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It has been a long time since I posted here, but I do visit the message board because it is so insightful and other peoples stories and the feedback helps me to process my own situation.
A bit of history here... my husband has been sober since end of June 2006. We have been married coming up on 14 years and together 17 years. Husband has always drank since I met him, though it escalated in about 2004. We had a good marriage for a long time, he was very loving adoring, my best friend and vice versa.
I became ill for a few years starting in 2002 - 2005 and we were rarely able to be intimate do to my illness. He was in a high profile powerful job, traveled a lot...had a one night stand in Feb 2004, then started a two year affair with a woman he was working with which ended very badly (she dumped him for his boss) in Jan. 2006. During this time his drinking escalated due to the guilt of what he was doing and he near had a nervous breakdown when she dumped him, but also a lot of prayers were answered and I was able to do an intervention and get him into rehab, as he was literally killing himself and ending up in hospital with alcohol withdrawal etc.
Since he came out of rehab, he has recognized and admitted all the major mistakes he made, we've had a lot of talks, counseling, he regurarly attends AA. I became healthy again, have stayed athletic, attractive, have my own business, thought we could rebuild things including intimacy, but he absolutely had no interest.
Anyhow, his famous line over the last two years has been I don't know what I want and I don't want to work on things. I've tried to just focus on me and let him focus during that time on his recovery however, I had so many triggers because there was no affair recovery things just weren't getting better. He said he couldn't live with always being questioned on his whereabouts and it's not that he was doing anything wrong, it's just when you've been pulled through the ringer you want some accountability. There was accountability but it was begrudgingly.
He just wasn't willing to work on the relationship and said he just didn't have those romantic feelings, he was numbed out across the board and wanted to be alone. He doesn't know empathy very well, it just wasn't working and so with the help of our counselor we came to decide upon a Healing or Controlled separation which has guidelines in place that include, when we communicate, how we communicate, phone, text etc. when we see each other, no dating, etc. This started in Oct 08 and has been extended to April 09.
Every other week we have a counseling session to touch base talk about where we are and what we are feeling. The counselor says he's logjamming things. He still doesn't want to work on taking some steps to rebuild relationship. He has had moments of deep emotion where he has shared that he feels that if he lets me go he will be making the biggest mistake of his life. He says I'm the sweetest person he knows and will probably ever know and that I'm extremely attractive but that he's just numb and doesn't feel things towards me and is afraid he can't get it back. He says he's emotionally detached not just from me, but life in general and just goes to work and AA. Mostly he says he just wants to be able to come and go as he pleases with no one to answer to. He likes being on his own and being able to do that.
We have an excellent counselor very pro-marriage and brings up so many excellent points and is very helpful insightful and one of the things she did say to him is that when you start to work on things the feelings do begin to come back and especially because we had them before. She also pointed out that if he doens't address his issues and the issues in our relationship now he will just drag the baggage into the next relationship because there is so much unresolved stuff here. He just seems stuck and fearful and I'm wondering is this Dry drunk recovering alcoholic stuff or mid-life crisis or both????
His words in the last session were that he was so emotionally detached that he felt like it might be the beginning of the end for us and that finances were a big thing in slowing him down from divorce (ouch). There is so much at stake here emotionally, spirituallly and financially. I can see all the benefit of what our HP can do to restore our relationship and help what has been so broken. Husband had very strong beliefs when I met him with regard to that but he is running from all of it.
Thoughts input here would be so much appreciated and apologies for the long dissertation here.
Aloha JS...Sounds like you've been working overtime and it sounds like he's got the fear and panic cramps. What could it be? Dry drunk..okay maybe. Program works on that (AA as suggested). Mid-life crises? Seems his crises has become yours and the counselors responsibility. His fear as you state it sounds self centered to the extreem and that is not only an AA awareness from recovering alcoholics. We can use that ourselves and sometimes do ourselves. For me I recognized it as whining about maybe there was a splinter out there to hurt my toe or finger without packing my gloves and boots.
He could not possibly be any worse off if you turned the responsibility for his health and happiness back over to him and commenced doing the right thing for JS. You are responsible for you and he can't be an excuse for your consequences. When you and the counselor stop pulling on his chain what's he gonna do? You know what he says hes going to do but what's he really gonna do and who is going to put the failure or success on?
If you are not getting to face to face Al-Anon Family Group meetings I would highly suggest it. It would be interesting to see what your counselor say about that also. You can get lots and lots of support and information at the meetings with an opportunity to create a miracle for yourself. The hotline number for the meetings in your area is in the white pages of your telephone book. Give yourself a chance.
I have been to some very good therapists for myself and other members of our family. What I found after going to al anon for over a year is that I learned a lot about what was going on or what should happen or not happen with therapy .......... but al anon actually gave me the tools to help me get healthier and interact with my AH in a way that would help him own his own issues. I use to feel like I needed to be doing for everyone, I can support my kids or AH in their efforts but I can't do it for them.
Getting on with putting the focus on me, has made them all step up to do more than they were. It is a work in progress and we have a long, long way to go. One therapist who worked with my whole family for a short time, wanted me to grow up and he wouldn't believe my kids or me that we were a family affected by alcoholism. The book "Getting Them Sober" helped me to figure out how well the counselors understood what it was like to live in a family affected by alcoholism. It would be time well spent to just check those sections out even though your AH is sober.
Sounds like you have made loads of progress and working very hard. My AH just continues to fortify the walls I think he has lived with all of his life so he has no idea what to do re relationships and he may never change. Keep posting and keep coming back, there is a lot of support here for each other.
hugs, ddub
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"Choices are the hinges of destiny." Pythagoras You can't change the past, but you can change the future.
Thank you for the responses. I think especially since the last counseling session that is what I've been thinking about, is how do I move forward, and what can I do that would force an outcome, because quite frankly I'm tired of hanging in limbo. Meaning sometimes I just want to tell him I'm moving out of our home, you can move back in and manage the home and finances. I've have had it, when you figure it out let me know, otherwise I'm moving on with life. Then on the other hand I don't know if that's the right choice right now either.
I recognize I don't have any control over what husband does only what I do, so trying to focus on my own stuff, sometimes that's hard when you feel like there could be a hammer about to fall on your head (meaning divorce), you just don't know when. I don't want a divorce I believe in the vows I took before God, my husband. I don't know the outcome, it's scary and all I can do is pray and trust that things will work out the way their supposed to I guess.
I do agree that he is very selfish. I think he may be about the most selfish person I have ever met in my entire life. I know alcoholics recovering or not tend to be the center of their own universe.
Counselor is very much supportive of the Al-anon and AA program and 12 step recovery and encourages both of us to be active in that. Unfortunately where I live there aren't any close by groups...all about an hour away save for a couple that don't match my schedule to well, so I've gone to some but that is why I like to visit this board.
I don't think counselor or I are trying to be responsible for hubby's health or happiness, hence why we are separated, so each of us would have some time and space to heal and for him to figure out why he wasn't wanting to work on the marriage since we were at an impasse. The counseling sessions are a temperature reading of where things are and a good place for us both to say what were feeling and the counselor to mediate that and brings things to light that maybe we hadn't thought of and work on solutions. Problem is I'm married to a self-absored recovering alcoholic...dry drunk whatever you want to call him, so last session was basically that he should get some individual counseling to try and work out the roadblocks and she has held him accountable with working his 12 steps and seeing his sponsor because it was part of the separation agreement but he really hasn't been working the steps or seeing his sponsor much.
So I think if we were just to not go to counseling and I lived my life and let him live his and continue in our limited contact, what would happen on his end...for a long time nothing, until some kind of crisis hits and I don't know what that is.
I realize I can't do much about where my husband is and what he is or isn't going to do, but I'm an analytical person and I do like to understand why he is the way he is. It just helps me process.
I tried and i learned never will. You can try all you want.
I let it go to HP. Now it doesnt enter into my brain anymore because I know HP is working on the A's in my life so I really dont have to. Also, I realized that by trying to understand, I was putting all the focus on him and not me.
I think it might be worth the hours driving to get to some meetings. I know I would if I were you. Hugs, J.
Hmmmm.... sorry you have to deal with all this.... however a few things popped up to me... things I have done in the past that I recognize in your posts.... sounds like you are still obsessing on HIM, not really taking care of you.... sounds like you said you focus on you to LET him take care of himself.... and that you blame yourself because of not being intimate with him for his affair.... this is not your fault!!!! I went to counseling with my A husband, but I really needed to go by myself -- I do now. Go for yourself, in addition to the two of you. I would find a new counselor just for me. I found it hard in my first marriage to let go and let God, but we must... My current A husband (in and out of AA -- in right now) was reciting the serenity prayer yesterday and interjecting comments with the jist being -- can't control/change anything except ourselves --- how true. Once we accept this then serenity can enter our lives. I know it is hard.... keep coming! Support is here. You can do it. db55
I can identify with much of your story--as most Al-Anons can with each other!!
My soberAH and I have been separated for almost 3 1/2 years. He will have 4 years sober in April. He is very active in his recovery program and has made incredible strides in his journey. I have been in actively working my Al-Anon program for about 3 1/2 years--coincidence, I think not. The wreakage of our marriage while he was drinking includes all of the standard "stuff," verbal and physical abuse, infidelity, financial ruin, etc.
The first year, he called me every day to "touch base." We went to family events together and I went home alone. During this time, an AA told me that it had taken him a year of sobriety to have a true emotion (because he had lived numbed for so long) and that then it took forever for him to figure out what to do with the emotion. UGH!!
The second year, we added a date night. He was still very selfish and self-centered. At some point he said that sobriety was like learning how to live life after loosing your best friend that you had done everything with... My IC told me that it could take 18 months sober before he would even be able to think/feel/talk on a more complex, "adult," introspective way. In our case, thank God, she was right. But, again, UGH!!
This past year, we added another date night, some trips out of town and some overnights at the house. He is beginning to show consistent concern for others (especially me) and no longer thinks only of himself. However, he also has been able to verbalize that he enjoys living alone. He never did it before or had to take care of himself. Now he does and he enjoys the feeling and I believe that it has been key to him re-building his self-esteem (maybe for the first time.) We have not been intimate since sobriety. With the help of a MC, he has acknowledged that he enjoys not having to deal with the emotions/complications that come with equating women=sex and that while kisses and hugs are great, he feels no great desire to go further, right now. It is incredibly difficult to not take that as personal rejection, especially in light of the infidelity. But, the more I read and learn, it is not unexpected. Try to get ahold of the Al-Anon book "the dilemma of the alcoholic marriage." "Sex problems" are nothing new. Also, my IC told me early on that some recoverying As go into a type of "sexorexia." They can be totally abstinent because on some level they equate sex with drinking/drugging or sex is so tied to feelings of guilt/shame that they can't/won't let themselves go there.
In our case, it was time for the "do I re-up my lease" discussion a few months ago. I prayed alot before we met and spoke with my sponsor about what I needed. Thanks to this program, I was able to say to him (without trying to force a solution or to guilt him into it) that continued separation was not good for me anymore; that I didn't know what it would mean if he did re-up, and that I wasn't making an ultimatum, but that I had to do what was right for me. He listened and went home to think, pray, etc. He called me the next day and suggested a three month extension and attending MC. That felt okay for ME and I agreed. Our HP sent us to an incredible MC and we have made great progress in alot of areas. The MC did tell us, however, that if my AH does not move in at the end of February that we will need to see individual ICs to decide if we should be married anymore. I appreciated his honesty. I especially appreciated that it wasn't just me who thought that we needed to reach some sort of resolution to our relationship.
I have tried not to project. My AH says that he is ready to move back in and will do so at the end of the month. I hope that that is what happens. If it doesn't, I don't think that I am ready to file for divorce, but I have thought about an extended period of NC. We have never really been totally separate. I don't know. I will take it one day at a time and live in today. But, I will continue to make what I need a priority. I think that my AH is finally getting it when I say that I am in limbo: I am married, but I am living single and that most days I feel like I am missing something that isn't here. For me, this living situation is no longer a healthy thing for ME.
I cannot control what my AH does, and honestly, I don't want him here if he doesn't want to be here (BTDT). I can only control myself and do what I need to do for me.
Thank you for your post and for sharing. Remember that you are not alone!!
