Not as strong as I thought
 

I was never codependent before, I don't think. Not really. 2 months into this and I'm exhibiting all manner of messed up stuff and I can't figure out if this is a personality flaw on my part or just what happens to most any person in this kind of situation.

So AH was clean 8 years, relapsed for 2 weeks in February on crack. I kicked him out, let him back after 2 1/2 weeks. Stayed clean for 1 month, relapsed again for 2 days and now he's just over a week clean. Well, "clean". Before, he was drinking and smoking pot. He stopped drinking after the second relapse, but started smoking pot again last Friday to help with the urges. Went to 2 NA meetings last week, but can't now that he's smoking weed again. He almost went back out last night. He is not in recovery. He's trying to abstain, which means he's going to fail. He will relapse.

So my problem is that suddenly I have become a person who checks phone records online, checks to see if his keys are in the room instead of his pockets, searches his truck to look for paraphernalia, constantly assesses his behavior, obsess about what I'll do when he uses again, etc. I WAS NOT LIKE THIS before. This is NOT ME. Do you turn into a codependent person naturally in this situation? I mean, how do you love a spouse so much and not go utterly and completely insane in this situation?

I don't know if I'm depressed or being realistic. All right, depressed is a given. I read all these threads from years ago and I don't find much hope there. It's like one relapse trashes everyone's life because they don't tend to stop. You never get your marriage back. Your heart breaks, but you can't leave right to begin with because there really was a real relationship there and you're in shock. You can't process "it's over" on a dime. So we tend to stay until we are damaged trainwrecks. I don't think that I'm "addicted" to him, I think that I love him the way a wife loves her husband. I want to have hope and some moments I do, but I can't not see what I'm seeing and what I'm seeing is someone who really wants to go out and get high and who will do so.

I talked with him Saturday night about how he doesn't seem to be doing much work on himself and he seemed deeply hurt that I just assumed that he was going to relapse. Well yeah man, it was just a week ago that he had after swearing he never would again and then he picked up smoking dope again.

Thing is, what's the line between controlling behavior and looking out for my own best interest? I do legitimately need to know if he's texting his dealer again or getting high. I need to know if he's using for my own sake. But I am disrespecting him as an individual by snooping, aren't I? It's really his choice to go out and use and it's my choice to react to that appropriately. I don't want to lose respect for him and I don't want to control anyone. I guess I just don't want this to be happening. I don't want to lose him. I genuinely do love him.

I'm going to another NA meeting tonight because I clearly need it. It sucks though because I feel like sanity means detaching from him and isn't that just a step towards leaving him? There is no way that you can have a healthy marriage with someone if their actions and feelings don't cause you pain, is there? Oh hell, there is no healthy relationship where someone is struggling with the desire to throw it all away for crack. Who am I kidding?

God, I thought I was smarter than this. I guess not. I'm not special. I'm every devastated person who has ever posted in this forum.

Deelilah, Wow! Certainly staying with an addictive that chooses his addiction would be hard. This is his story....he chose his addiction, he lost his relationship, he now has nothing. As painful as it sounds, I would boot him. He has to find his bottom as he will only destroy you with him if that is the direction he chooses. NA isn't effective because he hasn't embraced step one. You are ready and working sobriety, this is a step of making a stronger more stabile you. Sorry....

When a perfectly functional good person gets hooked on something, they eventually turn into sh!theads.
Being in a relationship with them eventually changes us too.
Don't beat yourself up too much. You entered that relationship with a clean slate and he changed.

Deelilah, all partners/parents/friends of addicts try what you're doing re: looking in his car, phone records etc... It's not that it's so wrong - he's put you in the position to be suspicious - it's that it won't work. When you find one hiding spot, he'll find another if he's determined to do so. My ex used to do a sweep of out apartment for bottles hidden various places. In my full obsession mode, I simply found more clever ways of hiding them (in the garbage room, etc). You'll just drive yourself crazy doing that.

He has to embrace the program and work on more.than just stopping, as you know. A dry drunk and a sober person are very different.

The fact that his drug of choice is illegal and results in many ODs puts you and your family at risk. This is a dangerous situation! Consider yourself and your own recovery above all else :)

Deelilah...I think that every single one of us can relate to what you have shared. You have done nothing wrong...like VigilanceNow said...it is just that it doesn't work and drives us even more crazy.....
There comes a point when you have got to do what you know you have gotta do...and the first thing is to take care of yourself. It serves no one if you get swept into the destruction, also....
That is a hard truth, I know....
You will survive and get through this....

