I am 33 yrs old and have been with my fiance for a year and a half. She has been clean and sober for over four years now. Recently we have been talking about her past and what she used to do, and up until tonight i felt comfortable talking about it. Never had a minute of doubt or mistrust, complete happiness. Tonight I am home alone and was looking for my old grad ring in her jewelry box when i came across a balled up piece of tinfoil. I unwrapped the tinfoil and found four brown pills inside with no markings. Having no experience with pills and not knowing what they are i immediately thought the worst. Called her on the phone to ask her what they were, found out that they are just some kind of supplement. Now she is questioning my trust and my acceptance of who she used to be. Now i feel terrible because she is the love of my life and the last thing i ever wanted to do was hurt her. Did I over react? Will she ever forgive me? How do i deal with my own feelings?
Welcome Doug! We don't give advice but suggest thru our experiences of life in active addiction and recovery, things that may or may not have helped us.Dr Phil I'm not,but my first thoughts areyou may want to lighten up on yourself.It happened ,you can't get it back,so how can you move forward..?You know you say this never bothered you before,but are you really being honest with yourself?.I know from relationship scenarios I was in and out of there was a lot of fear of maybe finding stuff out I may not be able to handle,didn't really have complete trust and bottom line I wasn't being honest how I felt.How did you feel when you found the pills?.frightened,sick,worried??? She is your fiance,the woman you may spend the rest of your life with,I would think complete honesty between both of you is very important to build a strong foundation.WILL SHE FORGIVE YOU?Thats her decision all you can do is ask for forgiveness,.She also has things to work out now like you said,trust issues,are you going to be a detctive now?,can you let it go?You may have both overreacted,?We deal with our feelings in the program of Narcotics Anonymous by sharing how we feel ,freeing ourselves and getting to the exact nature of whats really going on with us(the underlying causes for some of our actions)Are you both anxious cause maybe marriage is on horizon?,Its a big commitment are you ready? For me ,I would have to share that maybe I am not okay with the past,I am nervous and frightened about relapse etc. but these are my fears and I am working thru them .Listen this is me just thinking out loud ,this is not advice only my share on the situation presented as I have stated,Resentments in any form can be difficult to overcome if they get embedded early on Hopefully one of our sisters in recovery can share from their experience and offer any more suggestions here..I wish you luck,we are human beings,we make mistakes and we pick ourselves up and hope we have learned something along the way.I have been married 3x times divorced 2x,so obviously I am still learning "one day at a time"Let us know how it goes.... :)
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Our purpose is to remain clean,just for today,and to carry the message of recovery.
One of the principles of our program is honesty. We need to be honest with ourselves even when that uncovers truths about ourselves that we would rather not see. For example when I read this statement of yours "Never had a minute of doubt or mistrust, complete happiness." My thought was "really"??? As recovering addicts we have to face the fact that we destroyed many trusting relationships due to our using and finding the ways and means to get more. It is no secret that addicts lie, cheat, and deceive. I can tell you with complete certainty that if my wife of 11 years found a wad of aluminum foil in my desk that had pills in it, she would confront me on it. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. She loves me and she trusts me, but she also knows first hand where I've been and what I've done. For her to ignore something like that and just assume it was nothing would be foolishly naive. I can't undo the wreckage of my past. I can only strive to rebuild trust by living clean one day at a time. Good luck with your relationship. I think the fact that you came on here speaks volumes about your commitment to her.
Just after a few weeks after me and my wife had moved into a new home, I was replacing the cooking gas cylinder which is in a closet under the stove that is a bit difficult to reach in fully due to the way it has been squeezed in there.
While doing this, I found a bottle of rum, half-consumed. Now me and my wife, we both are NA. And believe me, my first impulse was to think that my wife had relapsed. Just that thought seemed to give me a kind of thrill that I enjoyed a lot while using. I was building a case, obsessizing over what will happen now, how I should be the perfect codependent savior, victim and offender now that this has happened. When I confronted her with the bottle, before I could react, she went berserk accusing me of having relapsed, and told me that she cannot live with me anymore now that I have relapsed... lol...
This way, it dawned on both of us that this bottle of rum was neither mine nor hers. We realized that we never actually looked into this kitchen closet below the cooking stove completely, beyond what was visible of it while standing.
I checked the date on the bottle, it had a very old packing date on it. I called our security who had been working there from before we moved in. He quickly recognized the bottle and told us that the one living in this house before us used to drink this particular brand of rum and he used to buy it for him everyday.
I must admit that more than relief, both me and my wife were a bit disappointed because we each felt that we were deprived of the drama that we sought!
I have to agree w/ Avid. Don't be to hard on yourself. i completely understand your reaction to the foil & the pills simply because she is an addict. But on the other hand, you were very quick in making the assumption that she was using. You stated in your post she has been clean for over 4 yrs but you've only been together for a year & half. So you didn't even know her when she was in active addiction, right? You say you've never even once questioned her honesty but you opened the tin foil. I think you need to think about why you did that. Be honest even if it's uncomfortable because if your not and you take all of that undealt w/ baggage into a marriage it's doom to fail whether she's a recovering addict or no. You were willing to come here & ike avid said "it speaks volums" and then some. Now the bigger & more important question is... Would you be willing to sit in on a few ala-non meetings? Good Luck ! Keep us posted.
Stacey
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The Will Of GOD Will Never Take You Where The Grace Of GOD Will Not Protect You
