Wife "waiting for the other shoe to drop" (Long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My wife and I am nearing our 7th year of marriage and it’s not looking good.

I am a recovering drug addict who hasn’t used in 16 months, save for 1 isolated incident in June.

Three years ago, my wife, Leigh, (name changed) took a job out-of-state and we only saw each other on weekends. Being home alone all week sent my drug use soaring. I was calling in sick to work a lot and spending most of our money on drugs. I rarely paid bills. The power bill would get behind and get turned off and I would go pay enough to get it turned back on. I was getting multiple payday loans and getting deeper and deeper into debt. I was lying to my wife the whole time, telling her the bills were getting paid and not to worry. Leigh found out when I didn’t pay the car insurance, and they canceled her auto registration and she got to the mailbox before I could.

She was furious at me and kicked me out for a few days. She had me ask her dad for a $5,000 loan to bailout us out. He gave us the money and Leigh begrudgingly took me back. She took over the bills and would give me an allowance every week.

She got a better job and moved back home about 6 months later. My drug use really slowed down. Then in October 2007, her father died suddenly at the age of 60.

She was spending a lot of time at her dad’s house getting his things in order. Being home again with time on my hands, I started using drugs a lot more.

One month later, I got a arrested for possession. It was the worst day of my life. Again, Leigh was pissed and she moved out for two weeks. I stopped using and started seeing a therapist and attend NA meetings. Leigh came back home. I plead guilty and went through the county’s pre-trial diversion program without a problem. Again, except for the 1/2 joint I smoked in June, I have been drug-free. Thankfully, I still have my job.

I have become much more responsible. I bought our first home in March and things were going great. I was still going to the therapist a few times a month and attending meetings.

Around the first of Jan., we decided that I would help her with the bills. She walked me through what we paid and how we paid them. I kept excellent records and showed her all the online confirmations. I was very proud of myself, I felt like I made a contribution to the marriage. So with Leigh’s blessing I paid them again first of Feb.

This is what the problem is. Starting last month, Leigh was been very cold and distant to me. When she finally told me what was bothering her, she said “I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She is expecting me to slip up and cause a disaster.

I know she doesn’t trust me. But, this disgust she has for me has me very confused? I was feeling great about myself and this relationship and this hit me hard.

Sorry for rambling.

2

While I am brand new around here, and the last thing I want to do is offend anyone, surely you can see why she would be apprehensive. By your own admission, you have given her ample reason to mistrust you. With her father passing, I think you should try to put yourself in her shoes, and realise that her “disgust” for you is dispaced/delayed grief and anger. I would do your best to focus on your relationship and sobriety…

I wish the best for you both! Good luck, Matthew

3

Keep up the good work and let her formalize her thoughts in her head on her own. When she wants to talk about it with you, she will. Nagging at her or debating things before it’s time won’t help, it will just make both of you feel bad and lead to further misbehavior and a worse ending. Expecting the other shoe to drop in regards to how you think of her (e.g. that she’s going to leave you or such) isn’t going to help either. Like I said, just leave her alone, keep positive and work hard, and deal with it when the time comes.

4

I am happy you are turning your life around and being a good, responsible, clean husband. The only insight I can offer is this: to your wife, the last two times you messed up your life (and by “your”, I mean hers as well as yours) were completely out of the blue, during “good times” similar to what you are experiencing now. Because of your behavior in the past, she has legitimate reasons to be apprehensive of “good times” and cannot feel as good about them as you do.

Imagine the last year and a half through her eyes. You haven’t been arrested and the power hasn’t been shut off, so it seems like everything is fine. You’ve been working and going to therapy and doing everything you should be doing. It’s almost too good to be true. I’m sure she wants to believe that this time, things will be different.

But in the past, it WAS too good to be true. The last time things were going smoothly, her dad died unexpectedly, and then you got yourself arrested. And the time before that, she rudely found out you were lying to her and had done considerable financial damage by spending all your (again, hers and yours) money and being late with bills. I too would be waiting “for the other shoe to drop”, because that’s EXACTLY what happened twice before.

Because of your drug abuse, you have lied to her, fucked her over financially, and caused her great amounts of stress and grief and anger and family strain, the depths of which you may never fully know or understand. She obviously loves you, but you’ve seriously damaged your relationship with her. She will not easily get over this.

This is not to say that you do not deserve praise for living cleanly and responsibly for the last year and a half. You do. But you need to realize that it is going to take a hell of a lot longer than that to prove you have truly changed. Focus on what you can do to keep the relationship strong. Stay the fuck sober. Give her reason to trust you again. I wish you luck.