Yours in recovery,
SLS
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Do not be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will look after itself. The Bible, from Courage to Change, p.138
This is a great discussion. The posts, replies... so true. Years ago.... in my first marriage... I didn't know about AA or Alanon... I just knew something wasn't right... my hubby (probably an A) separated, got back together, moved apart -- with no plans to end the marriage on paper... after 3 years he called me and said he was filing for divorce... I new it was because he was planning to remarry. Still hurt, I still got angry even though I thought I was over it. Looking back, I think I should have left and divorced him 5 years prior. All together we were married for 11 years. I have friends that tell me they never knew I was married! I don't know, I just remembered all that stuff. 20 years later, I wish I knew more then, but it is all my journey. in love, db55
Thankyou for the feedback. SLS thankyou for sharing your story, that really helps me to understand things a bit better.
It sounds like the two of you have made a lot of progress and that is great I will be praying that it works out for both of you and that he moves back in. I understand about not wanting to file for divorce should it not work the way your are hoping, that's a really hard one when you still love the person and have so much time invested in relationship. It sounds like HP is working lots of things out for you so trust him to continue to keep restoring things.
I guess I could be in for a long haul with the separation unless he decides to divorce me. It's hard because he is soooo detached and seems to become more so, not less with this separation. We don't talk everyday only once a week and when I asked him about a date night at first 2 weeks ago he was open to it but then after this last counseling session it was the I'm so emotionally detached maybe this is the beginning of the end speech. I guess I got freaked out, most of the time I do alright going about my own business but it kind of set me back.
db..thanks for your feedback. I do go to IC as well. It helps! I did use to blame myself a lot for the affair. It really shot my self esteem down to the bottom of the barrel. He told me recently in counseling that when he couldn't have sex with me anymore that he thought we would never have good sex again. He thought I wouldn't get well and basically got his needs met somewhere else.
I don't blame myself for the affair, frankly I think what he did was despicable, but I do have self esteem issues. It's hard for me to like/love myself. It's very hard when the husband that always loved you in the past doesn't look at you the same anymore betrayed you and doesn't see your value as a wife/friend, or he does sort of cause he verbalizes it but not enough to want to come back and work it out. Actually I don't want him back right now, I would just like to make some baby step progress like a date night. It wounds the soul very deeply because we were so connected once. Having said that I realize my identity is in the way my HP sees me not the way my AH sees me, but knowing it and getting to that place is really hard!!!!
So I'm trying to figure out how not to worry, I wake up every morning with so much anxiety and fear. Being afraid that he'll divorce me (the ultimate rejection/betrayal for me), being afraid that he might cheat again, although I told him if he ever does I'm done with the marriage.
I agree I need to focus more on getting my self esteem back and my own life but why is that so darn hard? I think fear really gets in the way. I do have a life, I have a business, I have dogs, cats a horse to take care of, friends and family but it's always lurking in the back of my mind...all these fears. On top of all that I just really miss my husband and best friend and I have for years.
Oh yea... and OMT... my first hubby --the 20 years ago experience -- he did remarry, and divorced again! He apologized not too long ago for the way he behaved with me, etc. Amazing. ... JS, things will get better. You are created in God's image and worth it!!!
I'm here with you in a similar situation. Seperated for 7 months now from my AH of 13 years (been together for 20). I recently said that I can't live in this limbo, we have to deal with now. So we are, as I read in the Getting them Sober 4 book, letting go and letting lawyer. We'll see where that takes us. We need to let go and get better, with an understanding that if it's meant to be, maybe it will be again some day ...but not now.
Yes, I still love him. Are we good for each other? No, not at this point in our lives. I have a HUGE problem obsessing with thoughts of him and not focusing on myself. Why it is so hard to put ME first, is what I am trying to work on? I need to get him out of my head, sometimes I need to get me out of my head. As I've sat in Limbo waiting for him to get it, I have tried, not not been truly able to take care of my life. I need to learn to drive my own bus.
I was just going to read and not post. I have to respond. Some of the dialogue between you and your AHsober could have been me and my AHsober. They are just doing the dance in my opinion in front of us and the counselors. If you read the Getting Them Sober books it starts to make sense. I am just like you. I married for life. I can't even think of the word divorce. We have been separated for almost 4 years. He calls and yanks my chain now and then. It is difficult to love someone who will not or can not love you back. I have to put my trust in my HP and let him report to his HP to know how this is going to turn out. Spend as much time working your program as you can. Hope this helps. I do so understand your situation.
