FireSprite

I think that most of us struggle with this. One of the truest statements ever said is that you'll know you're there when "the pain of staying is greater than the pain of leaving".

Basically, when change is no longer such a terrifying idea. It's not always about leaving.

I know that when I hit that point, there was NO mistaking it. I was D.O.N.E. putting myself second behind anything else in my life, in any way, shape or form.

Don't waste time searching out success stories - we're ALL success stories in one way or another & none of us measure our "success" by staying or leaving our relationships because that isn't what validates our growth or healing.

For the record (so you don't have to search my history ), I am still with RAH & we are both in recovery (almost 6 yrs for me).... but of course, it isn't *that* simple. It never is, lol.

honeypig

Have you considered going to an open AA meeting? ("Open" is the term for a meeting where anyone is welcome, not just A's--these meetings have speakers who are recovering A's who tell what it used to be like, how it changed, and what it's like now.) One way this would be useful to you would be in showing you what true recovery looks like and the kind of and amount of work it takes to find recovery. Another way this might be useful is in perhaps showing you "success stories" of the type you're interested in. It will also help you in seeing more clearly how close or far your AW may be to seeking recovery, and thus help you make decisions about how you wish to move forward w/your own life.

Also, you said you had just stumbled across this forum, so I want to make sure you're aware of the "stickies" at the top of the page. They are a wealth of information about alcoholism, and I'd urge you to read as much there as you can, if you haven't seen them yet.

honeypig

AMEN, FireSprite, a great big honking AMEN to that!

SmallButMighty

I left my alcoholic husband after two and a half decades and two kids together. However, I'm much healthier and happier so that is success to me.

My mother stayed married to my father for 50 years. He never stopped drinking and she never stopped living life as a full blown codie. She found him dying in their bed. He succumbed to his alcohol related heart disease(s) before help could arrive. I'm not sure you can call that a success either. They stayed unhappily married for a long time. I think that's devastating.

I think for a relationship to be able to survive the storm, both partners have to agree to get healthy and work on staying that way forever. Rarely happens where addicts are concerned.

I made different choices than my mother because I didn't want to waste the rest of my life being painfully tied up in someone else poor choices.

I love my mum with all my heart. She embodies so many qualities I wish I possessed...and for a while I shared her codependent qualities. I'm glad I fought that one off. As much as I love her, I am damn glad I wont be spending the rest of my life the way she has just because she felt she had to stick to a promise she made when she was 20years old...coincidentally, the same age I was when I married my AXH.

I suggest you learn about setting healthy boundaries for your own sanity.

Good luck to you as you stumble forward through the mess your wife's alcoholism has brought into your lives. Wishing you peace and clarity as you move forward. It hurts so much to love an addict. I'm sorry you are going through this.

DesertEyes

Hello Coys, and welcome to SoberRecovery.

Couples that have a happy, healthy relationship do not google the web looking for help. They have a life to live and have no need for SoberRecovery, or any other such forum.

In the larger cities there is the occasional "mixed" meeting of both AA and al-anon where you will find couples attending together. However, such meetings are quite rare.

Some of the larger Al-anon meets may have "long-timers" who have such a relationship. They continue to attend in order to be of service, a way of "paying it forward". Sometimes they attend as a form of "prevention", in order to keep their mind from forgeting important lessons and drifting back into bad habits.

Mike
Moderator, SR

abbccj03

I know there are those that post in here that are themselves sober and so it does give hope that a loved one will be able to achieve the same sobriety. Many times it comes with such drastic life changes that a relationship just can't survive. It would be nice if there were a book called "How to help your alcoholic become sober and you live happily ever after" with a step by step guide to this happy ending. It would be a best seller! I don't know the statistical data on relationships that survive recovery but I am learning that the majority of the "happy endings" are those that escaped life with an alcoholic.

abbccj03

Is a codie a codependant person? I am new to that term.

COYS41

Please understand I am not saying it is not a success if someone leaves their relationship to become better and healthier for themselves. I understand that's what needs to happen for a lot of people. In the short time I have read through things on this board, I have seen two main scenarios...1, the person had to leave because recovery for their SO was not an option. 2, they stayed even though their SO was not seeking recovery. I just hadn't come across any where they stayed and their SO sought recovery and came through the other side, regardless of the bumps on the road.

