NotSoIvory

Stuck in my own cycle again:

After over a decade of alcoholism, I got sober for 5 months, for myself, YES, definitely, but also in an effort to save my marriage (roller coaster 10 years but love of my life as well). I was ready to be sober, no matter what it took. If that meant separating from my husband, so be it. But in an unexpected turn of events, he made the effort to quit drinking too... for me. My life was improving and I found new hope. I thought that quitting drinking was going to save our marriage. This was, for me, a last attempt at making things right as well. We both put in every effort to patch things up and I moved in with him.

At first, we were trying to use our fair fighting practices and things went wonderfully for 3-4 months. That slowly began to fade. I was very far from my good job and the stress started to overwhelm me and I was often tired, and sometimes negative, so I didn't want to talk when I came home. He got worse in that he became more and more disrespectful of me. Old bad habits began to emerge. Boundaries were crossed that we vowed never be crossed again.

I snuck away a night or 2, slipping from my goals. The first night I went out, I handled it well. All the joys of a “rational, normal drinker.” Ha.

Things continued to get worse between the two of us and sober life no longer looked so happy. I began longing for the times I could be care free, going out and drinking with my friends for some kind of reprieve.

Push finally came to shove and I am realizing that my marriage is actually coming to an end. I have lost all of the motivation that kept me going so strong and I am failing at (many aspects of) life and sobriety again. For 10.5 years, this man has been the most important thing in my life and I feel so lost. I don't know how to find happiness for myself alone. I am devastated and emotionally drained.

I feel like I am moving backward. I have not been taking care of myself the way that I should. My only life is my job. I work all the time. If I am not working, I am drinking. Almost daily again. I am not okay. I have not been eating right. I keep telling myself, “Later. Later I will do it.” This only perpetuates itself. Now I have to figure out how to get myself sober again. I am now back in the endless cycle of self destruction. I was so angry about HIS mistreatment toward me, and now I have to start loving and respecting MYSELF all over again. For some reason, I somehow feel I can't do this in my current state of affairs. I am wasting myself away.

How does one find happiness and sobriety again when on the verge of divorce? Why is it so simple of a concept, yet so damned hard? I think I am doing this to myself semi-subconsciously and somehow intentionally, and I don't understand why. I don't know anymore how I found it within me to make the effort to overcome it before, and yet I can't find it now. This makes me sound lunatic. Nobody, including myself, understands why I can't seem to just be happy on my own.

I just thought that maybe, in this forum, there might be one or two people who could relate and shed some insight to overcome it. I need to get myself to stand up tall again.

robgt350

not so

i read your post with a person connection. i too was married and alcohol tore it apart and soberity also caused damage too. i had also lost most of my friends when becoming sober too. i had to learn to find new hobbies to occupy my free time and my mind. it was difficult for me to connect with addicts again and difficult for me to connect with sober people also. i came to the chat room here and talked to people just like me and got some advice, support and help i needed.
you can stop drinking again. you did it before, that only proves you can do it again. dont tell your self you have no reason to get sober, you have a good reason, you are a good person, and you can get sober. start today, and come to the chat room and make some new friends.

mecanix

Quitting drinking for me , never made life wonderful . Life has up's and down's and i'm sad about the downer you're experiencing .

The thing about both drugs and drinking in my life was it made a kinda comfortable hole to hide in , a place where i could hide from and not deal with life . My life got slowly worse as i hid in my hole, denying anything bad, denying that it had anything to do with me, so much bad luck happens to drinkers you know' …

I was always too drunk to have a 10 year relationship to loose , but i managed to ditch the 20 year one with booze , you can too ..

I know this doesn't answer your question but really ask yourself , what do you want ?

Bestwishes, m

22NGONE

I would concentrate on staying sober so you could find out who you truly are and what you truly want. I think it's difficult to make good decisions under the fog of alcoholism... not that it stops a lot of us from doing so.

ImperfectlyMe

I feel your pain. I'm working through my own own marital issues at the moment. What is helping me tremendously is to take ownership of my part, and actually not work on the marriage but work on me. As I get stronger and more in tune with the needs I have not received or given i am able to communicate better. It can be overwhelming to get and remain sober while trying to mend a broken marriage. My advise is to let the marital issues summer on the back burner and solely work on you. Unless there is abuse you don't need to rush out the door. Get your mind and body together and things will fall into place.

Threshold

A few years ago my husband (love of my life) told me he wanted a divorce after 25 yrs of marriage.

I felt like what was the point of not drinking? I had lost everything material and relationship wise (kids stopped talking to me) that mattered. I was 2000 miles from home and working a minimum wage job and had no close friends.

So yeah, I tried drinking and drugging...it brought back NOTHING. None of my stuff, none of my relationships,didn't fix the divorce, didn't save me money, didn't get me a better job, didn't make me hurt any less. All I did was add to my own misery, sense of loss, sorrow, etc.

I am the only person I am guaranteed to spend the rest of my life with.

There is life after divorce. There are friends, family, jobs, experiences. And if we allow them in...there is laughter, joy, and people to hug us when we want to give up. Divorce is painful and scary, and I miss things I will never get back, and things I had looked forward to in the future.

But I had learned from losses before that life will fill in the void if I let it. And filling it in with booze and drugs eroded me inside, but letting it fill in with good new people and experiences healed me inside.

Big huge hugs. Come here and share when ever you need to, but don't drink. There is NO reason you need to lose your sobriety in the divorce.

soberclover

I also suggest that you focus on yourself and try to get sober. I lost my marriage because of my drinking. Now that I've been sober, my current relationship is rocky as I'm sober and he isn't. Getting sober does not make everything wonderful and magical again especially when the initial relationship was built on drinking/using. When we get sober we become different people with a higher level of personal aspirations as well as expectations. I thought I lost the love of my life too. I did. What I learned that I lost was myself. I lost the ability to love myself. I am working on getting that back now. If I cannot love and respect myself, I cannot love and respect another person I'm in a personal relationship with.

Notmyrealname

I am sorry to hear about the divorce, that is a very hard thing. My longtime girlfriend made the decision to move on this last year, I am still regularly emotional about that and it's been months. And we were not even married (together seven years though, longer than a lot of marriages I suppose), so there's less stigma and less legal headaches, too.

But eventually that situation will resolve, and there you are with the same decision you have now: do you want to be a person with a shot at a happy, productive, healthy life, or do you want to be a drunk? It's awful hard to set yourself up for the former when the latter keeps getting in the way.

Sort out the booze issue, then go forward in good faith, and things have a way of working out. (at least I hope that's good advice, it's what I'm working off of..)

Signal30

Overcoming failure in divorce...Acceptance.

Olive1

I can relate.
I had almost hit my bottom when my ex and I started to split up. It is a long story, and the divorce took a while and when it was finished I dug a bit deeper for my bottom. At the time I was sinking I had purchased a new home in another state. And then I almost died. I was in the hospital for two weeks and then rehab for three. When I got out I had a new mortgage, no job and still a big mess to clean up from the divorce.
It was literally one day at a time. I plodded along each day. The most important thing was to not drink, then came the baby steps to get my life back in order. It took a while, but I eventually worked everything out. By myself.
If I can do it, then you can definitely do it.