He's-Sober.-Now-What-A-Spouses-Guide-to-Alcoholism-Recovery.pdf

He’s Sober.

Now What?

A Spouse’s Guide to

Alcoholism Recovery

by Sheri & Matt Salis

SoberAndUnashamed.com

Contents

Introduction: Trying Again……………………………2

Chapter 1: Sobriety Doesn’t Fix Anything………….5

Chapter 2: Changing Roles in Recovery…………...8

Chapter 3: Alcoholism 101………………………….11

Chapter 4: Elusiveness of Forgiveness…………...14

Chapter 5: Learning to Trust Again………………..17

Chapter 6: Patience to Repair……………………...19

Chapter 7: Opposite of Addiction is Connection….21

Chapter 8: Rebuilding Intimacy in Recovery……...24

Introduction

Trying Again

“We need to talk…” No conversation opener struck fear in my heart quite like

those four words from my husband, Matt, when he was in a period of extended

sobriety from alcohol. It meant he was going to try again. He was going to start

drinking, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

The words that followed the opening were always enthusiastic and hopeful. Matt

came up with another set of rules for his drinking that he was sure would lead to

successful control of that which was for him uncontrollable. “I’m only going to

drink on the weekends,” he once said. “I’m done with hard alcohol. I’ll only drink

beer and wine, so I won’t get so drunk and I’ll be better able to moderate,” he

said another time.

“I’m going to limit myself to six beers on a ‘normal’ weekend night, and twelve if

we are entertaining or out in a social setting,” he explained as though six or

twelve beers were a sign of control and accomplishment. He also tried drinking a

glass of water between each alcoholic drink, he set timing limits that allowed him

to drink only during certain hours of the day, and he even switched to cheap

canned light beer because he didn’t like it as well (but still managed to drink twice

as much in search of the same buzz).

My name is Sheri Salis, and I’m married to an alcoholic. When he made a

commitment to quit drinking because he loved me and our children, and didn’t

want to hurt us anymore, I was cautiously optimistic - every single time. And

when his enthusiasm for abstinence weakened, his memories of his drunken

antics and our alcohol-induced fights faded, and his self-confidence and longing

for what he thought of as the great parts of drinking strengthened, he told me we

needed to talk.

And my heart sank. I knew he was going to drink before he could even utter the

words.

When he finally made it - when he figured it out through experimentation and lots

of mistakes, and found his permanent sobriety - I didn’t believe he was done. I

didn’t believe he’d never drink again. I didn’t believe it for a very long time. It’s not

that I thought he was lying to me, or that he was weak and lacked willpower. I

watched alcohol destroy my husband over his twenty-five years of drinking, and I

knew the power it was in his life. I wanted to believe him, and I tried to support

him, but it took me a couple of decades to build my defense mechanisms, and I

had no interest in lowering my guard only to have my heart crushed yet again.

But he made it. He is permanently sober. I believe in my heart that Matt Salis will

never drink alcohol again. He is in recovery, and I am recovering, too.

We all know the term, codependency



. We all understand that the spouse of an

alcoholic suffers greatly. But what is dramatically underestimated is the effort it

takes for the spouse of an alcoholic to recover once alcohol is out of the

marriage. Just as important, and even harder to accomplish, is for the marriage

to survive the recovery process.

My husband used to say recovery from alcoholism was the single greatest

accomplishment of his life. Now he realizes saving our marriage after he stopped

drinking was an even greater challenge.

This book is my recovery story, and the tremendous effort and grace I had to

bring to the salvation of our marriage. I hope it will resonate with you, and that

which helped me and my husband to find love again can work for you.

The lessons I learned are not gender specific. I believe in my heart that our story

can be an inspiration for couples where the woman is the alcoholic in sobriety,

and the spouse that resonates is the husband. Same sex couples can surely

learn from our mistakes and our challenges eventually overcome, too. This book

offers suggestions to any couple where one person stopped abusing alcohol, and

the other person wants to get better and save the relationship.

Trust is so hard when we’ve programed ourselves to treat scepticism and

investigation as a survival tool. The patience required to tear down resentments

and lower our defences is unnatural and uncomfortable. Repairing intimacy

destroyed and finding connection where we used to find denials and deceit is

unimaginably hard. And transitioning from the pain of alcoholism to the love of a

marriage built to last is a gift like nothing else.

We hope our story can help you find that gift for your marriage.

Chapter 1

Sobriety Doesn’t Fix Anything

If we get a splinter, removing the splinter is the cure. If we are standing naked in

a blizzard, finding warm shelter, and maybe some clothes, is the solution to our

problem. So it makes logical sense that when we remove alcohol from an

alcoholic relationship, we have conquered our challenge. But it doesn’t work like

that with alcoholism. Removing alcohol doesn’t fix anything. Healing an alcoholic

marriage is amazingly complex and counterintuitive, and I learned all about it the

hard way.

