Reply to Married to recovering alcoholic... Help!

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Married to recovering alcoholic... Help!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP, my life is very similar to yours, except for the fact that I don't really like to drink myself so don't mourn the loss of that part of our life together. But I, too, am married to a recovered alcoholic and have small children. Our marriage was severely damaged by the betrayals from when he was drinking but I'm committed to keep us together in adherence to my sickness and health marriage vows and out of not wanting to turn my childrens' lives upside down. I also nodded right along with what you said about him finding other addictions to replace the alcohol, the selfishness of that. Everyone in our life thinks he did such an amazing thing getting sober and does not understand how that doesn't just magically make it all better and that it's still very hard work. My husband replaced drinking and drugs with being a workaholic and chain smoking (which he didn't do before and disgusts me). Whenever he's not at work, I'm frequently alone in the house managing the kids while he's sneaking outside to smoke. So textbook for them to find a replacement, be glad yours is a healthy one.
Anyway, here are some suggestions I've learned from experience:

-- I would say the most helpful thing we did was the weekend family program at Father Martin's Ashley, north of Baltimore. He was a patient there at the time, but you don't have to be to attend it. It would give you a chance to air out these issues you have with a team of addiction experts. You will see other families are struggling with the exact same things. And most importantly, it will teach you a lot about addiction so you will understand his behaviors and have some strategies for dealing with them. This was a hugely helpful bonding experience for us.

-- Also, you need to pull in whatever resources you can to support you as a parent. We bleed money on this stuff, but it's the only way our family functions. Hire people to do whatever you can to help, lean on relatives and friends. You can't do it at the pace you are going.

-- Work on keeping your side of the street clean. Meaning, don't let yourself become consumed by his addiction and instead work on your own issues and becoming the best person you can be. Find a way not to sacrifice your workouts or whatever else you need to stay physically, emotionally and mentally healthy.

-- Along those lines, make time for yourself and what you enjoy. For me, that means carving out time with friends, venting to them when I need to and getting time to read. Having an addict in the family can consume all your energy - fight that.

-- You also have to do a better job of trying to connect to him. That is really hard -- trust me, I know. I'm kind of lecturing myself here as a write this because it's easy for me just to tune him out. Our therapist warned me that divorce is inevitable, 100 percent going to happen, if I keep that up. Go on date nights, put down your phones and talk and you really have to have sex with him. It may sound like the last thing you want to do, but you must if you want to stay married, and it doesn't really take that long. In other words, when it comes to rebuilding closeness, you have to fake it until you make it. I'm still working to fake it in hopes of making it and hope you do, too. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics