I'm a recovering addict and my wife keeps telling our family and friends. Is she right?
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Loading... - Martina Castro
- 01 Jul 2022
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I’m a recovering addict and transitioning careers. My wife has reached out to family and friends asking for help with various things, but consistently breaking my anonymity in the process. I’ve asked her to avoid revealing my addiction and that I’m a recovering addict. She says sorry, but also says she’s justified because of what my past addiction has cost her. Is she right? Should I just be grateful?
Eleanor says: Congratulations on your recovery, it’s one of the hardest things a person can do.
It’s difficult for me to answer this question without more clarity about what exactly your wife is reaching out for help with. If she’s reaching out to try to get help for you, then I agree this isn’t necessarily helpful, especially if it risks affecting your career. But if she’s trying to get help for her, so she can share her own experience of addiction, that’s more complex.
There are at least two stories inside any addiction; one for the person who interacts with the addictive thing, and one for the people who interact with them. Your wife’s experience is separate from yours but just as important to recover from: in the breaking of those bitter, regretful dawns, it sounds as if she was there too.
And while your addiction will have taught you all too vividly what it’s like to see your fingerprints on actions you despise, the people around an addiction get forced into their own unwelcome knowledge too. It teaches you how to smell a lie; to feel apprehension in the early hours; it shows you what’s it like to watch the curtains come down in the eyes of someone you love.
It’s not in either of your interests that your wife keeps that story secret. The whole family unit needs to recover.
For your sake, it is desperately important that your relationship doesn’t get stuck in resentment, recrimination, or dynamics from when you were using – and it will, if she can’t talk this through with anyone else. You do not want to be the only place her conflicted feelings can go.
Addicts’ loved ones often have important things of their own to learn – like that trying your hardest to help your person by straightening out the day is actually called ‘enabling’; how to grow your own fulfilling life separate from the person living with addiction; or that there are other people who’ve lived through this, who can empathise with the peculiar remorse of having to blame the sober Hyde for the choices of the long-gone Jekyll.
As a couple, then, you need to balance two very legitimate needs: your need to rebuild without the fear that you’ll be known for your worst, and her need to process her experience. Read More...