My husband has written about six of his relapses before finding permanent

sobriety. He tried and failed to stop drinking for a full decade. For most of that ten

year period, our relationship disasters were the biggest reason he had to quit.

We argued because he was cold and insensitive when he drank. He would say

something crass or insulting, or he would lack patience and expect perfection,

and we would be fighting before we knew what happened. For my part, I often

took the bait. Rather than remove myself and the kids from the situation, I would

defend my position or counter his insults with some pretty good shots of my own.

Alcoholism in a marriage puts the spouse in a fight or flight situation on a regular

basis, and I stood my ground far more often than I wish I had. Matt’s alcoholic

rants were irrational and overly emotional, and once he went there, reasoning

was not an option. It really is kind of that simple. We can all get emotionally

elevated to a point where logic ceases to resonate. It just so happens that

intoxication makes the journey from reasonable to irrational a very short trip. That

is one of the evil superpowers of alcohol, and it is extremely hard to ignore.

Especially when we know



we’ve done nothing wrong.

Since our relationship was constantly in the spotlight when Matt considered

sobriety, he looked at it like a simplistic if/then



condition. If alcohol caused us to

fight, and then he removed alcohol from his life, our relationship would have to

get better. It was simple logic. It was like pulling out a splinter or extracting his

naked body from the driving snow storm. No other result from sobriety made any

sense.

But alcoholism is senseless - both in active addiction and in recovery. Matt quit

drinking, and our relationship got worse. The resentments from years of pain

were still there. Sobriety is like removing the bandage we used to cover and

deny, and exposing the injuries to the light of day. The damage was staring us in

the face, and we kind of had to deal with it.

When Matt was dealing with cravings for alcohol and the shame associated with

both active alcoholism and admitting that he couldn’t drink like a normal person,

the concept of working on the relationship was just too much for him to

comprehend. “I quit drinking for you, Sheri. Isn’t that enough? What more do you

want from me?” he asked. He didn’t get it. And I didn’t understand well enough to

explain it to him. All I knew was I was hurting. I was in deep pain because of the

things he said and the way he prioritized alcohol over me - over us, the kids and

me - for so many years. When you know you are second fiddle, just because the

first fiddle isn’t available, it doesn’t make you instantly feel better.

They say an alcoholic in sobriety who doesn’t do the hard work of recovery isn’t

healing, he is just a dry drunk. I can say with conviction that the spouse of an

alcoholic has a lot of hard work to do to recover, too. I had to learn about the

disease that hijacked my husband’s brain. I had to address with him the

resentments that kept me stuck and prevented me from opening my heart to him

again. I had to learn to trust, and I had to face the monumental task of

reintroducing intimacy into our relationship. I can imagine no task more

emotionally challenging and logically counterintuitive than welcoming Matt back

into my life. But that’s not all of it. There is something special about being the

codependent spouse that makes recovery even more nearly impossible.

I wasn’t in control of his drinking. Matt said he was done, but he had said that so

many times before. So, my challenge was to recover, but I had no assurance that

he wouldn’t pull us back down into the depths of the pit of depression and marital

dysfunction again. How could I trust when fighting the disease of lies and denial?

Why would I believe this time would be any different with so much past evidence

to the contrary? Why would I invest the effort when Matt could render it all a

gargantuan waste of time with the uncapping of a bottle at any moment.

Alcoholism is about wasted effort trying to control the uncontrollable. How ironic

that recovery for the spouse of an alcoholic is all about trusting something we

can’t control, either.

This necessitated that I recover at a much slower pace than Matt. When he was

eager and excited to deal with resentments and rebuild trust, I was mired in worry

about the permanence of his sobriety. As he was learning and growing, I was

watching and skeptically waiting for the other shoe to drop. And here’s the thing: I

don’t think there is any shortcut for the spouse. If I was to ever fully trust again, I

had to keep my guard up until I was 100% confident that he wouldn’t drink again.

It didn’t matter that I loved him and I wanted to believe him. It didn’t matter that I

wanted from the bottom of my badly wounded heart for him to find the peace for

which he yearned. Nothing I could do would speed the process. I just had to wait

and pray and hope my husband would come back to me - all the way.

The differing paces of our recovery caused a great deal of pressure for our

marriage. Matt was sure this last time - absolutely sure he would never drink

again. He wanted to talk and fix and move forward. I was in an impossible

position. Telling him I didn’t believe in him didn’t help our marriage, but trusting

prematurely could have resulted in pain I could not possibly have endured. I

knew I had to recover. I understood that I had work to do. But I couldn’t start right

away. In fact, since Matt had made it six, and even nine months sober before, I

had to protect myself and our kids for a long time.

There are no shortcuts to alcoholism recovery. And my delayed reaction to my

husband’s eagerness to make us whole again put a strain on our marriage that

most couples don’t survive.

But we made it. We made it out of active alcoholism and into a life in recovery

that is better than I ever imagined possible. We are among the very lucky few,

and I think about that everyday. I want that for you, and I’m thankful to you for

giving me a chance to share our story.

Chapter 2

Changing Roles in Recovery

Matt’s favorite movie about alcoholism is When a Man Loves a Woman



starring

Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia. Meg Ryan’s character is an alcoholic, and Andy

Garcia’s character is her husband. The first part of the movie is about her

spiraling addiction and his efforts to protect their two young girls and pick up the

pieces when she over-drinks. The second part is about her recovery and how the

marriage drifts apart in sobriety. The movie ends in a cliffhanger because

although she is clearly on a better and healthier path, the future of their

relationship is very much left in doubt.

There are no more pieces for him to pick up. She is no longer in need of

someone to take care of her because she’s no longer drunk or hungover. The

roles of the couple change, and that puts their marriage in a different kind of

jeopardy than it was in when she was drinking.

A similar scene played out in our marriage over the first year or so of Matt’s

sobriety. Matt used to say he didn’t want anything to change in sobriety. He

wanted to keep the same friends, same activities and same busy social calendar.

He wanted to do everything the same, just without a beer in his hand. What

neither of us understood at first is that everything changes in alcoholism

recovery. To become an alcoholic, you must invest serious time and emotion in

alcohol. Removing the booze is like cutting out a chunk of your soul. The impact

on life and relationship cannot be overstated. The impact of separating my

husband from his beloved alcohol had a profound impact on me, too.

Matt was never physically abusive to me or our children. There were a handful of

times when he raised his voice or acted irrationally in front of the kids, but for the

most part, we both worked to protect our children from Matt’s disease.

That protective instinct was hard for me to release. Even as Matt put down some

serious time in sobriety, I continued to think of it as my responsibility to shield the

kids from his alcoholism. My role had changed. It was no longer necessary for

me to keep my guard up and protect my children, but I was unable to make that

transition smoothly. Transparency and communication was the eventual solution.

About a year into Matt’s sobriety, we sat down with our four kids to discuss the

damage alcoholism had done in our family. Before the discussion, Matt and I

identified all the times we could remember when Matt’s drinking had gone too far,

and he was drunk and obnoxious in front of the kids. We addressed each

incident with our children, Matt apologized, I apologized for my reaction in some

incidents, and we gave the kids a chance to share their memories and feedback.

Our oldest, Cathryn, shared the fear and anger she had held-in from one incident

in particular. Next oldest, Nick, reached over and held her hand while she cried

and let it all out. Our third oldest, Joey, expressed happiness that Matt stopped

drinking, and youngest, Andrew, was a little confused about the point of the

family meeting.

The variety of reactions to this honest and painful time spent dealing with the

past as a family was important for me to see and understand. It was also vitally

important for me to witness my husband expressing love and remorse to our four

children. My ability to loosen my hold on my protective instincts hinged on seeing

him repent and rebuild his relationships with our kids.

And the rebuilding has continued. Matt plays such an active and thoughtful role in

all four of their lives. The two oldest are in high school, and seem to have

transitioned the trauma alcohol caused in their lives into a commitment to avoid

intoxicants and resist peer pressure. Neither Matt nor I have any misconceptions

that our kids will never drink. We know they will experiment in their own way and

at their own timing. We just hope and pray that our openness about the way

alcohol ravaged both of our lives will help them experience alcohol with a level of

education and trepidation neither of us had until it was far too late.

I’ve dropped my guard. I know Matt is a wonderful father, and a blessing in the

lives of our kids. I now trust the decisions he makes regarding discipline and

permissions to participate in activities. He listens to our kids when they need a

parent to help with life. When he was drinking, I carried a larger parenting

burden, and it is a relief to be able to share the load with confidence and love.

Our roles in our relationship have changed in other ways, too, and it has taken

some significant adapting. When Matt was drinking, I was very careful about

when to bring bad news to his attention or open a discussion that I knew could

potentially cause him stress or anxiety. Timing was everything, and I was vigilant

about not stirring the pot when my husband had been drinking. And when I did

bring up potentially touchy subjects, even when Matt was sober, I was very

defensive and prepared for a wide range of possible responses.

In Matt’s sobriety, it is very difficult for me to drop this defensiveness around

sensitive topics. I often approach topics related to parenting or finances prepared

to defend myself against irrationality. Often, my defensive posture is enough to

cause an argument because Matt doesn’t feel trusted. It is hard to learn to soften

my approach after years of shielding myself from the ravings of an alcoholic.

Trust is a big topic that we will cover in detail in chapter five, but it is at the heart

of many of the ways roles have changed in our relationship in recovery.

Change is hard. Even when the change is for the better, adapting after years or

decades of marriage can be too much for so many couples. It is especially hard

when we don’t anticipate the challenge. When we approach recovery with the

belief that sobriety will fix everything, we aren’t prepared to adapt and learn to

love one another again.

Chapter 3

Alcoholism 101

The societal misperception about what it means to be an alcoholic is crucial to

overcome if we are to love and support our spouses in recovery. But it is also

most vital for us to understand the disease if we are to move past resentments

and learn to trust again.

The stigma is powerful. Until I realized one was sitting on the couch next to me, I

pictured alcoholics as bums living in the gutter, or men is sweaty v-neck t-shirts

beating on their wives. I never considered that a person could be high-functioning

and still battle an addiction. When my husband held down a job, helped maintain

the house, remembered to pick-up the kids after soccer practices and paid the

bills on time, I couldn’t bring myself to consider him an alcoholic. Maybe he drank

too much. Maybe alcohol held too high a priority in his life, but alcoholic?

Denial is not reserved for the drinkers themselves. We spouses often carry the

burden of ignoring the truth for extended periods of time. Seeing the depths of

the turmoil is especially hard when both drinker and spouse work hard to mask

the situation.

Matt used to tell me that all the guys he knew came home to cocktails after work.

He said drinking beers all weekend was the American way. He didn’t see

anything wrong with drinking alone now that we were out of college and settling

into adult life where there wasn’t a party around every corner. He just wanted to

relax and enjoy his time at home, and drinking helped him to that end. And as his

drinking increased in frequency and volume, he seemed always to find a way to

explain it away and label it as normal drinking.

But I knew in my heart it wasn’t normal. Until he was in enough pain from

debilitating, alcohol-induced depression, there was no convincing him. And that’s

how alcoholism works. The drinker denies and denies, and often convinces us to

go along with the rouse until the pain becomes so severe that the disease is

undeniable.

So even as my husband held it together and functioned like everyone else on the

outside, alcohol was destroying him on the inside. Once he admitted the truth, he

began the long and gruelling process of getting well.

As a part of his recovery from alcoholism, Matt learned about brain chemistry and

the neurotransmitters that control our pleasure centers in the brain. The lessons

were important for me to learn, too, because it helped me accept the fact that my

husband was an alcoholic, and that label didn’t mean he was a degenerate with a

deviant mind and a bad heart. He was sick, and needed treatment to get better,

just as in the case with all other chronic and deadly diseases. So learning about

brain chemistry made me a better spouse, and it also helped me cope with the

damage done to my family.

The damage alcohol does to the brain of an alcoholic is because his

neuro-pathways are reacting naturally to one of the world’s most highly addictive

substances. Alcohol brings pleasure to the drinker, and his brain releases

dopamine and other neurotransmitters associated with pleasure. Our brains are

constantly trying to reach a state of equilibrium, and if he drinks a lot, his brain

starts to reserve the dopamine for only when he drinks. Therefore, normal,

everyday pleasures cease to bring feelings of pleasure. To avoid flooding his

brain with dopamine, his brain only releases it when he drinks. Our brains

associate pleasure with survival, so alcohol becomes linked to survival as well.

The alcoholic brain demands alcohol to trigger the dopamine release no matter

how determined the drinker is not to drink.

When Matt was committed to sobriety, his subconscious mind had different

ideas. Because of the subconscious connection between alcohol and survival,

Matt’s brain continued to beg for booze. This is one of the most diabolical

components to alcoholism, and to understand the brain chemistry is to

understand why alcoholics relapse so often.

As the spouse of an alcoholic, it was tremendously beneficial to learn about brain

chemistry and understand the battle my husband faced. Alcoholics Anonymous

addresses addiction to alcohol as a spiritual lacking. There is no doubt that

spirituality plays a huge role in conquering addiction, but there are tangible,

biological reasons alcoholics find it almost impossible to stop drinking. They

aren’t weak. In fact, the willpower required to fight their subconscious minds

makes them among the strongest people I know. But willpower is not enough,

and understanding the chemical rewiring Matt underwent helped me to be more

helpful to him.

Understanding the brain chemistry of alcoholism also helped me to love him and

trust him sooner. It is hard to fall back into love with a spouse we consider weak

and flawed beyond redemption. But when we think of our spouse as the victim of

an epidemic brain disease with a cure, we are emboldened to love and support

and help him heal.