I think you need to do one of the hardest things for a codependent to do, take it a day at a time, sometimes a moment at a time. Yes, if he is not taking care of himself he will relapse.

How about making a plan to put in place that you both go over, a relapse plan. That way you are both on the same page as to what happens if it does happen, and it will give you some thinking space to figure out just what you want if this continues.

Healing yourself and detatching is healthy. Self care is important. Doing what you are currently doing can and will make YOU crazy. You will end up as sick as him, just in a different way. Said from someone who has been there. Keep going to meetings. Get a counselor who specializes in helping families deal with addiction, and go, by yourself.

The best prediction of future behavior is past behavior. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.

You are in control of one person, you. You cannot control his actions, but you can put a plan in place and control your own reactions.

Tight hugs to you.

support to you

You can check his phone records, look through his vehicle, watch where his keys are all you want BUT what if you find something then what? And what if you don’t find anything but his attitude and behavior tell you he’s using, then what?

See, it’s kind of pointless to search for proof of something if you have no idea what happens next.

NA is for addicts, not you unless of course you are also an addict. Al-anon, Nar-anon are for the friends and family of addicts for support for YOU.

Relapses are hard and one thing I learned is that they pick up right where they left off, no matter how many years he’s been clean. He’s been using one chemical or another since February and that’s of what you know, he could have relapsed prior to that. He’s 3 months into using again and coming up with excuses on why he can’t seek help……he says he can’t go to NA because he’s smoking pot again…that’s total BS and I hope you don’t buy into it.

I’d find an an-anon or nar-anon meeting in your area and begin seeking help and support for yourself. In the mean time do as much research as you can on addiction and addict behavior. Keep reading and posting here on SR.

My personal experience:

I found more evidence by stepping away than I ever did snooping. My ex had me wrapped around his finger and I wanted so desperately to believe him that even if a positive drug test was staring me right in the face, I'd simply google "false positives" and cling to the 1% chance that it was wrong.

Sometimes we're just up too close to see the full picture.

Thank you all so much. Yeah, I meant Naranon, not NA for me. I'm reading all of this and taking it in. I think the hardest part is facing the reality that I have to change my relationship with my best friend (AH). We're so close. To have him as any sort of person that I have to protect myself from makes my head spin. My heart quails at the concept. Reality is what it is, though. I can't carry on as if we have the same marriage that we had a few months ago, because we don't. We never will again.

I am going to a Naranon meeting this evening. I think he's going to relapse again while I'm gone. He's awfully fidgety and I can tell the addiction is working on him. I think he hasn't gone out because I've been here. He has been afraid to go out because he fears that he'll make the wrong decision. If I stay home again and he stays in tonight but doesn't do any work on himself, he'll eventually relapse regardless. I can't stay home and police him. It's gonna happen regardless if he's not strong enough to resist. I can hold out some hope that as much as he says he doesn't want to use crack again, if he fails at recovering alone again maybe he'll take recovery more seriously. And maybe he won't. I have no control over this either way. I've just gotta figure out how to make that switch happen in my mind where it's possible to detach some.

And that's the thing...my plan if I bust him using is to have a rational conversation about how I would be enacting Plan B and leaving in June and suggesting that he get it together before he loses everything. Have a discussion about whether or not we can live in the same household until then.

Have a DISCUSSION with an active addict. I mean...what? Would reasoning even be possible? What am I thinking? I could have a productive discussion with my husband for sure. Have had many. A discussion with a crack addict is another thing altogether, isn't it?

So yeah, what would I do is the question.

you could bust a crack addict WITH the pipe in their HAND, and they'd deny it was even there. and certainly not THEIRS!

it's probably best you get yourself sorted out first. what are your limits? your boundaries? what would you need to happen in order to regain a sense of stability and calm?

i agree he isn't exactly taking the charge on meaningful, demonstrable, i can SEE it, recovery. he seems unsure or unwilling to close the barn door. he might be doubting that he can. he might be questioning if he really wants to. he might be thinking.....well hell, since i've already relapsed i might as well get the "most" out of it before i have to quit again. and then there's the crack monster that is now lurking right outside the window, tapping on the glass, whispering thru the opening, ready to hop in the car with him and go for a ride.

protect the finances and then try to remember that Using looks like Using - and you will know.

