The material presented
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
My wife and I have been married for 12 years and together 16. We have 2 children 5 and 9 months. My wife is almost 2 years sober (in September). Last year was a m*******r of a year. After debating whether or not to have another kid, I convinced my wife to get pregnant and then it all went to s***. We decided to remodel the house, adding a bedroom for the new baby, but right after we broke ground the company I was working at started to spiral into bankruptcy. My newly sober wife was actually getting s*** done around the house and I didn't have to take care of everything anymore and I started to micro-manage her. In fact, the more stressed I got, the more of an a**** I became alternating between sweetness and rage. We started counseling, but I plain ignored the suggestions to go to Ala-Non and thought I could handle it on my own. Big mistake. We continued to go to counseling and I half-assed it while I was figuring out an exit strategy at my job and into a new one. I promised my wife that when I changed jobs things would be different. We hobbled along, I changed jobs, the baby was born and ended up in the NICU. I didn't change and she continued to beg that I not be so controlling and prone to rage.
New year roles around and now I'm ready to finally start taking things seriously...kind of. I really did work at the suggestions of the couples counselor. I thought things were getting better as we were fighting less and recovering faster. What I didn't know is that it was because my wife was just giving up more and more.
In April my wife says she's just about done and this is my last chance. I was so careful, but inevitably we fought a few more times and then on our 12 year anniversary in May she said she was done. Of course she had no plan about how to put that in action, but she wanted out. I was devastated...and too late finally went to Ala-Non and started seeking help.
In couples we agreed that I would move into our new guest house (converted garage) and give her space, but appear to still be together for our kids sake while I worked on me. Our one agreement was No Dating, No Sex with other people.
I found a home group and a few other meetings I really enjoyed. I started working out and began swimming for exercise, something I always wanted to do, but never got around to. I got a shrink and even though I was confused, sad and lonely, all in all I was doing pretty good and I thought I was making inroads to reconciliation.
Then last week I started noticing that she was evading me. It was like when she used to be hiding Vicodin. During the week she showed me her step work notebook and the work she was doing in her 5th step. It really peeked my curiosity to why she had so many check marks next to lying and guilt and things like that. I knew she was using, but how bad could her actions have been?
So with my suspicions up I tracked her phone and saw that she was at a hotel, not any hotel, but the one that we used to go to for our romantic getaways. Then I looked at her phone records and saw a number of calls from someone I didn't recognized and when I called a male voice answered, but I was too much of a pussy to do anything. Then I did one of the worst things that I have ever done and sought out her step notebook and let my sick soul read it all.
Turns out that through our entire marriage, starting during our engagement, she was having affairs (mostly heavy petting, a couple fully sexual, all emotional) with every single guy "friend" that I ever had suspicions about. She always told me I was crazy and they were just friends, but she was using them for the attention, stringing out their affections so that she would feel some self worth, but used the alcohol and drugs to give her first the courage and 2nd the numbness to handle the guilt. I was shaking with rage, not so much because of what she had done, but because of all the years that it made me feel crazy and undesired.
See another side effect of this behavior was my complete lack of confidence sexually. We started out fine, but when she started seeing these other guys she would pull away from me in the bedroom which would make me feel insecure about my abilities which would turn her off even more. Then she would have to go get turned on by someone so that she could come home to me and start the whole sick cycle over again.
After several years of self-doubt in my sexual abilities, having been to more than one sex counselor with her, sticking me**** with numbing shots to last longer, buying every sex toy, sex book and other kink I could think of to try and satisfy her, I started to seek out professionals, prostitutes, to teach me how to be a better lover and more importantly give me some sense of sexual power.
It would have worked to, but then I fell in love with one of them. This was at the end of 2006 (before we had kids) and on New Years 2006 I told her I wanted a divorce with the sick fantasy that I would rescue my poor, crazy (she was bi-polar) prostitute, lover. To her credit, the prostitute dissuaded of these notions and then actually helped me emotionally and sexually reconnect with my wife. Combined with counseling and my secret life, in mid 2007 we recommitted to each other and it was a beautiful thing. We bought a house, we had a kid and it was great...except that I still couldn't tell my wife certain things I liked to do in bed out of shame and she was still kind of seeking the attention of other men, but only a little. So I saw some girls when I traveled on the road and she made out with some guys once a year on her trip to Vegas. Wedded bliss.
So back to last week. Here I have all this truth in my face and to me, the past is even, but what I'm really pissed about is the betrayal she's committing this night. I'd sworn off women of the night since the begging of the year when I started trying to save things and then we promised in the couples office, no dating, no sex. So I called her up and demanded to know "Where the f***she was" (I knew that already) and "who the f*** she was with." Turns out she was with the Dad of one of the kids my daughter goes to preschool with. Some weaselly writer type that I had actually helped get a job at her request.
She comes home and I attack, but instead of yelling at her, I unload all my secrets. My thinking was, if she knew it all we could start together from scratch at zero with all the s*** in the open. She tells me that she doesn't want to know all of this stuff, but I keep going. She tells me that she was probably never going to share her fourth step writing, but I keep going. Finally I tell her with all of what I found out that I'm only really upset about this most recent betrayal since we were supposed to be working on ourselves. She tells me she never had any intention of keeping the promise she made in the couples office because as far as she was concerned the minute I "agreed" to separation, she was finally free to engage in the act with this putz that she had thought about for almost three years. WTF? In fact they had been emotionally involved since the past summer when I was such an a***** and he was going through a traumatic divorce. Before that, she tried to come onto him when she wasn't sober yet one night when she had her nightly dose of Ambien and white wine. He already had a pilled addicted, drunk wife so he wasn't interested in that. So she got sober and befriended him again. And of course it started off as friends, but then you know, I became an a**** and he was getting divorced...and yada yada yada. She claims she cut it off as my son was born and we were trying to work it out, a 6 month period she claims, but her phone records say its more like a month.