Yes all those animals are lots of work. My horse is a Trakehner. I got her in July 07 with the hopes of showing dressage, she is trained through 4th level and shown through 3rd, but unfortunately she came up lame in Jan. 08 with Coronary Band Dystrophy which was misdiagnosed for about 6 months till I found the right vet. We then found out she had a coffin bone issue in her front left, which had to be corrected with special shoes pads and is doing much better, but she recently went lame again with tendon injury. I tell ya it's been one thing after the next, with huge vet bills to try and get her sound. I do board her but I can't really rely on anyone else because she needs certain medicine to be put on coronary bands each day, I have to hand walk her etc.
It's okay though I enjoy being with her. The dogs are super needy and they do tie me to the house a bit. It's a trade-off I guess they make good company with no hubby around. Oh that's one of the other reasons he said he doens't want to come back. He doens't want to come back to 4 dogs two cats and a horse. I confess three of the dogs are strays I have accumulated over last 3 years. We get a lot of them around here, abandonded, starved etc. and I'm a softy when it comes to the animals...I love them. I had a couple gals tell me to scratch the hubby and keep the dogs, their a lot more reliable, loving, always happy to see you and they don't complain...LOL!
Thank you for the post. That sounds like a good book, I will have to get it. We probably are doing the dance. Thats why I knew I needed to come here and start getting input. When your in the middle of it, you don't even realize what your doing sometimes, so thankyou for pointing that out.
I'm sorry the separation has been so long...that is really hard. Many ((((hugs)))) back!!!
Shortly after I reached one year of sobriety, I found myself in relationship limbo. My wife said some things and I took them to heart. It all caught me off guard. I was angry at her for almost a whole year. I tested the waters and found myself attracted to a much younger woman (with about zip sobriety) although nothing happened. She rocked my world just going out for coffee. At the end of that year, I realized I was about to lose my wife, and that it was because of MY resentment. This all hit me like an avalanche, and I thought it was too late. It snapped me out of it, and suddenly I only wanted to be with my wife. It was sincere, and I wrote her a letter. I meant it, and I guess she believed me. We had another 3 years+ together, much of it good, before the subterfuge of incompatibility snuck up on us again. I think at that point we were both afraid of separating. I don't know. But things were good enough that when she did dump me, I had no time to go into a year of waffling and resentment... it was over, wham, just like that. Then began my recovery. It took me half a year just to be angry with anyone but myself. I felt I couldn't be angry at HER, or that I needed her permission to be angry at her. I wasn't really free of her until I moved out of the house we had bought and lived in for a little over 2 years together, after living there by myself for another 9 years.
I don't know if any of this relates, but - my year of fence-sitting limbo, between year 1 and 2 of my sobriety, sounds somewhat like what your AH has been going through albeit for a longer time. Something will eventually happen to get him off the fence. Indecision can be a form of denial. If the available choices all have consequences and responsibilities a person doesn't want to deal with, limbo may be a comfortable choice. For me, the discomfort and motion sickness of floating in limbo caught up and forced me to act.
I think you are right that is going to take something to jar him off the fence. The counselor thought maybe that might be me telling him, I've had it, I'm moving on...and to give me a call when he figures it out and we'll see where things are then.
I don't know that I'm ready for that yet though. Sometimes it seems like he really wants me to file for divorce to make it easy on him. I don't want a divorce though. It will create a larger mess in many ways, financially spiritually, emotionally and I don't think he even begins to comprehend that. He comprehends the financial part, that is part of what keeps him from acting on divorce or at least he says, but he also says he doesn't know that he wants me out of his life completely for good.
That's because I told him if we do divorce I would no longer be a part of his life in any way shape or form, that I don't want to know who he dates, or marries or has kids with. It is to painful for me, because that was supposed to be my life with him.
Question for you if you don't mind sharing....what made you fence sit? It sounds like you and your wife were capable of having a good life together since you did share good times. Was it maybe the grass is greener somewhere else syndrome, or that you wanted your freedom just in general or something else?
I think with my husband he is so afraid of loosing his freedom (which I don't really understand since when he was with me, he traveled much went to games with the guys etc. and I didn't complain), that he is enslaved by the very thing he fears loosing. His life ends up being kind of empty because he does come and go as he pleases now where he lives, but he's emotionally detached from everything. I don't think it's that he wants to do anything bad; i.e other women (he said he wouldn't go there until making a decision about us), he just doesn't want to be accountable to his comings and goings. In the real world though, that doesn't seem realistic if you are going to have any type of relationship. Even at your work place there is accountability. It seems if you are going to have any type of rich meaningful relationship in your life there is some accountability.