Deelilah,
I used to refer to myself as a "situational codependent". I used to snoop everywhere too, for what I thought was protecting my son from himself.
In the long run I was wasting my time doing things that made me feel dirty and ugly.
Try to live in the here and now, and not in the forevers. He found his way back before, he knows the route. It's the limbo that's so hard on us.

Our finances are separate, thank goodness. And you're right, I'll know if he uses. Crack high is pretty obvious. You know, that's what I fear...that he hasn't quite closed the barn door. He knows that he should, but he doesn't quite want to yet. And geez, yeah, last night and today I can almost hear the crack monster talking to him. He's teetering.

For real. The limbo is what's killing me. I don't know how to live day by day and lately it feels minute by minute. Situational codependent sounds accurate, yeah. And boy does it ever feel dirty and wrong to behave that way!

it IS tough, darling. try as best you can to keep YOUR life as normal and on course as possible , ACT AS IF you are unphased and detached.

trust me, i've done all the snooping, bank account checking every five minutes, power phoning, ranting, yelling, threatening, hyperventilating, you name it. and what did i get for my troubles? not one damn thing. the neighbors may have been rather impressed with my "inside/outside" voice and how well it carried tho.

boundaries saved my bacon. still do!

My wife has been doing some "snooping " the last few days. Looking for the possibility I've been hiding wine or something else. I'm not a hiding person, but she is checking to see what she can find. I'm sure when I ran to get car parts early she was checking. Then she checked me when I came back. She is a classic co dependent. Short story.....there was nothing to find...on to day 11. Unless he commits to recovery.....you'll always be lacking trust and you will always find something.

It's funny, the first time I snooped it was because I already knew he was high and didn't want to believe it without evidence. I found evidence and still wanted to believe his excuse. You just know without needing all that evidence, don't you? Not much point in making life into a CSI episode when you already know the truth. I did the power phoning and manipulative guilt-tripping texts twice early on and found that it just pissed me off and made me feel like crap to try and get someone high on crack to have an emotion. So there hasn't been any real benefit for my crazy stuff. I only tried to impress the neighbors once with my inside/outside voice, lol, but wound up hoping later that they were all asleep and didn't notice.

I went to a really helpful Naranon meeting last night and my attitude was way improved when I got home. He wasn't high last night and I didn't need to snoop to know it. If he does use again, snooping won't be how I find out. If I can avoid doing stuff that makes me feel badly, I'll get through this a with a lot more peace.

I bet that makes you feel weird too, doesn't it? I've thought about that. What if he really doesn't pick up again and I add to the relationship difficulties by being as hard to trust as he is? He's facing consequences for spending so much money and is feeling pretty angry at himself over it now. It might be a step in the right direction. Hell, he's been through real recovery before. He does have the tools. I just have to make myself sit back and see if he can do it.

I just smile and hope that I don't fall back into wine. That is her need, security, whatever, but I'm not doing this for her. This is my sobriety. I want this, her checking when I'm drinking is an irritant, but when I'm not....knock yourself out!

Yeah we know but looking for all that evidence buys us time. If we fill our time with snooping, checking and re-checking it keeps us from having to think about or deal with what comes next and decisions we need to make for ourselves but are not ready to make yet. And then believing their excuses buys us even more time.

I’m glad you went to a nar-anon meeting! Keep focusing on you and getting yourself strong and focused on having to make hard decisions and the ability to stick to them.

It’s too easy to get caught up in the cycle of catching them, believing them, catching them, believing them. That becomes a whole new life of its own. Like being in a car without gas, you can stay as long as you want but it’s never going to go anywhere except exactly where it’s at.

Ooh. That hit home. Thank you.

hey Miss Dee - how are you?

I think back to all the times I was Codie Detective...and I was very very good at it..and I knew I would find drugs or evidence of using, but I already KNEW that in my heart. I think what I was really searching for was my son, the loving, kind, funny, respectful young man that I lost when addiction took over. I saw glimpses of him over the years but with each relapse I lost a little more....and searched a little less.

Meetings helped me find my balance, I hadn't realized it but as I was losing my son, I was slowing losing that person called "me" and that was very frightening to discover that I didn't even know who I was anymore.

In the end I had to accept that I couldn't save my son. He knew where real help was when he was ready. But I could save myself and each morning in prayer I ask God to do for my son what I cannot.

I pray for your husband too, many do find their way back. He has tasted sobriety and I suspect will want it again one day.

