Light on My Problems

Art work by: Adam TLS

Today was not a good day. Earlier this week, my husband drank again, and lied about it again, tried to cover over it again. At first, I stuck to the modo I've heard several repeat in Al-Anon - "Do nothing, that is the only thing that will help." I didn't say anything to him about drinking that night, I just went to sleep. Magically, I was actually able to fall asleep without needing to confront him. That really is progress!

But two days passed, and I couldn't stop myself from asking him, "Have you drank since you started 90 meetings in 90 days?" He said yes, and admitted to drinking the night I knew he had. I was able to take this calmly, for the most part. I said I was glad he was honest, but that I needed to read for a while, I wouldn't be able to fall right to sleep.

He went to the couch.

I did read and I did sleep. Then in the middle of the night I woke with such anxiety. I started thinking about our future, if it would be an "our" and felt the weight of needing to take things into my own hands, not count on him at all as a partner. I started to agonize over my lack of trust in him and how this would affect summer plans, day-to-day life, our marriage in general.

Luckily, instead of staying in that cycle I was able to just turn on the light and start reading until I felt sleepy again. But the next day and the rest of this week my anxiety over his having a relapse strengthened and strengthened. When I read an email from a friend checking in on how I was, I broke down crying at work. Clearly, everything was not okay. I was not coping with my husband's additional drinking and lying as well as I would have liked.

Things came to a head tonight. During a conversation about how I was "trying to do nothing" but that it  didn't seem to be working, he said that it had. Well, he admitted to feeling worse about his drinking when I said nothing than when I brought up the drinking and what he was going to do (or not do) about it all the time. I get that - it makes sense.

But at one point in the conversation he said, roughly, he'd done wonderfully with his drinking since January. Hearing him say this really higlighted for me how deep of denial he is in. He lied about drinking and drove us both home drunk from the airport in February, he hid and lied about drinking in May (and who knows, maybe before), he has twice in the past month gone to AA meetings and then drove around drinking afterwards yet in his opinion he's done wonderfully. And all of this when I've told him he cannot drink and lie and expect myself and my daughter to stick around - that it IS NOT okay with me, even if it is okay with him.

He pushed me over the edge and I said, finally, that we should not live together, that it is not helping. I told him that either our daughter and I would get an apartment or he could start looking for one. He said okay. I went to take a shower.