Reply to impact of Alcoholics Anonymous on marriage?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "impact of Alcoholics Anonymous on marriage?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Spouse of a recovered alcoholic here. DH has over 30 years of sobriety, regularly attends meetings, and speaks with his sponsor almost daily. I’ve attended open meetings with him, and I find them mostly inspirational and a tad depressing.

The main issue we had was DH not sharing feelings and emotions that have anything to do with sobriety and recovery. I felt like I was being iced out and didn’t like that he’d share everything with AA and not me, his wife. As a program, AA seems to support this approach. We started marriage counseling, and the therapist told him about “walls” and “windows”. Relationships should be like windows to each other. Hiding feelings was a wall. Therapist said AA approach was fine if you’re single, but doesn’t work for married couples. She said he was acting like a single person in a married relationship. That hit home with DH and he now shares all his recovery work with me. A complete change from how he had been - and how most function in the program.

DH has multiple family members in AA, and they don’t agree that alcoholics should share recovery work. I’m glad DH valued our relationship enough to step out of the mold.

Regarding women in the program, DH knows I have complete trust in him, but would feel uncomfortable with him having an emotional relationship with any other woman - in AA or out. Therefore, he doesn’t exchange numbers, call, have one on one conversations about recovery, sponsor/sponsee or other type relationships with women in the program. They participate in group meets and that’s it. If a group goes to coffee afterward, he sticks with the men. [/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