Hello Funandsun, welcome to MIP

Good to hear that you are finding the benefits of going to f2f meetings. I can relate to your feelings when you check phone messages etc. It took me a long time to stop wanting to do that - after all my mind does love to find the solution to any problem!! Realising how tense I felt while accessing the messages on my husband's phone helped me understand what I was doing to myself. Accepting that, frankly, anything that might possibly answer the questions that I had would probably be deleted anyway helped me to understand that I was wasting my own time chasing something that probably wasn't there.

I used the HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) question and found out that one of those applied to how I was feeling most of the time. Nine times out of ten I just needed a friend, or something to eat, a rest or a beautiful walk - using these things to sooth myself turned out to work better for me than any snooping ever did!

Well done on staying pleasant - it feels good to be able to rise above stuff and I found the more I do it the more natural it becomes and the easier it is to be objective about my circumstances - less guilt about my own actions I guess!!

My husband went through a few relapses and I learnt to just carry on with my life regardless of what he was doing. As you say, keeping the focus on ourselves works so much better. Thank you for the reminder.

I am having this same struggle. I snoop because I know he's not being honest, but I never like what I find! Recently I found proof he had been drinking behind my back and he responded with absolute rage. He turned everything around on me and said I had no right to snoop through his things. I made the point that although it is an invasion of privacy, I had asked him several times and he always denied it and he would continue to lie to me unless I looked myself.

He often deletes his text messages before I can even read them, but I had the chance to see yesterday and I took it. He was buying pills from someone. I am left feeling like I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I feel I no longer have the strength to leave and furthermore I'm not sure I want to. Then I ask myself "Do you really want to live like this?" I've stopped trying to control him and even when he says "I won't do it if you don't want me to" I don't buy in anymore. Because he will just lie to me anyway when he wants to do it.

It's like I HAVE to know the truth for my own sanity, but the truth absolutely sucks. You're not alone. I've only posted here a handful of times, but it helps.

If you really want to stop the obsessive checking...consider this: Alcoholics are insanely egotistical so having someone hanging on them enough to check on and try and spy on them will actually INFLATE is already fat ego. Though he would act mad...it really works in reverse. He will sickly get off on you being obsessed with him, turn the behavior all on you (and the sneaky checking is yours to own), and he will use it as yet another dumb excuse to go drink cuz he has a "bleep" girlfriend that is always riding him and all that nonsense. You know this right? I bet you do.