Outside Perspective

Recently, I asked my husband to write about what it’s like to be married to an addict in recovery. I think our spouses, friends, and relatives’ perspectives are just as important as our stories. They are part of our stories, after all.  It can be hard to hear what others think of us and how they view this part of our lives. But it’s important to know what they deal with too. We tend to only focus on us and our struggles, faults, and victories. But there are other people in our lives that matter just as much to our recovery. How will we ever know how we affect others if we don’t ask?

I asked him to be as candid as he could be on what it’s like to live with me and my addiction. I told him to not hold anything back because it wouldn’t feel authentic if he told bits and pieces of it or left whole chunks out. He also wrote this without any input from me. It’s purely an outside perspective. This is unedited and all his words.

Confusing, stressful, fearful, anxiety-ridden are a few examples of how it feels to love an addict. When you fall in love with someone, you see them… all of them. That means you take the good with the bad, accepting everything they bring to the table because you expect that same regard and respect. Loving an addict is hard. Period. But worth it when you can accept it.

I never expected to fall in love with an addict, and to be honest, writing this is really the first time I’ve said I love an addict. I look at my husband like he’s not an addict until I’m reminded at times that he is. It’s hard to remember sometimes, especially the longer you are with an addict, but instances come up that remind you that they are an addict.

When friends invite you out, and it’s a social gathering, drinking is to be expected. It’s an unfortunate social norm that is the “comfort” in large social gatherings. Then you remember the addiction. If I don’t invite my husband, I’m being exclusionary; if I do invite him, I’m being insensitive to his recovery. What do you do? Then the anxiety sets in because you want to show you care, but both sides become all-consuming and eventually make you not want to do anything.

I made a promise to my husband to help with his recovery, that I too would abstain from alcohol. It allows him to know that we are in this together. It shows solidarity in our marriage and, most importantly, it gives support at its core, our relationship. Sometimes my feelings to have a drink come to the surface. I go out to a nice restaurant and sit at the bar or out to a club, but then it comes up again about my husband’s recovery. Writing this helps put it in perspective: that if I have those feelings, then how intense are the feelings for my husband? It humbles you and puts it in perspective.

Sometimes I get fearful for my husband, especially when anniversaries come up. Communication has lacked significantly in our narrative together and is something that is a work in progress for us. But fear arises from the fact that I don’t want my husband to relapse. Would I be the reason? Of an argument? Something I did? Would he get the help he needs? At the end of the day, I lay my head down next to him and remind myself to trust. Trust him to make the right decisions. Trust him to communicate his needs. Trust him to tell me when he feels temptations, because I can’t read minds. And I have learned that if an addict wants to use, they will and will hide, manipulate, and deceive to do it.

The best thing my husband has ever done for me was take me to a couple of meetings. I’ve gotten fearful. I’m not an addict, but what will people think of me being there…. Really… they are addicts, that’s why they are there. I have learned MANY useful lessons from meetings, even as an outsider. To stay focused on your goals, don’t judge a book by its cover, surround yourself with like-minded people, be kind, support each other, the list goes on and on. Every meeting I have left has left me speechless at the lessons I have learned and the ways I can fix my own life. (If we were to be retrospective, I think everyone has some type of addiction as it is a scale. It depends on where you fall on that scale. (But that is for another post))

Loving an addict is challenging. It has its ups and downs. It has its days that make you question it all and has its days that are so vibrant and amazing that you don’t even remember your loved one is an addict. I have to remind myself that a relapse is not my fault. That I do love an addict. That the other person I gave my life to is also an adult with free will. Meeting your loved one where they are and communicating will help relieve that awkward silence that sometimes happens from anxiety or fear. Support them because you will need support in return one day. We are humans, not defined by our diseases.\

~Levi

This was a hard one to read. To know how my husband feels about my disease and how he approaches it was eye-opening. Like he said, our communication isn’t all that great sometimes, but to hear how he feels about my addiction, the way he cares for me, and how he has made changes to his own life to accommodate my recovery really made me evaluate how I am contributing to his livelihood. And to be completely honest, I rarely thought about it because again my recovery was mine, not his. The sacrifices he has made, the changes in thought flow, the constant worry, and the pledge to abstain to support me in my recovery were things I never thought of. I affect his life in a profound way, just as he does mine.

I think the part that hit me most was his views on balancing my addiction and his thoughts on drinking and how this made him feel. Not knowing whether he even wanted to have a social life makes me feel terrible. My selfish thoughts didn’t let me see his social life was impacted by the risks he thinks he’s taking by going out with his friends. I never wanted him to feel like this. I assume plenty of normie spouses have those same thoughts about possibly affecting their loved one’s recovery by their actions. Constantly worrying that anything they do could cause a relapse

Hearing how he feels puts a lot in perspective for me and makes me reevaluate how I approach my recovery and how it affects others on many levels. It brings so much clarity to our relationship and my recovery. I encourage you to ask your spouse how they feel about your recovery and how it affects them. It’s important to know how your recovery affects those around you and how you can be a better person. Then it’s up to you to take that information in and do good with it.