Take care of yourself, keep making a plan and I think you will know when it's time to go or when recovery starts looking like recovery again.

Hugs

Ugh, I'm not great. I think I absorbed every single thing I knew intellectually on Friday. I don't matter to him right now. Nothing I say or do matters. I'm just a consequence. Best case scenario, I'm a footnote in his recovery story. Worst case, I'm just one of the things he lost before he died of this mess. He blew off work and used again Friday. Saturday he said he doesn't think that he has another recovery in him if he has to hit bottom. That he'll make sure not to survive it. He binged again today. So I asked him to leave for a few weeks so that I could get a place for me and the kids and then he could have the house back. He said he'd probably lose it anyway, and I agreed that was almost certainly true. He packed and left.

So there I was not 20 minutes ago, mourning what we've lost and yet feeling a great weight lifted off of me not having to worry about crack for a few hours. Yes, worrying about him and heartbroken for sure, but at least with a direction and a purpose in mind. And then he pulls back in the yard saying that he couldn't find a place to stay (he didn't even call his friends that he stayed with before) and that he'll be out in the shop and stay out of my hair tonight. Finding a place tomorrow. OMG. Maybe he just can't show up at our friends' place clearly high on crack. I have got to get off of this ride. I won't survive it. It is pure insanity. Cruel cruel insanity.

It's funny, when I got home Friday and he was high out in the shop, I knew I had surrendered and given up. There was no longer any point in snooping. It was all over. I had lost to crack. That was an odd feeling of relief and intense sadness. I lost hope. I think you snoop when you still have hope. Once you give that up, there's just no reason to. I would definitely prefer for him to recover. I don't want him to die. I don't want him in pain. I just don't have hope at the moment.

I am still amazed that the man I married is nowhere to be found. He's gone and there's a stranger in his place. I wouldn't wish this hell on anybody. And yeah, I've lost a lot of myself in this. Just over 2 months in and I'm already seriously damaged. I barely feel like a human. I'll need to hit the meetings hard this week.

ah Dee, i am so sorry. even if it doesn't feel like it, you have maintained a pretty clear sense of what you are up against, and what you need to do.

the problem with addiction is that even when the addict is NOT using, the disease progresses. that's why relapses, especially after a lengthy period of clean time, can be so hard to get out of. and recovery can SEEM impossible to commit to again.

while it is not up to you to create consequences FOR him, you must enforce boundaries for your own sanity. dad shouldn't be out smoking crack in the shop with the kids around. kids shouldn't be around anyone high on crack. NO ONE should!!!

it totally sucx. but it is what it is. and must be dealt with. you didn't ask for this, sign up for this, or do anything to deserve this. for reasons that will never make sense, he made this choice with a clear and sober mind.

scares me spitless as a former crackhead.

i hate to suggest it, but you should probably consider a visit with an attorney. you have much to protect.

I suspect the fact that it scares you spitless is a really really good sign. I cannot comprehend why he picked it up again, knowing what he knows and knowing what he was risking. I guess you're right, I'll never be able to get that. He can't even really understand that. It truly is insanity.

Yeah, I'm going to call an attorney in the morning. Good lord what a pain in the butt this is going to be on top of all the emotional agony. I guess it's good that I do take advice and wisdom from those who have been there before me or I'd be in a much worse way with this. It makes no logical sense. There's a man wearing my husband's skin out in the shop covering the windows, pacing around searching the floor and turning lights off and on. Acting like a crazy person. My husband who bought this house for us and carried me over the threshold with so much pure joy is somewhere in that man, but he's unreachable. That is something seriously hard to come to terms with. I can't say that I totally have, but I'm leaning on the expertise of those who have been there because having read hundreds of posts on this site, I see that my story is far from unique. It's all the same. I can expect a lot of what comes next to have been what has gone before for others.

It's the feeling of being discarded that hurts the most. Like all that we've been to one another has been invalidated. I see all the pictures on the wall and it kills me. Maybe I just need to take all of that down and not look at it. I don't even want the house because of the memories attacking me at every turn. I get the feeling that he's fine with losing me so that he doesn't have to worry about my feelings. He said that it would have been easier to go through this alone. Hell, me being out of the picture doesn't mean he isn't still hurting me, his daughter, my kids, both of our families...but he doesn't want to comprehend that reality.

I know that all of this meant a great deal to him at one time. I just don't have the off button that he has. It is torture to deal with this straight on.

Sending you a hug. I'm so sorry.