Hi, I'm new here and I'm here because I am lost. I've never been an addict but my life has always involved one. My father was an alcoholic, my first 2 husbands were abusive alcoholics and my current husband is in rehab. We been together 10 years he has battled this demon his entire life. I knew he was recovering when we started but I had no idea how deep his problem really was. He has done rehab several times in his life. First 2 years were good but past 8 have been plagued by relapse after relapse, usually brought on innocent enough he's always trying to help others but the ones he tries to help aren't ready to give it up so they drag him back in a lot of the time it was his family who were his party buddies growing up they seem to be the worst for dragging him back into that life not that it's their fault he is trying to help them get straight while they are telling him come on just one drink just one night, sometimes he would make it a month all the way up to a year, but this past year has been one on top of another until I was going to leave for good. When sober we have an amazing relationship he is a wonderful husband and father and I love him dearly. He is in a rehab program a year long leaving me and my daughter to tend our farm and animals alone,but I'm very happy he is getting help after 8 years of praying he would. As for me I'm trying to come to terms with all the lies and pain. The pain of what I do know and don't know how to forget, the haunting questions of what I know he is still lying about and the biggest wondering how to rebuild our trust with so many unresolved lies. I want to make our marriage work without him I'm incomplete. He is trying working hard on his recovery and I am trying, working on being the good wife focusing on taking care of our home staying busy. I'm mainly at a loss on how to resolve all these feelings brought on threw this past year of hell. I wish I could unknow the things he's done, unfeel the pain its caused. I know to make my marriage work we have to come to a point of trust again and I know it takes time and we cant really work on rebuilding us with him away for a year only seeing each other three hours a week for visit, I guess I'm just at that place where it feels impossible for 10 years we been together 24/7 except when he relapsed now I'm here alone on this farm in the middle of nowhere with all this pain so fresh I cant even cry anymore I want to and always feel like I'm about to but the tears just don't come. I've ordered the big book to try to better understand his illness but I don't know if a nonaddict can ever really understand, I've read the wives section of his book but I need to read it again so far I'm more confused. So for now I'm struggling, lost, a prisoner in my own mind, a prisoner on my own farm, a prisoner to the disease.

When you read the many posts on this forum, you will hear your story told by many...we have lived with the disease of alcoholism and the destruction of the disease.  Through my recovery (al anon, sponsorship, working the 12-steps, one on one therapy, etc) I have come to recognize my addiction of co-dependency.  My recovery had to begin with my embracing the powerlessness over any addictions and my surrender to a HP that could restore me to wholeness.  I took my focus off of the addicts in my life and placed the focus and recovery work on me; then I began to live my life...not the life that included being here, there, and everywhere reacting to other people's BS and craziness.  Recovery is possible for you....you don't know what you don't know until you sit through meeting after meeting in the same energy of people who have been there.  Good for you that you found this forum and welcome.

Aloha Farmerswife and welcome to the board.  There is a suggestion that is valueable which is to listen to the stories that have already come here and the ones that newly come such as yours.  That value in that is if you listen to the similarities with an open mind you will find help.  That was the first recovery promise made and kept for me and I did need help.  Right off you and I are similar in that I also married and had relationships with addicted and alcoholic women and men.  The reason for that I found out was because I was born and raised in the disease and would only do what I knew from birth until I learned something different and I've learned tons different.  PP's share about learing to live her life is also what happened for me.   I learned that I invested almost everything I had into the addicted relationships and marriages I kept getting into and that it was natural that the disease would take all of the investment and return nothing in return.  I learned that alcoholic/addict relationships are all one way and they take because I was always willing to give.  This disease needs givers and giving enables it to get worse.

Your husband is responsible for his recovery and his life.  It's nice to have support however he must get, maintain and stay sober in spite of the support.  His recovery has to become even more important than his drinking and using or the disease consumes him entirely.  This is a fatal disease and it has no prejudice which sacrafice it gets.  Alcoholism consumes until it is arrested by total abstinence.

