Married to an Alcoholic :: Part 2

Read Part 1

When I made the decision to leave my husband AND quit my job in the same week, I think most of my friends thought I was nuts. I think some of them even thought I was being irresponsible by letting go of all of the things in my life that held the tiniest shred of security. I doubted myself like crazy:

Tonight I wish I had positive questions to share, or a good reframe up my sleeve for myself. To be frank, I just want to crawl into a hole and cry my eyes out. But even when I do that it makes me feel worse rather than better. Because in that ‘hole’ I look to everyone but myself to make me feel good and happy and I want anyone but me to take care of me. Thinking that way just feels like shit because it feeds into itself and makes me more helpless.

The ONLY reason I made the decision was because I absolutely knew with 100% certainty that my heart said this was the right course of action. I had absolutely nothing else to guide me:

My friend Alan is fond of saying that “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of UNCERTAINTY you are willing to live with”. Well, I’m living with a lot of THAT and I’m praying it means a higher quality of life, because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

But the point is, that no matter what is uncertain right now, and it’s a LOT, I AM certain of the fact that I am on the right path. I may end up changing course at some point, and that will be revealed to me at a later time. Now I need to trust myself, trust God, and believe in my heart. My heart has brought me to this moment, and my heart has never led me astray in the past. I MUST trust that what I am doing is for my highest good, even though I feel like I just jumped off of a cliff.

I know now in hindsight that it was the ONLY course of action that would get me what I wanted - but I had to let go of all of my ideas about how I “should” be getting what I wanted.

I can’t take credit for getting my husband sober. I can take credit for changing the patterns in our relationship. The three most important things I did were:

1 - I raised my standards. I had been raising my standards for what I wanted to achieve for years. But only when raised the bar on what I was willing to ’settle for’ did things start shifting. I told my husband that I was not willing to settle for the relationship we had. That he needed to get into treatment or I was leaving. Period. Scary, too!

2 - I started expecting my husband to be the great man I have always known he is on the inside. So I treated him as though he was that man. When I thought of him, I focused on his talents, his strengths, his wonderful qualities. Every morning I would visualize him healthy, deeply happy, confident and sober. This was SO hard to do at first, especially when he was still drinking, lying and being emotionally abusive.

3 - I knew that if the man of my dreams walked up to my door that very day, he would walk away in a heartbeat. The man of my dreams wouldn’t settle for a woman who was living her life “settling”. I knew that I had to raise my expectations of myself immensely. I had to become a different woman if I was going to attract a different man.

I spent time getting in touch with who that woman would have to be:

• That woman would come from a place of love and understanding even when her husband was lashing out.
• That woman would refuse to take the bait when her husband picked a fight - instead, she would calmly state that she loved him and would speak to him later when he calmed down.
• That woman would choose integrity over being vindictive, not out of fear, but because she knew it would be the only way she could live her life.
• That woman would never settle for anything less than what she knew she deserved and was worth - even if she had to “fake it until she made it”

I’m not saying that it was easy - in fact, after he quit drinking, things got even harder before they got easier. But the shifts were so profound, so significant, and even though they were excruciating at times, I held to the one thing I knew I could count on - my heart.

And my heart was right - both my husband and I transformed massively once I focused on what I wanted, rather than what I didn’t want.

Questions about this experience? Drop me a line - I will answer them confidentially here on the blog, or personally if needed.