Still On The Run

This isn't really about my recovery -- and it may qualify as self-pity, grandiosity, denial, delusion, resentment, or any number of my other character defects -- but it was a long drive home Sunday night and I just got to thinking...

I love my son so much, we had such a wonderful time together Sunday. At age 2½, he's very sensitive and expressive emotionally, he doesn't filter it. When my wife and I started getting into an argument, he started to cry. When she was in another room, he was happy playing with me. At one point my wife hugged me -- and our son was delighted, he came up and grabbed both our hands and said, "come on!" He wanted to go for a walk with both mommy and daddy, together. He is always happiest when he is with both of us, one hand in mommy's hand and one hand in daddy's hand.

I don't think he has a well-developed sense of past and future -- so when mommy and daddy are together with him, life is good. When mommy and daddy fight, or he’s separated from one or the other, life is bad. He is very clear about his "family values." He doesn't understand, or much care, why mommy and daddy aren't together and getting along. He simply wants us to be together and get along.

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I pretty much agree with him. There really aren't any excuses for the parents of a toddler to split up without making every effort at reconciliation. At this moment, I can barely stand being in the same room as my wife -- but I would move back with her and work hard to renew the relationship, with confidence that we could restore our love if we honestly commit to it and honestly work at it. I owe that to my son.

My wife always says her reason for leaving, and for staying apart, is my drinking: she didn't want to live with it, and she wanted to protect our son from it. That's a good reason, I can't deny it.

But it doesn’t add up.

I started at AA the day after she left the first time, and I took to it like a duck to water. This isn't how we calculate time in AA, but with the exception of two relapses totaling 38 days, I've been in recovery and sober for the 6½ months since she left.

So if my drinking really is the reason, I think a lot of spouses would take my effort seriously, stick around, and try to be supportive.

There's also this: when she left, she first went (and took our son) to her brother's -- who is an active alcoholic without any desire to recover.

And this: after she left the first time, she came back a month later. She stayed for six weeks, then left again -- and I was sober the whole time.

So, um, what precisely is the issue around drinking that is the problem...?

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My hypothesis is that my wife only knows how to function around active alcoholism, even though she genuinely hates alcoholism. She grew up in a typical wildly-dysfunctional alcoholic family: drunk dad, drunk sister, drunk brother, sexual abuse and rape, gunfire in the house, fistfights, smashed furniture. She had it all. No one, not a single person in her family, ever even tried to stop drinking.

She has never in her life lived in a household without active alcoholism.

My wife is stark raving codependent, IMHO. All the shame, fear, need to control, withdrawal into a fantasy world of grandiose dreams that will show everyone how great she is, always sure that "once this and that happen, then I'll finally be happy," and incapable of taking even the first step to make anything positive happen.

She has never acknowledged her codependence (and I sure as hell never saw it while I was drinking!). She's had endless hours of therapy, all kinds of medications -- all attempting to solve her misery by fixing something outside of herself.

While I was drinking, of course, I had all the same crazy fears, dreams, paranoia and incapacities she did, and medicated my misery with beer. We were two peas in a pod, comfortably reinforcing each other's insanity and misery, giving each other someone to blame.

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Then I came to the end of my run. I couldn't go on. A couple months before I stopped drinking, before I recognized "it's the alcohol, stupid," I knew my life was wrecked, the grandiose dreams were a sham, and I was going down the tubes. I realized my life was insanity.

My wife and I had a big fight -- I blamed her for everything, of course, for not doing her part to make our crazy dreams real, for the wreck our lives had become, for the chaos in our household.

We started seeing a counselor. My wife never budged from her position that there was one problem, and one problem only: my drinking. I was still drinking, still in denial of my alcoholism. I was, however, on the verge of "getting it."

One Tuesday, I had a separate session with the counselor about my drinking. I confidently agreed that I wouldn't drink until the following Tuesday, and if I couldn't make it, then I would acknowledge I have a problem and would get help for my drinking.

I told this to my wife, and she disappeared on Wednesday, leaving our son with me. She turned up briefly Thurday morning, picked up our son and disappeared again.

I got drunk on Thursday and Friday. I reluctantly started suspecting that I had a drinking problem and would have to talk seriously to the counselor about it the following week.

Friday night, my wife returned, with the cops and her alcoholic brother, grabbed some stuff, and she was gone.

Saturday I went to my first AA meeting and immediately knew I belonged there.

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So, what does this long story mean?

I think she decided to leave when we had the big fight, when she saw I had quit buying into the alcoholic/codependent insanity, that I knew I had to face reality, a month or so before I accepted that the core reality I had to face was my alcoholism. It's almost as though she could sense that I was about to begin recovery, and she had to get out before I stopped drinking. Without alcohol, what would there be to blame for her misery? And her misery was now at a whole new level, without a husband sharing, reinforcing and validating the insane thinking and living that are all she's ever known.

It means, I think, that I was finished with my run, but my wife is still on her run. I came in, and she's not ready to come in.

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My wife WANTS me to drink.

If I'm drunk, she can continue blaming me and my drinking for all her misery and everything that goes wrong in her life.

If I'm drunk, she can justify ignoring my input into raising our son.

If I'm drunk, she can convince herself that she's the "innocent victim" of her life.

If I'm drunk, she can avoid looking inside herself for solutions to her problems.

If I'm drunk, she can avoid the responsibility of doing her part to create a healthy, intact family for our son.

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She has grabbed on to my relapses like a drowning person grabbing a life preserver. Because I relapsed, she can convince herself that my recovery is not real, that any day I will go back to drinking, and stay drunk. My sobriety is her enemy, even though she hates alcoholism.

I hope my wife will start dealing with her codependence. Until she starts working a program she will be miserable and never find a solution, IMHO. Our son is a huge motivation to me to stay sober, and I hope he will finally motivate her to change her life.