Sorry that you put the responsibility for your happiness and sadness again on to the shoulders of a fatally sick person and that is what I also did.  Addictive consumption of a mind, mood, physical and spiritually altering chemical makes them less than and it is normal and natural to also lessen the trust and hope and expectations we have of them.  

I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know about alcoholism when I first found the Al-Anon Family Groups totally by the will of my Higher Power in a location 2600 miles from my homeland.   I knew nothing except that if something didn't happen to alleviate the problem in me I would finally complete my suicide.  This would be a 3rd attempt except that I found the program.  

Your husband has never been sober...he may have been dry at times and all alcoholics who are sober for real know that no one can take them off of their sobriety but themselves.   Dry isn't sober.  There are too many things missing in just being dry including the awareness that you don't give away or try to give away something you haven't got or you'll loose the little you have.  We (yes I am a double...also a member of AA) stay away from using people, places and thing and anchor ourselves to our home group meetings, Sponsors, Big Books and most of all our Higher Power.  Notice that spouses and families are not in that list most often because our spouses and families do not have the tools to keep us sober unless they are recovering alcoholics themselves.  Alcoholism is a cunning, powerful and baffling disease and outdates the life of the Christ by thousands of years.  We are altered (my opinion) from the start.

You're lost for now and you have found MIP Miracles In Progress.  You have lots and lots of help here and in the last month or so we have had new miracles...members who have come here terrified and hurting and lonely and confused who have stayed....followed the suggestions of those who have been here for a while and have their own recoveries and then practiced what they have learned. Today they are awesome examples of positive change in their lives and ours.   Stick around and keep coming back.  In support (((((hugs))))) 

one statement in your post...."i want to make this work...without him i am incomplete"

that is a red flag to me....I DO hope you can get into some face2face meets , get a sponsor and work the 12 steps in their entirety, they are a life effort.

to be "incomplete" w/out a man reminds me of my old codependent days when i was not complete unless i was married, had someone...oh yea, my 2nd AH was nice to me and i hung on bc I, too, felt incomplete w/out my man

then i finally had enough, asked him to leave , got into recovery, got a sponsor to guide me, in fact i had fac2fac sponsor AND an on line one and i found out  I AM COMPLETE.....with ME>..

my maker did not make me  1/2....he made a full, whole, complete person, but my childhood abuse and abandonment, i splintered....i became incomplete bc i was trained adn brainwashed to THINK i was not enough...not good enough....a failure...stupid....not worth anything.......that isn't how my maker started me out.....

HP does not  make  "half assed projects"  so i had to work the steps, went to meets,  did inner child/family of origin discovery and i found out WHY i felt that way......i was torn down, year by year by people who NEVER should have been fertile......but they were, they had us and crippled most of us.....

little by little i am becoming complete within myself......i feel just as whole as a couple feels when i go out....i take me out to eat, by myself  and i am no less then a married lady w/her man sitting by her....

i am just as whole and complete and all my "parts" are intact just as anyone else.....I will never marry again to feel "complete"  b/c I already am......i will marry again, if it is meant to be,  for frieindship...companionship......for to share life w/someone clean...healthy and can hold up his end of a relationship....I don't want to be anyone nurse, or baby sitter or caregiver when the booze eats him up and takes his body out

i am complete right now.......yea, i am a work in progress,  will be in recovery for the remainder of my life to maintain my serenity and healthier life style but  i am complete in every sense of the world...

if i was not complete, i would not be able to take care of me, make decisions,  do for myself..set and maintain boundaries...i would not be able to make sound decisions, ..

my body needs no other to function,  my lungs breathe fine for me...my heart beats fine for me.....so that has to mean that i can do fine w/me......I know i CAN...

if i marry again it will be out of want....not need......

please stay in the program....and you will find out like i did that there is a complete you under neath all that pain....

please take what u can use and leave the rest