I've just read this thread and felt compelled to reply. Much of what I have read strikes a chord. I too do not know whether my OH is a dry drunk or is just a relationship mess.
I attended my first Al-Anon meeting last night. I'm not sure why. I suppose I needed some answers and to see if what was happening was 'normal'. I had never heard the term 'dry drunk' before. I dont know if it applies here. Last night showed me that whilst I thought I understood I am actually naive.
I have been with my OH for nearly three years and moved in with him after a year. He is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for two years: regularly attending AA. Before that he was on and off the wagon. When I met him he wasn't drinking but he lapsed two or three times.
I too have heard the line I don't know what I want and I don't want to work on things along with Im better on my own, I cant do relationships, I love you, I dont love you etc. I too have watched as my OH emotionally detached, re-attached, detached again. Now we are in relationship limbo and have been for a year. We are like housemates. I dont know what is going on in his head but I feel scared of the emotional harm he can cause and I suppose I have detached too. I know why I have.. protection.
Last summer my OH attended some relationship counselling alone to see if that would help with some of his issues. I say attended but he just showed up for a few sessions and then decided it was worthless.
We dont talk about this. It is like the elephant in the corner of the room.
If Im honest, I feel like he is dry but the unproductive attitudes and behaviour patterns are still there and in fact worse now. I also feel that whilst he is in the program, attends regularly and is almost evangelical about his AA membership he isnt doing recovery. Like simply being dry is all.
Im not saying he isnt recovering. Im not saying that I am not proud of where he is and how much he has achieved. But I feel that he is going through the motions. His step one involved writing a brief life story for his sponsor. It took him a year and a half. I know it must be difficult to do but he would use any other distraction to stop doing it. He goes to meetings but Im not sure whether that he is just going through the motions.
He turns to drink during emotional crisis. And what I have seen of that is that he has turned to drink when he and I have had problems and our relationship was on the rocks. He has said he wont do that again and I suppose I believe him as he seems to have replaced feeling and getting drunk when he cant cope with total numbness.
Question for you if you don't mind sharing....what made you fence sit? It sounds like you and your wife were capable of having a good life together since you did share good times. Was it maybe the grass is greener somewhere else syndrome, or that you wanted your freedom just in general or something else?
In my marriage, I had to solve all the problems singlehandedly. If there was something she didn't like, I had to fix it. Whether it was her car, the house, the food, whatever. I once did a little humor piece on how various members of my family would react to being served the proverbial "shit sandwich". It was good for some laughs, but I couldn't come up with one for my wife. I didn't come up with it until a few years after she was gone... her response would have been to hand it to me and say, "can you eat this?"
So when we had our falling out, I was the one who had to fix it. My fence sitting was perhaps not so much indecision as a year of trying to find the right combination of voodoo chants and sweet talk to fix things back the way they were. Oddly enough, it was "sweet talk" that precipitated the falling out in the first place. She came out of nowhere one day and just got all over me for using nicknames and cute affections - "baby talk" as she called it. The kind of stuff that people in love do, you know. She had participated and encouraged it so it seemed. Now, it was a bad thing and she acted as if she had told me 1000 times. I missed the first 999. At any rate, I felt like Igor in Young Frankenstein "There. There Wolf. There Castle". "Why are you talking like that?" "I thought you wanted to!"
The fact of the matter was, she just didn't love me any more. I guess I instinctively knew it, but that's a hell of a way to communicate. Of course that's not what she said. She was simply projecting a different me, that she could love. What-EVER.
So I tried to get it back. At one point I was working on a very intense project for my work, and I suggested separating for a couple weeks to get off each others' nerves. My plan was to just check into a hotel. She thought that was a bad idea and would lead us further down the path to permanent separation. Which I thought odd, I thought she would have welcomed it. Actually, for that time I would not have been available to be the kids' taxi driver and every other thing (including shit sandwich disposer).
Marriage counseling? She didn't need that, just ask her. I was the one who needed counseling.
