40. Challenges arise when spouses get sober

By Tom O'Connell

We imagine how life can be for us. We fantasize about jobs, retirement, relationships, relocation, and methods of communication. Also, we fantasize about how it will be when a spouse stops drinking or drugging. This tendency is explored in the pamphlet "Happily Ever After" by Melanie S. for the Department of Therapy at Beech Hill Hospital, a leading addiction treatment center located in Dublin, New Hampshire.

Melanie reports, "Now we could live happily ever after, I thought. The relief I had fervently hoped for had come." But she had a rude awakening. Although her husband had gone through treatment and was now in Alcoholics Anonymous, Melanie says, "I found myself as unhappy in those first months of sobriety as I ever was in the drinking days."

She tried to be perfect to earn his approval. But she was frustrated by how many AA meetings he had to attend. And she would check his breath after he came back from meetings because she lived in constant fear that he might have a relapse.

However, in Al-Anon she soon learned that she had been caught up in the family disease, and had become "a captive of alcoholism." Losing her own integrity she had "crossed over the line from natural concern to preoccupation....I became absorbed in trying to control his behavior, until I could no longer recognize myself." She admits she used sex to reward her husband, and vented her buried anger about the situation on her children. And she confesses that she stayed in the marriage for economic security. "I had been a financial parasite....I had been an emotional parasite, too, depending on this man for my happiness, feeling that I couldn't live without him."

But Al-Anon helped her to realize she could stand on her own. "I had never learned how to be alone." So she learned to live with herself. And in a while it dawned on her that she didn't have to be perfect to earn her spouse's approval. She came to believe she hadn't caused her husband's drinking problem, couldn't control it, and couldn't cure it. His drinking was his responsibility, and so was his sobriety. Her responsibility was Melanie. So she learned to let go and not stake her peace of mind on his sobriety or mood swings. And attending Al-Anon meetings helped her do that.

"By walking on eggshells and trying to please everyone, I had sacrificed my own feelings and needs," writes Melanie. "Without love and respect for myself, what could I give to others?" Little by little, she learned to make healthier choices. And she let her husband focus on his recovery while she concentrated on her own. "Al-Anon encouraged me to grow, too, to deal with my own spiritual emotional bankruptcy."

Once she had dreamed about what a "sober Superman" her husband would be. "What a shock it was to discover that he was the same person in sobriety." But with time in Al-Anon she could see their relationship more clearly and realized her "wounds of loneliness, mistrust, and paralyzing fear could indeed be healed." Al-Anon taught her to befriend herself and others. "Al-Anon helped me to see that we could have our own identities. But we could also choose to create a third identity, walking hand-in-hand, instead of one of us struggling to push or pull the other..."In Al-Anon , I don't have to live happily ever after, just today."

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