I don’t make excuses for Matt’s drunken behavior, and the resentments left

behind when he quit for good were real and formidable. But knowing none of it

was entirely his fault, and there were neurological reasons for his actions in

addiction made my recovery more accessible. It made love and trust possible.

Chapter 4

Elusiveness of Forgiveness

An apology offered by alcoholic in active addiction is meaningless. In fact,

sometimes the apology itself causes more damage because of its worthlessness.

Matt was reasonably good about apologizing the next day for arguments he

started while drinking. I believe he was truly sorry and definitely meant it when he

told me so. But as long as he kept drinking, I knew it would happen again. I knew

he would again drink until his temper got the best of him. I knew he would again

prioritize the drink over me and our kids. I knew he would again drink and

misconstrue something I said as an insult directed at him. It would happen again.

All of it. I just knew it.

So when in active alcoholism Matt apologized for his drunken antics, even in the

most sincere way, the apology felt like salt poured in my wounds. If he was sorry,

he’d take action to prevent the behavior again in the future. If he was truly sorry,

he’d quit drinking. His words without action were nothing but an insult, and further

confirmed my position behind alcohol in his list of important things.

In sobriety, all of this caused confusion and pain as we recovered from Matt’s

addiction and tried to save our marriage. Matt knew he had apologized most

sincerely for the atrocities of his alcoholism as they had happened and shortly

thereafter. I knew it, too. At first, Matt didn’t see a benefit to trudging up the past

and reopening wounds. I was in no hurry to relive awful memories, either. Matt

had already moved on, yet I was still suppressing the trauma. We both tried to

move forward, but for two very different reasons.

If you are the spouse of an alcoholic, I’m sure you know exactly what happened.

In recovery, we tried to deal with a normal, everyday conflict that arises in all

healthy marriages. But there was nothing normal about how we dealt. My mind

immediately found a bad memory from our alcoholic past, and dragged it into the

present adding pain and anger to the situation. Matt was blindsided because a

current argument suddenly shifted to a resentment from the past. The wave of

suffering and fury overwhelmed me, and elevated a minor disagreement into a

bitter and relentless fight.

Months, even over a year removed from alcoholism, we were susceptible to

being dragged back down into the senseless battles of addiction. It was as if we

were constantly walking on thin ice knowing any minor disruption could ruin the

relationship we were trying to rebuild. Matt thought the pain of the past had been

addressed, and I was unknowingly pushing it down and trying to move forward.

The past turned present disagreements into raging battles.

Releasing resentments has proven to be one of the greatest challenges of my

life. In recovery, Matt and I have relived the past. We have conjured the demons

of each incident when his drinking caused me pain, and discussed the agonizing

details. Matt has apologized again for his drunken behavior. This time, however,

his apology came in long-term recovery. I didn’t hear his words knowing he would

drink again. I heard his apology knowing my husband is permanently sober and

becoming the best father and husband he can be.

The words coming from his lips are the same, but the meaningfulness could not

be more different. I believe him. I appreciate his sacrifice, and I am thankful for

his sorrow. The memories of the resentments are not gone, but they are less

powerful. They are not pushed down in an attempt to forget and move forward.

The memories have been addressed, and moving forward has become the only

logical option. We are no longer running from the past, but rather, we are building

on its lessons to make our hopeful future.

This is a big, big deal. Resentment is not a topic reserved for couples dealing

with alcoholism. Resentments fuel future pain and anger for many relationships.

Those of us recovering from alcoholism just have a particular affinity for

mismanaging resentment and remaining stuck in the drunken past.

Even now, years removed from active alcoholism, Matt and I have a weekly

appointment to discuss resentments and worries. We spend about an hour a

week sharing emotions and concerns that have the potential to lock us in conflict.

We prioritize this meeting because we can’t afford to slip back into hurtful

patterns of letting issues build and fester. Things continue to improve in recovery

for both of us and for our marriage, but no matter how good things get, I can’t

envision a day when we will discontinue our weekly meetings. We want a better

life and a better marriage, and we have a lot of dysfunctional time to overcome.

The resentments that remain when alcohol is removed from a marriage are

among the greatest threats to relationship survival. Don’t underestimate the

power of the past to derail your future. Don’t push it down. Don’t assume it has

been addressed. Even if it seems reliving the past is futile, dive in and do it. The

only way to drain the power from resentments of the past is to address them in

the present.

Chapter 5

Learning to Trust Again

Trust is the gatekeeper to love, peace, relationship happiness and even intimacy.

If you want to coexist with your spouse, and hang on to a loveless marriage until

death or divorce, trust isn’t all that important. If you want more, trust is the

foundation.

Alcoholism destroys trust. It isn’t necessarily a matter of evil, deceitful, intentional

lies, either. When he was drinking, I truly believe Matt tried to be truthful with me.

