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Rebuilding my life

Old 11-16-2013, 03:20 AM
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Rebuilding my life

Feeling really guilty posting this but need my SR friends guidance!
Currently im 7 months sober. I can honestly say I'm pretty certain I will never drink again.

I feel like I'm a blind woman who woke to perfect vision. Sometimes I'm not sure what is real and what is exaggeration. So here's what I'm dealing with.

I figured out some of the key points that kept me bottle bound:
1. Isolation
2. Controlling relationship
3. Need for perfection
4. Not knowing how to use my voice
5. Dissatisfaction with the role in my life Ive created.

So at 7 months my main struggle is stay or go. I've been with my husband since I'm 23 that's 12 years. Slowly over time our relationship has taking on a very unhealthy dynamic. He's can be controlling, jealous, mean, unsympathetic, spiteful, damanding, and always watching me waiting to fail. The problem is this was not his nature initially, I taught him to treat me this way.

Last week we were separated by family circumstances. It was probably the greatest week of my life. I felt like a boulder was lifted off my chest, I felt calm. I wasn't waiting to hear about all my **** ups of the day, or hear how spending another $12 on I tunes was irresponsible (we are not broke) My kids were peaceful and I wanted it to be like this forever.

He returned home Thursday to a different woman he left. I shared how happy I was to be alone. Told him we need therapy STAT or im leaving after the holidays. To which he said we need to go over your credit card statements. I don't spend anything !!!! in 60 days my transaction total was $142. HEs NOT HEARING ME!!!

I still love him and want to work on the marriage, but he says no to therapy, he actually suggested we use his mom as a therapist!!!!

I'm feeling stuck and I know if it doesn't change there is a strong possibility I could return to drinking! And I don't ever want to do that again.

Has anyone been in my shoes? How after so many years of not loving yourself and allowing others to treat you so do you change it?????
It's kind of crazy because when I was drinking I thought we had the greatest relationship use to say we were the classic 1950s household !
Sorry sooooo long!

PS that's not my picture that's Diane Prince WW alter ego
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Old 11-16-2013, 03:50 AM
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Hi Imperfectly, always love your posts.

Two things jumped out at me on this one and I hope you don't get mad at me for pointing them out. First you start out with, "And I am pretty certain I will never drink again" but then at the end say, "If HE doesn't change there is a strong possibility that I will return to drinking."

Obviously I am no therapist and I could have never gotten sober in the relationship I was in prior to my first attempt a year ago. My ex was exactly as you describe your husband now. And, yes, I indeed had allowed him to treat me that way for a very long time. As long as he left me alone to drink my fill, that was all that really mattered.

But I knew, deep down, that once I quit, those things I was ignoring would become glaring and that would likely spell the end of us. Plus he was also prone to sabotage. So I ended it first.

I think that when we get sober, it's like we hatch a whole new person. I know how hard it is for others to deal with the fact that the person they have gotten "used to" over the years is now someone else. I know a friend's husband who says, of his wife going through recovery, "I never know who the eff I am going to end up waking up next to every morning, at least there were only two people when she was drinking...nasty and normal wife."

HOWEVER.

This is your recovery and this is about you, ultimately. Not him. He may be skeptical about you leaving if you've threatened it before in the past or he may be reluctant to go to therapy if you've asked before but not followed through.

Are you in therapy at all? Have you talked to anyone else about this?

I remember you posted on this before as advice to someone else that I thought was pretty brilliant and very self-aware.

But you have to be 100% sure, I think, that your sobriety is not able to be sabotaged by anyone or anything else.

Sorry I don't have brilliant or even good advice here...just wanted to let you know that your posts to others (and me!) are always really helpful and show a pretty deep level of awareness and empathy. So maybe you already know the answer to the question you ask above??