It had been maybe 10, 11 months. I finally made an appointment with a marriage counselor and convinced her to come with me. What happened next I still don't get. We had another crisis, and this one was brought on by me - no need to go into detail. Small thing but she first began to mention things like divorce. In that moment, my bubble of resentment burst and I just shifted gears. I called my sponsor - who was very supportive and said it's not as bad as you think it is. He was right. I wrote my wife a letter, and it was me eating the shit sandwich but... I guess I did it right. Within a few days, she sat down to talk to me and we just had one of those "oh shit, what did we almost do?" moments. We had this rather wonderful return to the old days (sans nicknames and baby talk - I just wasn't going there and I never did again). 3-4 days later we went to the marriage counselor for our first appointment... holding hands. The counselor told us what he could offer, but we had this feeling at the time that the problem was solved. We didn't go back.
We had more than 3 more good years together. The end game is another story but in the process I found out that she had been carrying on an affair with a co-worker that had actually predated my sobriety by some months and it had continued right up to then, almost - through my first year of sobriety, our year of falling out, and our three more good years.
I think that what *really* happened was she realized she wasn't ready to be on her own. The kids (not mine) weren't all out of the house yet, in fact some that should have been were still there. She *needed* me. To finish the job I was hired to do - be a father to her kids and some support and comfort until the kids were grown, then she could dump me. It just wasn't time yet, and she realized that if she was going to keep me, she'd have to warm up a bit. That she did, and did very well. The guy she was having an affair with wasn't my replacement - just an outlet, until she found someone better. So it was a logical conclusion for her to stay with me a while longer, and go back to feeding me those little crumbs that had kept me happy before, and continued to do so. And may have kept it up forever had she not made the first move down the road.
Oh yeah, after the break up, one of her accusations/justifications was that I "never stopped with the baby talk". Noticing things was never her strong suit. Although it tended to wax and wane at her convenience. Whenever my sobriety anniversary was coming up, she'd say "how many years is it? 1? 2?"... yet I saw some of her correspondence with a friend and she said something like, "oh he's sober now, for 5 years and 2 months". LOL.
There wasn't much point in arguing this with her. For someone who wasn't an alcoholic, her ability to manipulate and deny was pretty impressive.
I'm happy to report that my current fiance - and we're going to be celebrating 2 years together real soon - is very much into cute nicknames and in fact I have trouble keeping up with her. Together we are probably the silliest pair on the planet, and I love it.
It's encouraging to know you have found true love fun nicknames and all. It gives me hope if this current marriage doesn't work out maybe I can find true love once again.
I guess in our relationship, I am more you and my hubby is more your exwife, in that I'm the one trying to fix things, managing everything in the household. Someone here on the post mentioned my husband does kind of a dance with me, I think that's true. Last two nights we have talked. He talks all the negative why it won't work, and then he regurgitates things I thought he had said he was over.
For instance he told me in a counseling session he was afraid of coming back because he might have another affair and hurt me again, then in the next counseling session he was over that fear....then tonight he had that fear again. My response to him was your a smart guy your successful in business, why the heck if we went down recovery road in our marriage and things were looking up would you choose the same path that ended in so much destruction? His response was good point, he just thinks I'd be way better off without him sometimes.
I think he has a lot of guilt and fear issues, sometimes I just feel like he plain doesn't love me, but when I ask him he firmly states he really does love me, he just doesn't have the romantic feelings but he says he's just kind of numb in general. I dunno it's confusing as heck and then I get all this anxiety and fear because I'm not ready for divorce, I really don't want to go there and it scares me.
He agreed were focusing to much on the negative, but next week in counseling the d word will probably come up again. I guess that's the dance, the funny thing is tomorrow is our anniversary and he wanted to know what I wanted to do for our anniversary and for valentines day.
Having said that I also prayed a lot before talking with him and I felt like God was working in those conversations for me and giving me the words. I just told him I was really tired of talking about all the negative divorce crap when he is so emotionally detached and hasn't really done business with God his program the healing that needs to happen before all those big decisions are made.
I'm trying to get a bit more centered here and I'm going to see my Pastor on Thursday night just to kind of pray and try to let go of some of the fears I have. I know God has a lot of work to do with me to and I want to get to a place where I can feel more peaceful in the midst of the turmoil, it just been really hard lately.