He said he wouldn’t drink too much at the party, and he tried not to. He said he’d

come home before the kids went to bed, and he really wanted to. He said he was

not going to drink during the weekdays, and he really intended to abstain.

Alcoholism makes unintentional liars out of the best of them. That’s just how it

works.

Broken best intentions are the enemy of trust. In many ways, I am lucky. I never

worried about Matt cheating on me, or draining our bank accounts. I never

worried that he’d get fired or hurt the children. He was reliable in a lot of ways,

and I was able to trust that would always continue. But I could never trust that he

would keep his drinking in control. I couldn’t trust him to behave rationally or treat

me with respect consistently. I knew we would be the last to leave the party no

matter what he promised before the party, and I knew he prioritized alcohol in

any last minute decision making. An alcoholic is unreliable in certain ways

preventing the spouse from ever fully trusting.

In recovery, rebuilding trust didn’t come easy for us. Rebuilding trust required me

to lower my guard and feel confident I would not be punished for the decision.

Before I could even consider dropping my defenses on which I had grown to rely,

I had to believe Matt would never again drink alcohol. There is a certain

unavoidable order to rebuilding a relationship destroyed by alcoholism, and

learning to trust comes well down on the list.

Once I began to have confidence in Matt’s permanent sobriety, I could start to

change my reactions to stressful situations. Once we dealt with the resentments

of the past, I could work with Matt on the future without dragging up the failures

that haunted us. Once we could start to move forward together, relying on each

other as parents and partners, trust was able to grow.

Humans are experiencial creatures. I needed to open up and lower my defenses

and be rewarded with good experiences so I could do it again. There is no switch

to flip and no exercise plan to which we can commit.

We open our hearts and see if we get hurt. When we don’t, we open a little more.

Little by little, trust builds. There is no shortcut. Alcoholism isn’t just about

sobriety, it is about undoing the pain of the past. And that pain can only be

replaced slowly, over a long period of time, by good feelings that displace the

hurt.

Building trust is simple, but it is also gruelling and uncertain. Building trust is

hard, but it is also essential to saving a relationship decimated by alcohol.

I enjoy spending time with Matt. I like watching him father our children, and I

know how hard he works for our family. Now, finally, more and more each day, I

trust him completely. And that trust that was so elusive for decades, is the

foundation on which our future together is built.

Chapter 6

Patience to Repair

When we are in pain, we want relief, and we want it fast. Recovery from

alcoholism just simply doesn’t work that way. Divorce is the quick and easy way

out in comparison. If you want your marriage to survive recovery from alcoholism,

you are going to have to work, wait, hope and pray.

Matt has written extensively about his battle with early sobriety. Rewiring his

brain chemistry hijacked by addiction to alcohol took over a year. Building his

sobriety muscles so he could navigate our alcohol-soaked society without feeling

the shame of being unable to drink like everyone else took a year, too. Defeating

cravings, developing new patterns and routines, and understanding what things

remain important in life after alcohol all take a lot of effort and a ton of time.

There are no shortcuts to alcoholism recovery. That’s why there are over 15

million alcoholics in America, and most of them will drink themselves to their

graves.

So if it took my husband a long, long time to make progress in recovery, and my

recovery has to happen at a slower pace as I can’t control his decision to drink,

just imagine the patience required to help me along the way.

For Matt and me, alcohol was the shortcut that put us in a troubled marriage from

the start. Alcohol made us comfortable with each other before we should have

been. Alcohol helped us trade careful consideration about escalating our

relationship for immediate fun and ongoing pleasure. We didn’t do the hard work

of evaluating our compatibility. We were in college. We had fun when we drank

together, and that seemed like enough. Eventually, alcohol-induced decisions led

us to a lifetime of commitment.

I’m not saying Matt and I would not be married without alcohol. I’m not

suggesting we made a mistake by getting married. I’m saying we bypassed the

normal human evaluation process. We didn’t fall slowly and patiently in love, we

basically drank ourselves together. And a relationship based on romance

between drinking buddies is bound to have problems down the road. And

patience is an unexplored concept.

So now, when we need it the most, patience is not available in our marriage. We

have to learn to heal and grow patiently, and we have no experience on which to

lean. After years and decades of struggle, I want to feel better now. I want the

marriage I dreamed about as a little girl, and I’m low on the energy and time

required to allow it to happen.

But I don’t have a choice. There is no shortcut. First, I had to learn about the

brain chemistry of alcoholism in order to find understanding. Then I had to defeat

the resentments that haunted me and continued to inflict harm on my marriage.

After that, I had to learn to trust the man who has hurt me most in life. Now, I’ve

got to give my marriage the room to grow and breath itself back to life.

Recovering a marriage from alcoholism is an endless and arduous process.

