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My AH stopped drinking 3 months ago. I'm proud of him for stopping (health reasons) but what a change in him. I know he's knew at sobriety, but on a typical day he comes home and goes to bed to watch Shark Tank. Every day. He rarely leaves the bedroom.
We've only been married a few years and most of our free time was spent going out every night and drinking. I'm not a heavy drinker, 1-2 at most, but we had a lot of fun. Now that he's sober, he seem irritable all the time and worse--he doesn't seem to like me anymore. Like he couldn't be bothered. I won't leave him, but it feels like living in purgatory. I try to do what I can to keep him happy, since he's going through something difficult. I just hate our life now. We don't go out, we don't have fun but without a doubt is him acting like I'm a bother. I'm exactly the same as I was when he was drinking. I guess the alcohol just made me seem more interesting.
He's probably going on 40 years of drinking. I wonder if he ever knew who he was.
There's a term in recovery called dry drunk. A person can stop the drinking but alone it doesn't change the thinking. Before coming to this board, I didn't recognise until I read the posts, and was surprised to see myself actually. I generally go years without drinking, then sabotage myself for a long while then dry out. While drinking and hating myself in brief moments of sobering up, the focus is on stopping. Now, ive started looking at my sober parts to see a serious, utterly uptight person trying to be her approximation of sober. Total crap and very hard for loved ones. I think you hit the nail on the head, re not knowing ones self. Now that I am not drinking, what am I? Good on for you for coming here, keep coming back. Ones own recovery whether drinker or partner is the most enlightening process available for this disease. Welcome aboard.
OhioWriter - welcome to MIP. Glad you found us and glad that you found your courage to share.
If he's been drinking for a long while, it will take time for him to find a new normal. It's possible that his new normal is hard, difficult, painful and a bit too much at this time. And, if you met & married while he was drinking, he may not like you - who knows! The good news is that you are not responsible for his happiness nor his recovery journey. My hope is you can go to Al-Anon in your community to better understand the disease and how it affects the alcoholic as well as those who love/live with them.
I am sorry that you're suffering. New sobriety is not easy and for those of us who want them better, it's often hard to watch and hope while being unable to help them. It's very possible that he's still detoxing mentally and if he's not in a recovery group, he is most likely fearful of life without the alcohol.
The Al-anon program will help you find your peace and joy no matter what he is or is not doing. Keep coming back - you're not alone!!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
I can identify with you on many levels. My AH stopped drinking this past Monday. Since then, it's weird between us. It's like he doesn't know what to do with himself at night, so he is doing a lot of reading and work on the computer. Before, he would grab a drink and we would hang out and talk/watch TV. Now, it seems like he is internalizing everything and keeping to himself. I'm only a week into this, so I'm hoping things level off and we both adjust to this new normal. Three months isn't very long, so hopefully you too can adjust to this new normal. Advice, well we aren't supposed to give advice, but I will tell you what works for us. There is definitely one aspect of our relationship that he is still very interested in. :) So, I'm giving him a lot of that. Haha. Maybe you can pay him a visit in the bedroom and suddenly shark tank won't seem quite so interesting.
OhioWriter- Welcome. I can relate to what you're going through. My AH stopped drinking 6 months ago today. This is his third attempt at sobriety. He's very active in AA and has a sponsor. We've been married 15 years, together 18 and have two teenagers. He was a drinker when I met him (in a bar) but most all of our crowd was at that time. I thought nothing of it. We both liked to party and have a good time doing it. However, as time went on and the kids came along, I stopped the partying....but he couldn't. Things got progressively worse and I was basically a single mother doing everything alone.
I kept saying if he would just quit drinking all of our problems would be gone--everything would be fine. But when he came out of rehab this past June all he wanted to do was sleep, watch TV and go to meetings. I felt resentful that after everything I was doing to keep us afloat he didn't want to spend more time with me. I thought the same thing as you--maybe he really doesn't like me. My therapist summed it up like this: after the addicted partner enters recovery it's a whole new ball game--you have to get to know each other all over again...sort of feel each other out. There were good days and bad days during this time. In fact we just started getting to mostly good days now. AH is more affectionate, more thoughtful, wants to go to dinner and movies, overall just a nicer, sweeter person who I can actually have a conversation with and who I look forward to coming home to. When he was in active alcoholism I literally wanted to sleep under my desk at work and never come home at night. It was that bad. We had no life when he was drinking. There was no marriage when he was drinking.
He explained during one of our group sessions--when I complained that he never wanted to do anything with me--that since he has been drinking just about every day for over 30 years, he did not know how to do anything WITHOUT drinking--that included having fun. Believe me I have communicated to him how I felt--that I was lonely, sad and still didn't feel like I was in a partnership with him. I'm not sure if someone put a bug in his ear or what but whatever it is things are much better. So you can invite your AH to do things that don't involve drinking like going for a walk in the park or just watching a movie together. Eventually I stopped asking because the answer was always no. Then he started slowly coming around and now he is starting to initiate things. So give it some time.
I'm not sure if your AH is working a program or not but that made all the difference in the world to my AH. I know you mentioned that he had to quit for health reasons. The first and second times my AH attempted to quit drinking he never stuck with the program so he relapsed rather quickly. This time he said he had a spiritual awakening and rarely misses a meeting. I tell people that nothing I did or said made him quit, I believe he got so sick and tired of being sick and tired that he knew he had to stop or he would die.
My suggestion would be to hang in there as your AH may start feeling better in the next few months. I read up as much as I could on recovery from alcoholism so I could attempt to understand what he was going through. Apparently sleeping is very common in early recovery. As hard as it may be try not to take it personally, just go about your business and let him go about his but be supportive at the same time. This board and going to Al-anon meetings saved my sanity and made me understand that I am not alone nor am I responsible for his recovery--only mine. (((HUGS)))
Just wanted to let you know you're not alone. I feel the same way with my AH lately, whether he's on a sober stint or drinking again. Either way, he's either awake half the night and acting as though I'm not there (or at least it seems) or he's passed out/on his way to passing out. I've been struggling with whether to mention this to him for quite some time. Part of me questions my motivation for doing so as it's certainly a subject we've broached before.
I hope you are able to come to a better place with your AH soon as I know how this feels from our side of the fence.