So I decided to start a thread to reach out and see if this scenario is even possible. As previously stated, the realization that I am now married to an A is a very new and raw. I have never been through anything remotely close to this scenario and not sure what to expect. Trying to find out if what I seek is impossible or plausible. I am well aware that my life is not a movie and the ending is all rainbow and butterflies.

Thanks to all that have replied. It has made me realized that Al-anon is definitely worth pursing and could be a wealth of knowledge and acceptance. Thanks to all that have shared their stories as well. It seems their are a few that have what I was seeking. Apologies if I offended anyone by demeaning their outcomes as unsuccessful. That was not my intention at all. I look forward to continuing to read through this forum and gaining advice as I start down this road I never knew existed. I understand this is a map-less journey and there isn't any step-by-step guide on what to do to get a fairy tale ending but with a community of people willing to share their knowledge and personal experiences I am not alone in figuring how to make the decisions that are right for me.

Jaeger

Yes, it is.

FireSprite

No apologies necessary - you haven't offended anyone. I'm in the vast minority here - there aren't many regular posters that are still with their qualifiers & actively working toward recovery. This question comes up a LOT, here are some old posts that you may benefit from:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...s-stories.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...s-stories.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...rd-health.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-recovery.html

I was just trying to save you time - it's so much better spent on the wealth of other topics related to dealing with addiction.... like detachment, boundaries, etc.

COYS41

Thank you very much for this! You are awesome.

abbccj03

Firesrpite- thanks for the links! I know if I would have found SR a few years ago- I would have continued to stay in denial. I am still not 100% ready to end my marriage, but I am not where I once was. I choose to read the post and replies to stay strong. I plan to post any changes or updates so that I can get the views from those much more experienced than I am.

LexieCat

Hi, COYS, I'm happy to see you coming in with an open mind. Not everyone comes in with the same willingness to learn from the experience of others.

I didn't have a lot of time when I posted earlier today, so I wanted to put my experience into a bit more context.

When I met my first husband, he was 18 and I was 20. He was already a full-blown alcoholic who would do absolutely INSANE things while drunk. I was getting over a broken engagement and drinking quite a bit, myself, at the time. When I graduated and went to work, I settled down. He continued to drink, and would get off the bus when coming to visit me with a bottle of brandy in a paper bag at 10 in the morning. After more bad stuff (including his totaling my car while drunk, and without a license), I told a friend at work about his drinking. That friend happened to be in AA (which I didn't know) and she gave me a copy of the Big Book to read.

We both read it and recognized HIM in the pages. He wanted to try on his own, first. When that didn't work, we went together (something I don't necessarily recommend) to ONE meeting to see what it was about. He liked the meeting, and the people, and what was in the BB made sense to him, but he still wasn't quite ready to go that far. A short time later is when I said I needed a break, and that's when he went.

So the point is, he was already at the point where he was ready to be done with it, it was really just a matter of getting to that final point of acceptance and willingness. He was ready.

Now, for a bit of contrast, here's another story. A few months after we separated, I met my second husband--at a bar. It was that whole soulmate thing, and we moved in together within a matter of a couple of weeks. Shortly before he moved in, I found a Big Book in his apartment. I asked what that was all about, and he told me that he'd once upon a time had a problem with alcohol, but he'd dealt with it and now everything was fine.

So, we moved in together and became drinking buddies. My own pattern from college more or less resurfaced, though I now had a very responsible government job. He could drink me under the table, though. One snowy weekend, after digging out my car, he became quite ill. Went to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and was hospitalized. He went into acute withdrawal, had to be placed in restraints, hallucinations, whole nine yards. Then he went into a coma and his liver and kidneys shut down. He was literally at death's door for a couple of weeks. When he woke up he was told that IF he lived, he would certainly need a liver transplant.

To make a long story short, he was eventually diagnosed with EARLY cirrhosis and told if he never drank again he would be fine. At this point he was back in AA and I was back in Al-Anon.

