Did you feel like an out of control child?

Old 01-29-2018, 07:29 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by Spence7471 View Post
Just wanted to share some insight...

I have done a lot of reading about the survival of relationships after addiction recovery... one thing that struck me hard was this...

In family counseling, the recovering addict with a couple months sober was commenting on how his wife did not trust him and was not very welcoming.... the therapist asked the man how long he had been in active addiction.. the man said 15+ years.... The therapist then went to point out that he was only 2 month sober... so the amount of time to do the damage was much longer than the recovery time being given their partner to recover... the husband then just sat quiet having gotten the point.

Long winded I know, but the point is, often times the recovering addict expects things to change right away... not realizing that like themselves, it will take time to recover/heal/restart the relationship... years of damage can simply not be repaired in months.

Recovery, whether it is addiction or relationships, takes time, and most of us want instant gratification..... patience is a virtue... one that most of us could stand more of. I know I could.

T
This is very true and it took my RAH a good year before he finally got it. Early on after he had come back from rehab he accused me of acting like a dry drunk because I just was not now erybwelcoming at all and I just didn't put much effort into interacting with him.
He has been an alcoholic for 40+ years and we've been together almost 16. During those 16 years he quit and relapsed several times but all in secrecy until I confronted him 16 months ago. So i suffered in silence for a very long time because I could not talk to anyone about it (and thereby enabling him).
he has said many times (including toward the end of rehab) that I wasn't giving anything to the relationship, well no **** Sherlock. I've given it my all for many years when I wasn't getting much back,
A couple of weeks ago he said he felt isolated and was angry at god due to our current state of the relationship and I actually said out loud: well now you know how I felt for all those years. I made it clear I wasn't doing it to punish him on purpose but there is still lots of resentment.

Also what someone pointed out in the thread about repulsion was that oftentimes we have asked them to quit several times, but only when we were ready to walk away from the relationship is when they decided to get serious about it. Because now there are consequences for them such as losing the relationship they neglected for so many years. So in a sense still a selfish act once again . Granted they do need to quit for them selves and not for anyone else but ultimately but the relationship was not an important enough reason to quit until the non alcoholic threatened to walk away and it was affecting them directly. By that time the non alcoholic was done enough to walk away so obviously the warm fuzzy feeling we once had , or what was left of them at that point, have mostly disappeared otherwise we would not have made that ultimatum. That made a lot of sense to me and it gave me some more clarity on why I feel the way I do and why I still have a lot of resentment I guess. No one was important enough in his life to give up the bottle until it affected him personally. And then he just expected everything to be just fine because he was all good now and I should be happy. I also never realized how and to what extent it had affected me until this past year. I guess it is that whole autopilot thing that I did for so long until I had enough.
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Old 01-29-2018, 08:02 PM
  # 22 (permalink)  
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I get EXACTLY what you are talking about (I quoted you below regarding the part I am talking about.) We are in the same boat, going on autopilot until we just couldn't take anymore. Great minds think alike huh?

" By that time the non alcoholic was done enough to walk away so obviously the warm fuzzy feeling we once had , or what was left of them at that point, have mostly disappeared otherwise we would not have made that ultimatum. That made a lot of sense to me and it gave me some more clarity on why I feel the way I do and why I still have a lot of resentment I guess. No one was important enough in his life to give up the bottle until it affected him personally. And then he just expected everything to be just fine because he was all good now and I should be happy. I also never realized how and to what extent it had affected me until this past year. I guess it is that whole autopilot thing that I did for so long until I had enough."
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