but I am AWARE of what is going on around me. Obviously getting and staying sober didn't make life smooth and hasn't always made it just the way I want it to be. However me being a drunk like I was for many years certainly wouldn't have helped anything.

I am extremely glad I chose a sober life back in 1999 and wouldn't trade the last 13 years regardless of what has happened. Oh yea, last October I was diagnosed with a very rare cancer, but I had the operation the doctors recommended and I am doing great, every 3 months I have a CT scan and then hold my breath until I get the results and just like the guy falling off a 10 story building going past the 5th floor, SO FAR SO GOOD!

Sober is better in my opinion, but it is just my opinion.

Jon

bygdan

Call it an emotional first post. We both go to individual counseling and together we see a therapist. I've asked her to go to Al-anon, she isn't into it. I guess you're right about people thinking what the want either way. This is my first time putting any of these words down on paper so I'm just as frustrated writing it as you are reading it. I'll work on more coherent thoughts going forward.

wellnowwhat

Everything in your relationship seems to have been about you. You even frame her cheating in terms of the length of your sobriety.

Maybe the cheating had nothing to do with you, was not done "at" you, but was a purely selfish, erroneous act on her part to claim back a little self esteem.

Maybe after sharing you with your bottle, and then sharing you with your recovery, she wanted some undivided attention, if only for a short time. Does not excuse bad behaviour but can make it understandable.

Titanic

bygdan, you did just fine in posting what you were feeling. Awareness and acknowledgment of what we are feeling is a great first step.

Feelings are NOT facts though. And people here who have been through the same kind of siht (addiction, infidelity, "dry alcoholic" phase, separation, divorce, etc.), are simply trying to get you to see the feelings in perspective and to sort truth from fiction, valid bases from invalid ones.

You did nothing wrong in posting, you don't need to apologize, and you can express whatever you really are feeling (without pre-filtering it). Be prepared, though, for comments like those above, which 99% of the time are intended to help you see things differently for your own recovery's sake!

WishingWell

I agree with Zube, go to the Alcoholic forum - so much support there.

But I do think it was brave to come here to this one, first. My husband became an alcoholic 15 years into our marriage. And yes, I married an alcoholic but it wasn't at an advanced enough stage that I could clearly see that. It progressed, as this disease does, until it wrecked havoc on both our lives. It took him a great deal of work, help, expensive treatments to find his sobriety. But through the years the damage done to our marriage on every level and to my life is unmeasurable. Unbelievable when I look back. So glad to have gotten through it but some of that damage remains along with a new relapse so . . .

Your wife is human. She needed comfort after the hellish ordeal of addiction. Comfort that you had been probably unable to give her for years. Is an affair right? Of course not. But she may have been deciding to leave you and this was the only way she knew how to find relief. I don't think addicts fully understand the terrible pain their addiction has put their loved ones through.

I know how devastating an affair must feel. Horrible feeling. But in the end - you both have many things to forgive each other for. The person who said your mistress was alcohol is correct - that doesn't make either one correct. I hope, now that you are finding sobriety, you stay strong, your marriage recovers and you both find peace! It's very doable and all my best wishes and hopes are with you both. CONGRATS on your sobriety - wonderful!!!

bygdan

Well of course its all about me. I'm the one writing it. She'd paint a very different picture I'm sure. I'm willing to answer any questions anyone has and love the constructive criticism, but i hardly think you can nail down my relationship after a few paragraphs of selective thought.

bygdan

I agree tat I cheated on her with alcohol. She happened to be right there with me most of the time tough. I think as happy as she is for me that she misses the old me too. She has told me as much, but i encourage her to say what she is feeling without taking it literally as go back to drinking.

WishingWell

What I really dislike about all of this?

The friends/family of those with addictions - lower the boom on them. Accusing, blaming, bitterness (yes, it's everywhere but not with everyone fortunately) call them an "A". Or "Qualifier". Just - yuck.

Those with addictions call the rest of the world "normies" and point the finger at them. Accusing, blaming, rationalizing . . . yada, yada.

Can't we all just get along? :-)

How about we're all to blame, we're all deeply flawed, and we've all got work to do on OURSELVES? How about some honesty?

