I've been a addict for 4 years and have now been clean for 90 days! My wife and I have been married for 1.5 years. I am a good addict and she is a wonderful co-dependent. We've never really communicated well but it seems now things are worse. We're through the honeymoon phase of recovery and life is starting to hit us again. She brings all of here co-dependent to me and wants me to help her through it, but she does it in a confrontive way. She hasn't gone to any Alanon meetings or really talked with other co-dependents. I tell her she needs to go to meetings and establish relationships there so she can talk through her issues there. I take my addict issues straight to my sponsor. She's having a hard time grasping how the programs works because she won't take the time to go to meetings, work the steps and get a sponsor. I'm frustrated because I don't want to leave her behind. I feel like I am growing and hope that she would do the same. I've heard many stories of people getting clean but the co-dependent doesn't think they need help and it ends the marriage. I don't want that to happen to me.
Glad to see your reaching out for help thats what the name of the game is for you but everyone in there own time Mike, be patient with her thats one of the spiritual principles you'll get to work on now, opportunity will abound in recovery to work all sorts of neat principals.
I honestly don't have another suggestion for you maybe it's just time for you to start practicing real love and for us addicts thats a real trouble spot, but your not without the opportunity.
How's the fishin Mike? I just went last night took my girlfriend night fishing for catfish she didn't like the bugs and the howling coyotes or the cold wind that started blowing :) I love it all, Ah and no fish she got a few bites was all, met some good friends of mine too but she wont go again she says though she did like gold Dredging today least thats something.
Hope someone else can give a hand with this and WELCOME to the board glad to have you on board.
Thanks for the reply. You said many good things that I needed to hear. I do have a hard time with patients and love and I for sure need to work on them. You're right though, she needs to do it in her own time, just like I did.
The fishin' is pretty good! I've going this week for sure. I've been catchin' some nice trout recently. Nice big browns and bows. I haven't done a lot of catfishin' lately but that sounds like a lot of fun. I haven't and don't think I ever will take my wife. Fishing is a separate world for me and if she came with, worlds would collide.
I'm glad I found this site. It's cool to find support where ever I can.
Right on Mike any help I can support you with I will, just stay clean and work them steps and get to some meetings, people there will help also get a good support group/ network going for you.
I hear you I like doing stuff with my boys ( buddys with the same interests ) pretty much took my girl with me the last few days but went alone today to do some hill climbing and metal detecting.
I tried flyfishing 2 years ago and pretty much gave it up, now all the rivers and creeks I go to for gold are good fly fishin holes so might just take it back up again, just noticed recently the tip was broken off my fly pole need to get that fixed and check my fly box of goodies :)
I too feel at times that my wife is acting out on her codependency, and it would make me so miserable and frustrated that I would so much desperately want her to work the NarAnon or the CoDA program so that she leaves me alone and I get to feel good. But getting trapped in wanting my wife to be fixed where I FELT she needed to be fixed only made me feel even worse as I got sucked into my own codependency in the process, losing out on my own personal recovery program in the process.
I reached out for help both to my Sponsor in NA and also to NarAnon. I read literature on codependency, picked up few of the tools from there like Detachment (from the behavior of another, not from the person), Assertiveness (expressing my boundaries in a healthy way to my wife), abstaining from acting the role of a Seducer, Savior, Offender or Victim in her context, and most importantly continuing to commit myself to the relationship by being there for her and supporting her when she does ask for help. Through these tools, I've learned to reverse this process of focusing outwardly on my wife into focusing inward to see how my defects of character in such situations like frustration, anger, my own codependency that she must be different than what she is and so on show up in me again and again, and how they disturb my daily recovery and sanity. That way, most of the times, I'm quick to transform these situations and how I feel about her as an opportunity for my personal growth by owning my part.
-- Edited by Tahir at 23:10, 2008-04-27
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"If we do an honest examination of exactly what we are giving, we are better able to evaluate the results we are getting."Chapter 10 - Emotional Pain - NA Way of Life.
Hi Mike, Amazing! You are reaching out for help and receiving it. i am reading your post because i'm having relationship issues bigtime. i've been clean for a while and am suffering from the illusion that i can handle everything that comes up. You see, i am a codependent girlfriend. i want to defend myself and say that it's not all me, but that's not what i'm here for. i need help and support to deal with my side of this. My partner and i have been repeatedly unsuccessful at communicating and it always seems to make it worse. i feel like our communication is a chainlink fence and each attempt is linked to past resentments that haven't been resolved. it would be easy to say "sounds like we're not meant for each other", but what if we actually are? i think we're very alike in some ways and totally different in others. Anyway, i felt that an online forum for this relationship stuff would be better than talking to my close friends (who know both of us) or in local meetings where people gossip and the opportunity for hurt feelings is way too obvious. There's also the old pride that's telling me to not "hang out the dirty laundry" and keep this to myselfat least here, there's anonymity.
