Want to be a supportive Wife

Advice & Questions
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My husband, an alcoholic, has been in treatment for 5 weeks today for the first time. Im proud of him and grateful that he is choosing sobriety but my biggest fears right now are what is going to happen when he comes home sober? Weve been together 13 years and while he is an alcoholic and things have suffered in our lives because of it, im doing my best to move forward from the past hurt in a healthy way for both of us. Im expecting it to be a while until his emotions are regulated and hes actually aware of his feelings. Any advice on ways i can stay positive for him and not let resentment get in the way? Im already attending al anon, 12 step and celebrate recovery so i can be on the same page as him when he gets home.

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Hey there. Welcome to the forum :wave:
Great to hear your husband made the decision to choose sobriety and went into a treatment programm :+1:
You already are doing all the right things, attending al-anon and other support groups.
I believe the most important aspect of being affected by a loved one’s addiction is the helplesness. You can’t change him, you can’t make him make the right choices.
What you can do, is to educate yourself in understanding his condition, and to take care of yourself. Connect with people and communitites that understand what you are going through and will support you.
I would suggest checking out the Are you affected by a loved one who’s an addict? thread.

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Oh, it’s normal to have those anticipations đŸ©· Are you excited a little as well?
I’m happy for you both.

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My wife has been supportive and understanding of me throughout my recovery. I am grateful for the effort she has made to understand and be supportive of herself too (and that includes participation in a group like Al-Anon (not the same exact group but similar) where she has learned about her own emotions and experiences and has had support to walk through them).

We talk about resentments with each other. (Not talking about them openly would not work for us; it would become a seed of resentment and we would become passive-aggressive.) I will share with her when I am feeling resentment about something she said or did, and I ask her to do the same with me. To keep it focused and constructive, we use “I-statements”, which follow this format:

“When I see / hear [measurable thing], I feel [emotion].”

For example:

“When I see the garbage has not been taken out, I feel angry.”
(Not this: ‘When you disrespect me, I feel angry.’ - you see the difference? “you disrespect me” is no a measurable thing; it is subjective. “the garbage has not been taken out” is measurable: it is not an opinion)

The conversation has to be about listening, so the listener has to indicate they heard the speaker, and has to empathize. The listener would respond like this:

“I hear you saying that when the garbage is not taken out, you feel angry. Is that right?”
(The “is that right?” is important, so the speaker can add more info if necessary, and you repeat the process until the speaker has said everything that the speaker is feeling)

Then you switch roles: the person who was speaking becomes the listener, and the person who was listening becomes the speaker. (There’s no need to be too complex with the emotions; if the speaker doesn’t know what to say, the speaker can keep it simple and say “when we do this communication exercise, I don’t know what to say, and I feel a little frustrated or annoyed”. That is a legitimate feeling too.)

There’s no magic switch and it’s not like things are a well-oiled machine. (They never are.) Usually it is still emotionally messy, even after we do this communication exercise. But the difference is that we’ve talked it over and shared with each other - we don’t keep it bottled up inside us - and that brings us closer together.

Our marriage is messy and we have disagreements regularly. But it’s by talking through the mess that we get closer together. Then a few days (or hours) later, there’s another mess. Sometimes we talk through it right then; sometimes we say “let’s put a pin in this and come back to it tomorrow morning”. But we never leave it too long. We don’t want it to fester.

Don’t be afraid of messy emotions and messy (constructive) conversations. No mess, no success.

You can do it.

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