((Think you're awesome, btw!))
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Old 11-16-2013, 04:17 AM
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Picapote thank you so much for the beautiful response. I didn't even notice the statements with such opposition you pointed out. It's true I could never see myself drinking again, while at the same time I don't think I could survive living like this without having to numb and disappear again. Not In Therapy YET! Starting the first week after thanksgiving. Poor therapist

Ps you're awesome too BTW
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Old 11-16-2013, 05:04 AM
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The dynamics of my marriage drastically changed when I sober up. 1 line that helped me alot was "I'm not that person anymore." there was a couple years where things were pretty rocky. I started reasserting myself. the guilt and shame started to fade and I found that I was not a bad person. unfortunately you are right we have trained our significant others how to respond to us. Now we have to train them to respond to us in a healthy way .it takes time and it is not painless. Whether the marriage survives is not the point. what the point is is keepin our side of the street clean.
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Old 11-16-2013, 05:29 AM
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I don't know what others think, but my hackles went up when I read below:

Originally Posted by ImperfectlyMe View Post
He returned home Thursday to a different woman he left. I shared how happy I was to be alone. Told him we need therapy STAT or im leaving after the holidays. To which he said we need to go over your credit card statements. I don't spend anything !!!! in 60 days my transaction total was $142. HEs NOT HEARING ME!!!

I still love him and want to work on the marriage, but he says no to therapy, he actually suggested we use his mom as a therapist!!!!
I don't know if his opposition to therapy is that he doesn't feel like he wants or needs it, but I've seen this before in my own parents and it's part of a nasty denial thing (not saying that's your case...). Asking someone to enter therapy with you is asking them to take on their responsibility for making the relationship work. I get that there are generational things and stigmas attached to this for some people, and I get that your alcohol issue makes it easy for him to dismiss any other things that are going on in the marriage, but it would sadden me to no end if the person I was committed to wouldn't be willing to work on it with me. I would have to express that to him somehow.

Your sobriety is your journey, and you are doing a very hard thing at maintaining it. (I never realized how hard it would be for me until I started it -only 15 days ago -and I am an emotional wreck right now.) You love this man - and while I guess its true that you train people how to respond to you, not acknowledging how you feel and the help you need is not helpful and supportive.
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Old 11-16-2013, 07:01 AM
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His opposition to therapy is quote: He doesn't need some feminist fanatic telling him all his wrong doings as a man/husband/father, nor does he want my head being filled with these ideas.

He 100% supports my never drinking again, I can say that whole heartedly, however I think in his perfect world the only change that he'd like to see in me is that I don't drink while remaining a mute doormat.

In other posters similar threads I've advised letting the marital relationship issues simmer on the back burner, while one works on themselves. But that pot can only simmer for so long, before its empty and evaporated.

Has anyone had success rebuilding their marriage post sobriety? He does not drink, he isn't abusive, he does love me, we really just don't LIKE each other at the moment

Other then all this mess I'm quite happy at the moment, maybe because I've slowly detached myself from caring!
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Old 11-16-2013, 09:14 AM
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Detachment can be a good thing. It's something I've had to do in my marriage to avoid getting caught in unhealthy emotional patterns.

Regarding couples therapy. Like your husband, my husband did not want to go. But because he is so passive aggressive, he "agreed" to go and then was not cooperative. After a few months of this, the therapist sees the dynamic and gives me some very good advice: don't expect more from the marriage than you get, don't give more than you are getting, he isn't going to change, set your boundaries, cultivate lots of outside interests and friends.

This worked well, but what didn't go well was that not only did my husband refuse to use some of the methods we learned, but his behavior got worse. He became even more passive aggressive, manipulative, neglectful.

So I guess it's my long way of saying, it will definitely help you to go to therapy but it may not be productive to drag him along if he doesn't want to go.

You sound like a very intelligent, insightful person. I'm sure whatever road you take, you will be successful! Good luck.
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Old 11-16-2013, 09:21 AM
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Sunrise your response was kind of the best beat around the bush way of saying something I really needed to hear. glad to have another person understand where I'm coming from. Going to keep working on me and let the chips fall where they may. Like you said maybe best not to force him into therapy if he isn't willing. Thank you
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