A short time later, in a burst of unwarranted optimism (after all, first husband never picked up a drink again and had been sober for over 15 years), we decided to get married. During that time, he had a couple of "slips" where I caught him drinking. We moved across the country. He lost his new job within a matter of months after a return to drinking. He continued to drink, intermittently going to AA, while my life became more and more unmanageable. Remember--I was experienced in dealing with alcoholism, and I still refused to see what was right in front of me. Finally, less than a year after we'd gotten married, I left him. Eventually I moved back across the country and we were divorced. As far as I know he is still drinking himself to death. I'm amazed he is still alive. We don't keep in touch.

So. The point of all this is that whether the alcoholic recovers actually has very little to do with what a loved one does. There are certain things that can help, more things that can hurt. But ultimately, whether someone gets sober is entirely beyond the control of another person.

You might be fortunate, and she might grab onto recovery. Some people do--they are basically ready. Others NEVER get well. They just continue to spiral downward. Eventually they will die drunk. And there's nothing you can do to stop it.

So it's far from hopeless, but it may be a very long journey before she is ready to do what has to be done to get sober and learn to live that way, happily.

Incidentally, years after I left the second husband, my own drinking finally spiraled completely out of control. Even with all of my knowledge and experience, it took me FOUR YEARS of effort to "control" my drinking before I finally accepted that I can no longer drink and went to AA for myself. I'm now sober eight years, and life is better than ever.

So just wanted to give you a more complete picture of some of the various scenarios I personally have experienced. It's truly a cunning, baffling, and powerful disease.

COYS41

LexieCat,

Thank you for sharing your stories. It definitely puts some things in perspective for me. I know the difficulty of the journey I/we will be facing depends on her willingness to accept that she needs help and seeks it on her own. I acknowledge that she is not as bad as either of your husbands seemed to be, she is in the high functioning stage. Which I learned through this forum is in fact a stage of and not a separate form of alcoholism. However, I also learned that alcoholism is a progressive disease that will continue to get worse if left unacknowledged and untreated.

I guess I am realizing that I am really trying to figure out how long I am willing to wait for her to realize there is a problem and seek help. What steps will she need to take that shows me she understands she has a problem and needs to seek help? I'm aware that is only something I can answer.

LexieCat

Remember, it took me four years of "managing" my drinking before I gave up. I knew I had a "problem" all that time, but I wasn't ready to give it up forever. I was able to appear functional all that time--never got a dui, never had a medical crisis, never lost a job. But I was starting to have close calls and I eventually was scared enough to do what I needed to do.

Get to Al-Anon, start working on detachment and boundaries, and things will become clearer. You don't have to figure it all out right now.

dandylion

COYS.....one piece of practical advice.....avoid a pregnancy at all costs.
If you don't want your life to become complicated beyond your imagination....that is what happens when a child is brought into the mix....
There are thousands of real life stories, here, on the forum that attest to this....

LexieCat

^^^^^+1 to that. ^^^^^

Bekindalways

^^^^^^ +2 to that ^^^^^

Some women can't stop drinking even when pregnant and have babies with fetal alcohol syndome . . . .really, really sad.

pndm07

I think a success is when you reach a point of complete peace with yourself and the point where you no longer wish to change the Alcoholic, regardless of what they do. This is very, very hard. I am about to finalize a divorce because I could no longer handle the legal and financial liability of an alcoholic (who has been in AA for a good 7 years, but still has had multiple relapses). I still live in fear and worry about him. I just don't know if that fear or worry will really ever go away. When it does, and when I can be happy regardless of what he does, I know it will be a happy ending for me.

abbccj03

I know a mom and kids that are in financial ruin bc the AH drove drunk and killed 2 people. Dad is in prison for life and mom and kids lost EVERYTHING and had to move in with her parents to start over. The husband made over 100,000/yr and they had a nice home, vacations, private school, etc. Legal fees, civil lawsuit, etc ruined them financially.

I used to remind my AH of this family everytime he drove drunk till I was blue in the face. His own dad died in a drunk driving car accident. It is hard to wrap my head around how AH could continue to drink knowing the destruction it WILL cause. Because eventually it will destroy.