So I spin the f**** out of control and go to three meetings on Saturday. Sunday I calm down, but have previoulsy texted the guy some pretty unveiled threats and of course did get him fired from the job I got him. I'm oscillating between not being able to live without her and then all my friends and family saying...dude, its over and me trying to accept that. Sunday night we meet back up and we begin to talk. I mean really talk and put everything out on the table. She tries to justify this by saying she talked to her shrink and her sponsor about this guy and this time it was different than when she was using. This was an adult relationship...blah blah blah. I get her to admit that she became emotionally involved with him before her one year in sobriety and that I never really had a chance to reconcile because she had already planned an escape route. And then she asked for a hug and I thought we were back on the road to reconciliation baby.
We ended up in the couples session again the next night and I basically got beat over the head for 2 hours that it was over, by both my wife and the therapist. Guess what, I can't control the way other people feel? Who knew?
So now where am I? Well last night I finally approached someone to be my sponsor and I admit that I'm truly broken. Our marriage for 12 years was almost a complete lie. Even in recovery she still resorts to her alcoholic behavior and I am so sick that all I want is more. Give me all the f**** abuse, lies and sickness you got and I'll fix it. I'll control all the chaos.
We've started the process of truly separating with her getting her own apartment. Financially its going to f***us both, but c'est la vie. We're getting a legal separation so she can still have health insurance and we're using a mediator, because f*** lawyers. I'm slowly accepting this, but if she said she was ready to try it again tomorrow, I would be on that s** like stink on s***.
People in our program keep telling me that just about the time I'm ready to truly move on, she want to come back. Again, all I think about is "really, how long do you think that will really be?"
I've read all the entries about how I'll learn to work on myself and be happy, and that its not about her, its about me...s***. All I know is the one thing I wanted in life was a wife, kids and complete happy home because my dad died when I was young and I wanted to be the most present Dad ever and now they get to be from a broken home too.
Anyone ever had something like this happen and actually end up with their wife? If so, god bless you and I hope he blesses me too.
-- Edited by NewAndImprovedMe on Wednesday 2nd of July 2014 06:19:58 PM
-- Edited by hotrod on Wednesday 2nd of July 2014 06:35:33 PM
Dear New and Improved Me, I do hear you and understand the pain, confusion and sadness of which you speak. I am happy that you found Al-Anon and are attending meetings. It is here that I learned to seek the support and understanding from others who understand his few others can. The tools of meetings, slogans, a sponsor and the steps all led me one day at a time out of the darkness of despair.
Alcoholism is a progressive disease over which we are powerless. We who live with this disease develop similar symptoms as the alcoholic, without the addiction to the booze. Al-Anon is a tried-and-true method of recovery from living in the insanity.
It is a process and progress not perfection is our goal so please keep coming back. You are worth it and there is hope and life after this disease.
Welcome to MIP: There is so much ambivalence in your share and from the story you have shared, it is certainly understandable. Lots of hurt, betrayal, anger, confusion and some clarity and understanding in your share, too. Thank you for trusting us.
I know when I bake a cake I pull out everything I need, put it on the table, mix things as the recipe calls for, beat it altogether, pour it into cake pans and then drop the pans on a flat surface to get out the air holes before I slip the cakes into the oven to bake for as long as necessary before I can frost them. After I put the cakes in the oven I notice that the kitchen counters are coated in flour, sugar, egg whites that dripped, cake batter that dripped, Crisco, and leftover wax paper from the rounds I cut to protect the layers from sticking to the pans. I clean that all up while I wait for the cakes to fully bake. When they're done, I pull them out of the oven and let them cool. When cool, I frost the top of one layer and put the other layer on top of that. Finally, I frost the entire cake and add decorations.
Sometimes, even when I've done everything I know how to do to create a good tasting, pleasant looking cake, I fail at it. I do two things. I either dump the whole project and start again or I try to repair the damage I've done. it all depends on how badly the cake turned out what I do. But, before I can do anything, I have to figure out what went wrong and what I can do to avoid making the same mistakes with my next attempt at baking a tasty cake.
I think that relationships affected by alcoholism can sometimes be like baking a cake. There's the idea, the recipe for success, the mixing of necessary ingredients, the mess that follows the mixing, the waiting on seeing the fruits of our labor and then the decisions on what we can do next if the cake didn't turn out exactly as we hoped. There's no use beating up on myself for doing the best I knew how to do at the time when I tried to do my part to create a tasty and pleasant looking cake. That won't make the cake any better. But, I can look at where I slipped or what I missed or what I might need to know before I try to bake the same kind of cake and this time with better success. Nothing is lost that way. I've just learned something I didn't fully understand or grasp at the time I thought about making a cake.
Although right now everything is in the messy stages for you and for your wife, nothing is lost. Just more opportunity to learn new things about yourself and new ways to treat yourself with the continued help of Al-Anon and working a program for you. Who knows how the "cake" of your life or even your marriage will really turn out in the next few years? Maybe its a project that will need to be dumped long term and maybe its something you'll both learn how to repair?
