My boyfriend is 18 days sober and pushing me away
 

19 days ago my boyfriend who suffers from ptsd asked me for help after he told me he wanted to hurt himself. He safely detoxed in a hospital and was enrolled in aggressive outpatient treatment. He has also started A.A. after a week of being sober he left. Went to his moms and has been pushing me away and emotionally hurting me. I refuse to give up, I know he loves me but will he come home will we survive?

It sounds like he is doing what he need to do for him recovery at the moment. He is getting help from professionals and other alcoholics in recovery who've walked this path ahead of him. You may need to accept that 'helping him' for now might look like giving him space and letting him work on his recovery and figuring out for himself who he is without alcohol.

As far as whether he will come back and your relationship will survive this, none of us here can know that any more than you or he can. We know nothing about that relationship at all. I can say though, in early recovery I didn't know how I felt about anything, but my emotions were so raw that I felt like I'd gone through trauma and was going insanely the end of the first month. I'd suggest reconnecting with friends and family while he s working through this. Keep yourself busy and try to include lots of fun things. You suffering isn't going to help him heal any quicker.

Have you heard of AlAnon? It may be a good idea for you to check it out and go along to some meetings.

BB

Give him space. He needs to focus on his recovery. Look after yourself. That is all you can do.

I encourage you to look after yourself. Do kind and nice things for you.

Al-anon is an enormous help to partners, spouses, families of drinkers. Perhaps you might consider going along to a local meeting and see if it resonates with you.

All the best to you

gosh, this is definitely a hard one. It's great for you to stand by him BUT I strongly agree with the others- it can be tough to understand, but he truly need to focus on himself right now, and possibly for quite awhile (by that I mean, a year or more- for some of us it takes a long time to heal and certainly seems baffling to our partners). Al Anon - and learning about Alcoholism (and it sounds like, PTSD) is a great idea.

Non alcoholics rarely understand what us alcoholics have to learn and adjust and change to stay sober and begin recovery. And very likely, our partners have to examine their role in the relationship bc when one person is an addict, the relationship has a dynamic that changes when the person gets sober.

It's difficult to do, but accepting that time takes time, and you really can't know if the relationship will in fact work - the very best thing both of you can do now is focus on yourselves.

Take care.