Most days, I feel better about Matt and our marriage than I did the day before.

Each day I try to trust a little more. Each day puts more distance on the past, and

each day my confidence in Matt’s commitment to sobriety grows stronger. Each

day, our marriage has a chance to get better and grow stronger if I let it.

Do you know what else I’ve learned about the patience required to save a

marriage from alcoholism? It is worth it. I’m blessed to share my life with this man

I love so much. I’m thankful for the patience to bring such a bond out of the

rubble of alcoholism.

Chapter 7

Opposite of Addiction is

Connection

It is often said in the addiction recovery community that sobriety is not the

opposite of addiction. The opposite of addiction is connection. Connecting with

people who have walked the road of our lives before us makes us feel like we

aren’t alone, no matter how much we struggle. Isolation might be the worst

feeling in the world, and the stigma associated with alcoholism keeps us isolated

and convinces us we are going through emotions and pain that no one could

possibly understand.

The drinker is not the only one who feels isolated and needs connection. This is

a disease of denial. The family secret must be protected above all other

considerations. When Matt was actively drinking, the depths of his dysfunction

were not to be discussed with anyone for any reason. My mental health, my

ability to cope and manage, was a secondary concern. The secret had to remain

secret.

Now in recovery, connection is one of the greatest blessings in our lives. Matt

tells his story openly and often, and the response he receives reinvigorates his

efforts to recover out loud. My recovery benefits greatly from connection, too.

The secret is gone. My pain is exposed. The healing comes not just from work

done internally and within our marriage, but from helping others understand they

are not alone.

Matt and I are committed to connection to each other. We have four kids with

busy school and activity schedules. We both work very hard, and are active in

our community. It is incredibly easy for us to lose connection with each other. To

make sure that never happens, we have a weekly scheduled appointment to

discuss the happenings of the previous week and prepare for the immediate

future. We discuss resentments and stresses, make parenting decisions and

share our emotions as we navigate the challenges of life. We both keep the

appointment on our calendars, and we take it very seriously. Losing connection

with each other would be catastrophic to our marriage. We can’t leave it to

chance to have meaningful conversations in a very busy household. Just as

alcohol once held a very high priority in our marriage, connection is now given

the emphasis it deserves in our strong and growing marriage.

Connection outside the marriage is high on our priority list, too. Recovering

openly has been a blessing in both of our lives. For me, it means I can talk

honestly about the pain we’ve suffered as we held on and survived addiction. Not

only can I help other spouses, I can seek help from the alcoholic marriage

recovery warriors who guide my growth and discovery.

My recovery and the recovery of my marriage is frequently a topic of discussion

in my Bible and book study group. Connection is about relating our stories to the

stories of others. I often find guidance in the words we read, and discussing my

interpretation with my friends strengthens my convictions and helps me see

angles I would not have otherwise considered.

I have also been amazed to discover so many of my friends who have battled the

destruction of alcoholism in their own families. Sometimes the afflicted is a

spouse as in my case, but other times my friend is the one who battled the

disease. They have all had parents, children, uncles or siblings who fought or are

fighting alcoholism, and our collective stories resonate and provide comfort for

each other. After decades of isolation and incomplete relationships with my

friends, it is such a welcome relief to stop hiding and start healing together.

Just as Matt found a great deal of comfort in bibliotherapy, I too, have found

connection in reading about codependency and researching ways to heal my

relationship after alcoholism. My reading is not always specific to alcoholism,

either. Since I have identified the components to healing like trust and

resentment, there is no shortage of articles and books on these topics. Therapy

comes in many forms. Connection is available if only we make the effort of

looking for it. I have found peace and encouragement from reading the advice of

experts and stories of people who suffered and survived.

The epidemic that alcoholism is carries with it one inherent benefit. Many people

have walked this path before me. With so many people suffering from the

damage caused by alcohol abuse, rare is the person who cannot relate in one

fashion or another. Connection is available, and I don’t have to look very hard to

find it.

Chapter 8

Rebuilding Intimacy in Recovery

In alcoholism, the alcohol has a warping effect on so many facets of the drinker’s

life, and the lives of those around him. Alcohol warps the brain function of an

alcoholic and changes the way neurotransmitters are released. Communication

in an alcoholic marriage is warped and stunted creating massive pain and

misunderstanding. Trust is warped into resentment, and connection is warped

into isolation. And no aspect of an alcoholic marriage is warped and twisted quite

like the romantic, physical love between someone addicted to alcohol and the

spouse.

Matt and I have always maintained a consistent sexual relationship since shortly

after we met in college. In the beginning, it was exciting and adventurous, and we

both benefited from our physical connection. We enjoyed being together, and we

felt the relationship growing stronger as a result of our trust and affection for one

another.