Truce?

wellnowwhat

My response was an attempt at an explanation at why it happened from another perspective and not to blame shift. That is why I included the words "selfish", "erroneous" and "bad behaviour" to describe her wrong choices.

Being in a relationship with someone active in their disease and their early recovery isn't for sissies, especially if you have no program of your own.

Katiekate

wellnowwhat

Hello? Moderators?

Edit: @ bygdan: That last comment was directed to Zube.

Your (bygdan) searching for answers is commendable. The answers on either side of this terrible disease, it seems, is not usually what we want to hear.

Dee74

lets everyone chill.

I think everyone in this thread knows the boundaries of civil communication and most of you guys know the conduct we expect here.

The forum moderators will look at this thread.

D

lillamy

Let me try this one on for size -- and again, you know, we spend a lot of time on this forum talking about "sweeping your own side of the street" but I do also feel like understanding the other side of the street can be helpful.

I resented the suggestion to go to Al-Anon for years. Basically, my thinking was "why should I go get help when he is the one with the problem?"

I thought if he just sobered up or disappeared from my life, my problems would be solved. Either his drinking or he himself was the problem -- that's how I defined it.

What I found out when I hit some kind of bottom and started going to Al-Anon was that... alcoholism had affected me, too. Yes, he was the one with the drinking problem, but I had spent years developing coping mechanisms that were unhealthy in order to be able to stay married to him. Someone in Al-Anon said to me that "spouses of addicts refusing to go to Al-Anon because it's not their fault is like if someone hit you with a car and you'd refuse to go to the hospital because it's not your fault your leg is broken."

It did, however, have to begin with me acknowledging that I did, in fact, have a broken leg, so to speak.

I think you seeking answers is, as someone else said, commendable. I think that as a spouse of an addict, if you were my spouse, I'd be skeptical about the sincerity of your seeking answers (and I'm saying that in all honesty, not as an attack on you or him).

Alcoholism is evil. It drives us all crazy, drunks and codies alike. And I think we all come here to figure out some kind of way to make sense of it all. There's no need to get into fights. I'm quite sure we've all done that enough in our lives up to this point. I know I have.

LifeRecovery

I belong here because I married a man with an alcohol problem.

I got here though because he had an affair and it finally got me to the hospital as Lillamy points out so eloquently above (that is such a GREAT line). The affair finally got me dealing with both scenarios as I had lived in la la land for awhile prior to that.

I did not cause it
I cannot control it
I cannot cure it.

The three Cs work in both instances of an affair and alcohol use. My job is me, his job was him. I was very confused with that for a long time. I also found that learning about loving detachment helped in both instances.

Neither his drinking nor his affair were directly about me. The affair might have been a statement about our relationship....but not about me personally.

How they were similar is that they both made me feel similarly. Out of control, like I was at fault for the whole world, etc. Healing from both has been about individual therapy (I did marriage counseling for some time too), reading about affairs (and alchohol use), joining Al-Anon (which helped with both), body work etc.

Just an FYI but it takes at least 2-5 years to recovery from a recovery from all that I have read. I am finding that to be true....and at least that long from alcohol use also.

For me the affair and alcohol use were seperate but related issues. The solution to either is getting help for yourself (regardless of which side you are on in either case).

In addition my recovery from an other affair and alcohol has looked different from my own recovery from an eating disorder. I had to learn about myself (the eating disorder part) before I was ready to learn about myself in relationships.

That is my two cents, take it or leave it. Both are very hard and I feel for both you and your wife.

Also my two cents, but I have seen loving and caring people only on both sides of this challenging street that are here to learn, grow and share the ESH. I hope that is what you find also.

dandylion

Dear bygdan, I also commend you for looking for answers. If you can hang on, and forgive the occassional "skirmish", you can learn so much here. There are many here who have been to he!! and back, as well as relative newcomers. We all have a lot to learn from each other--and do.

Please be patient. I wish you and your wife the very best. Have you read any of the stickies at the top of the page? They contain a wealth of knowlege.

Remember---a day at a time, and the serenity prayer!

dandylion

choublak

Can I ask why you got sober?

SadHeart

I love this. Perfect!