5

I don’t have much to offer beyond what has been said, but something jumped out at me from your post. You mention that both of the times your drug use increased is when your wife was out of the home and you had “time on your hands.” Knowing nothing else about you, it seems like maybe you’re putting some of the blame for your drug use on her shoulders…she wasn’t keeping an eye on you, she “abandoned” you, etc. This might be something you want to examine.

6

I don’t know the intricacies of you or your marriage, but to be frank with you, you sound very childish, and I don’t mean that as an offhand slap at you. I mean quite specifically your post and the attitudes in it sound like that of an adult sized child - ie “When mommy’s away I lose control”. “I’m being so good why doesn’t she love me?”

You need to understand MOST women would have kicked you to the curb well before this. Including, but beyond the drug issues, it sounds like there is an ongoing child-mommy dynamic with you and your wife and she’s getting to the breaking point with it. As to the “other shoe” comment what really do you expect? Any rational adult dealing with a recovering drug addict that tends to use when stressed is waiting for the other shoe to drop on practically every level you can think of. Your only scenario in which your marriage will potentially survive is to for you to grow up and take full responsibility for your own actions AND stop trying to retreat into infantilized comfort zone where you require mommy to be strong. No woman (or person) wants to deal with an adult like that.

7

Sounds to me like you rely on your wife to keep you living as you should. Whether it’s for fear of disappointing her, or because you just plain can’t get away with damaging behaviours when she’s nearby, you’ve essentially described your sobriety as dependent on her.

And now that she’s (understandably) wary and distant with you, you’re (also understandably) hurt that she doesn’t seem to trust your healthy actions, but also at risk of letting the emotional distance between you two lead to the same actions that her physical distance did.

In my (nonprofessional, but not insignificant) experience, if you’re going to beat your drug use, you’re going to have to want to be clean for its own sake. Making things better with your wife may be what lead you to consider kicking drugs, but for long term success, your positive actions need to come from a sincere preference for doing right, and not as part of whatever dynamic you have going on with her. It’s often much, much easier to stop using for someone else, but you’re no freer then than you are when you’re binging on whatever your devil of choice is.

If you’re not already both receiving counseling, both for the issues related to drug use and more general relationship wellness, I strongly recommend it. Even if there were no drug issues involved, the combination of debt, repeated separations, and a parent’s death would make couple’s counseling worthwhile.

8

The sins of your past don’t often go away that easy. 16 months is not that long of a time frame really. It may seem so to you because you are drug free but not so much on her side.

Once trust is broken it is very hard to rebuild it. Her letting you do the bills again may seem like a huge hurdle to you but to her it is a baby step.

I think Sebastienne is right in thinking that you are doing all these changes for her or it at least appears that way. You should be doing them for yourself.

It is going to take time. You may be feeling great and be in high spirits but I have a feeling that she has never really faced her feelings of being hurt and betrayed. Those are hard things to get over when you are keeping it all inside.

I would suggest she speak to someone about them. Has she gone to any alanon meetings or gotten any therapy herself?

9

Trust has to be earned, pal. There’s no other way to put it. Work for the the long-term to earn back her trust. And recognize that she’s already taken you back twice, and if you screw up again, no one is going to blame her for kicking you to the curb.

10

While I have no personal experience with drug use, I can understand why your wife doesn’t trust you. My oldest sister was a heavy drug user for years (heroin, cocaine, hash, you name it) since she was 14. She is clean now and has been for almost 17 years. But at the time she was using, she would steal anything that wasn’t tied down to sell, it got so bad that my mother had to make her leave. She eventually got clean. I have asked her about it since and she has told me that she had to make the decision to stop, no one could force her. She had to earn our trust back we didn’t have to trust her blindly, neither should your wife. You decided to use when your wife was away, nobody made you.

11

This. It’s going to take longer than this for you to earn her trust back. She’s worried you’re going to screw up again because you have done just that, when she wasn’t expecting it, in the past.

She doesn’t want to be blindsided again, so she’s protecting herself and not letting herself trust you again right away. Which is completely understandable.

12

Good advice above.

Stop minimizing your relapse. You don’t have 16 months clean, you had a relapse last summer. Be glad it wasn’t prolonged, but any relapse is significant, and sets back one’s progress on many fronts. Believe me, I know this to be true.

All you can do is take it one day at a time, and do the next right thing. Keep doing that, and the promises do come true.

I was straight for over a decade before my wife began to fully trust me again.