Intimacy is an important component in any marriage, and it was a priority for us,

too. We have been committed to each other for decades now, and the

commitment never wavered even as we struggled through Matt’s most

destructive drinking. We have both always remained totally faithful to each other,

and we have kept our physical relationship alive even as alcohol destroyed so

many other parts of our marriage.

Intimacy can suffer in either of two ways when a marriage suffers trauma. In

many cases, sex becomes infrequent, or can stop altogether, when couples are

ravaged by alcoholism. Sometimes, the drinker becomes so unattractive to the

spouse that intimacy becomes almost impossible. Other times, the lack of

interest shown by the spouse feels like rejection to the drinker, and the drinker

stops trying to initiate physical connection. In either case, the result is

devastating as intimacy is the glue that holds us together when other aspects of

the relationship are struggling through hard times.

But that’s not what happened to Matt and me. Our story is quite a bit different,

but with the same tragic results.

The intimacy in our marriage didn’t suffer from infrequency. Quite the opposite, in

fact. We continued to have physical contact on a very regular basis. However,

the purpose changed as trust was washed out of our marriage by alcohol. Matt

became quite unattractive to me. Between his beer breath and inability to stay

awake in bed when we were trying to be together, I found being with him to be a

chore rather than a pleasure. I did that which I was asked to do out of marital

obligation and not any kind of pleasure.

My husband disgusted me physically, and intimacy was the furthest thing from

my mind. But, I knew he was relentless and needy, and it became easier just to

do it than not to do it. By giving in, by continuing to have sexual contact long after

the pain of the marriage made intimacy impossible, we made restoring intimacy

in recovery that much more impossible.

Sex became a resentment for me. Had we stopped having physical contact as a

result of alcoholism, intimacy would have been difficult to restore, but we would

have tried to do so from a clean slate of inactivity. Because we pushed through

and did it anyway, even when it was meaningless, the memories of meaningless

contact made finding intimacy again that much more seemingly impossible.

Romantic connection carried with it a burden of pain. Like with everything else in

recovering a relationship from addiction, finding intimacy required a lot of work

and a whole lot of patience.

Matt was eager to restore our intimate connection because his priorities shifted in

permanent sobriety. I was most important to him again, and he wanted to show it

in romantic ways. As the resentments about our physical contact lingered, I

rejected his romantic attention adding yet more pain to the marriage. At the same

time, I couldn’t ignore my feelings. Sex had come to represent something dirty

and unfulfilling to me. Those feelings would not change overnight.

So we worked to overcome resentments and build trust in the bedroom, just as

we had done in all aspects of our marriage. Patience was both important and in

short supply. I initially had no interest in our physical relationship, so turning it

into something important to our marriage, turning sex into intimacy, was a

monumental effort that meant relearning something we never learned at the start.

We both used alcohol at the beginning of our relationship to take the edge off,

make it easier to get to know each other and bring an ease to nervous situations.

Like so many other couples, alcohol was a shortcut to intimacy when we were

young. What that meant when we were trying to recover our relationship from

alcoholism was that we needed to build intimacy from scratch. We needed to

learn to love each other physically without alcohol - something we had never

done before.

I’m not suggesting we’d never had sex sober before. But I am suggesting that

because of our reliance on alcohol early in our relationship, we’d never had a

bonded, physical and spiritual connection that wasn’t lubricated by alcohol. We

knew how to go through the motions sober. But neither of us had any idea how to

make it meaningful and important. So we had to learn. We had to take our time,

find patience and let trust build to make our connection strong.

There is nothing easy about recovering a marriage from alcoholism, but building

intimacy might be the hardest part of it for Matt and me. We had trust before

addiction. We had love before addiction. But intimacy without alcohol had never

existed between us. So intimacy post alcohol was something new to build. And

that something new carried with it the resentments of years of loveless contact.

Add to all of that the fact that no one talks about it. Alcoholism is stigmatized, and

so is intimacy dysfunction in marriage. We were trying to fix a problem we didn’t

understand and thought we were the only couple to have experienced.

We were not alone, and neither are you. Whether alcohol has made physical love

rare or non-existent, or it has made it a despised chore, intimacy is possible

again as your marriage recovers from alcoholism.

Work, patience, learning and connection - the effort required to recover from an

alcoholic marriage is intense. For most of us, it will be the greatest challenge of

our lives. For Matt and me, for our kids, it has been worth all the effort. Recovery

is possible. Love and happiness can emerge from pain and suffering. If your

spouse has committed to permanent sobriety, don’t expect that to fix anything. In

fact, your relationship will likely get worse before it can begin to get better,

But if you had something special with your spouse before, and you want that

feeling of partnership and trust back in your marriage, love is possible after

alcoholism.