QtM, clean and serene since 1990

13

You may not count the one time in June but She probably does. Start counting from June not 16 months ago, a slip is a restart.

14

Wow. You just told my story except I’m the wife. I’m also a recovering addict but have been clean (and clean dates are the 1st day we are clean with NO slips - marijuana maintainence is not a recovery program) for years. My husband struggles with relapses and has throughout our relationship.

I can tell you, it’s tiresome, infuriating, exhausting and frightening to live with an addict who can’t/won’t stay clean. It is a life of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve thrown him out and let him come back when he got some clean time but it happens again. Because I’m in recovery myself, I’ve learned how to take care of myself regardless of what he does but we’ve had periods where I’ve been very cold and distant and even ugly, I’m sure in an attempt at self preservation. If I allow myself to fall back in love, I risk another heartbreak.

You can only betray someone’s trust so many times before it just doesn’t return. I don’t have any suggestions for you other than to get yourself entrenched in NA (that’s the program I’m in) and work on staying clean. Your disease will use her behavior as an excuse for you to get high again if you begin to listen to the lies you tell yourself again. You have to stay clean no matter what happens to your marriage. Trust the process. Trust that if she goes, she’s meant to be gone. If she stays, the trust will return when it returns. Your recovery cannot be dependent upon her decisions.

You might want to visit here and talk about this… NA Message Board I’m a member and you’ll be talking to people in recovery who understand and can actually give you some program oriented suggestions.

Hugs!

15

You’re confused? Really? You don’t know why she’d be wary?

Anyone who’s ever lived with an addict or an alcoholic is alwayswaiting for the next shoe to drop. A few months of alleged sobriety and a few paid bills is a start, but nothing more. To put it bluntly, addicts can’t be trusted. The only way to earn back trust is with long term sobriety – that means years, not months, and even years – even decades – of sobriety are not ironclad guarantees that an addict will never relapse.

You can’t just expect that your wife is going to think everything’s all hunky dory now because you say you haven’t gotten high since June. You’ve got a long way to go yet.

By the way, when you say you’ve been clean, does that include alcohol?

16

The story sounds familiar to me, except my wife was the one with the problem.

Well, ex-wife. I wasn’t so much waiting for the other shoe to drop as dodging a constant downpour of falling footwear. Eventually, I’d had enough, and I left. She told me that my leaving had finally made her see the light (again), but by then, it was too late.

Thing is, you’re going to have to earn her trust back. She more than fulfilled her obligation to the “for better or worse” part when she took you back the first time, and the first time things got rough, you flushed it all right down the crapper again.

If you want her to stay, the very last thing you should do is come down on her for being cold and distant. She has a right to be cold and distant, because she’ll have no reason to trust you for a very, very long time. The only thing you can do is handle yourself with aplomb through the next crisis, and the one after that, and the one after that.

If you’re lucky, time and honesty will help heal the wounds.

17

You’ve also put a hell of a lot of weight on her shoulders. If she leaves you, from her point of view (and your description of ‘she leaves town, I do drugs’) you’ll probably relapse. So she may, in fact, be there only out of a sense of obligation and if she saw you as healthy, she’d be gone.

Can you imagine being stuck with someone because if you leave horrible things will happen to them?

18

Have you actually sat her down and told her that you are truly, utterly, heartfelty sorry for what you’ve done so far? Or are you just assuming that she knows it?

My late husband was an alcoholic and we’d go through a very bad patch, and then he would seem to be getting better. But what made me harbour so much resentment and anger towards him even when he was relatively sober (not that that was very often) was the fact that he never took any responsibility for what happened. He never once said “I did a Bad Thing. I’m Very Very Sorry and need your forgiveness.” He never spoke about or acknowledged the ruined social events, the ruined holidays, the lost jobs, and the fact it was basically my money he was hosing down his throat.

Are you just taking it as read that your wife forgives the drug-fuelled misdemeanors, or have you actually spoke about it out in the open, apologised, taken responsibility for your actions, and tried to reassure her it’s in the past?

19

I wish you luck in your continuing struggle. As Qadgop the Mercotan rightly says, take it one day at a time.

As others have said, you haven’t been clean for 16 months. One incident is a relapse. I’m sorry it’s so hard, but remember you have a lot going for you.

I suggest you tell your wife how wonderful she is, how lucky you are to have her and how hard you’re going to try to stay clean.

20

Yes, exactly. If you represent your clean period to your wife the way you represent it here, then you’re not being honest with yourself, which is not a positive clue about your stability. You are not clean for 16 months with one slip in June. You are clean since June. Period. No wonder your wife is uncertain.