I go back and forth. I struggle with black and white thinking, and yet I am also very comfortable with gray areas. It�s kind of hard to explain. Yes, I might have an opinion right away on most things, but not all things. And usually my opinion is just a starting point. I state my opinion in the hopes that someone can prove me wrong. Sometimes the other person has a good argument, sometimes not. Mostly I care about WHY someone believes what they believe, and I engage in a discussion to get to know THAT, and also for the opportunity to learn about WHY I believe what I believe, and for the other person to be a witness to that, even if he or she doesn�t agree.


Yes and no. I wish that the person that I was married to was also someone who shared my passion for my various �causes.� So that our mutual passion could be the passion of our relationship. Yet as a spouse in semi-withdrawl from my husband, I don�t really want Him personally to be �the one� who is sharing that passion with me, because for whatever reason that I don�t fully understand, I don�t really �like� him. I see that he is good for me in many ways, and that he is good TO me, and that I SHOULD respond by being a nice loving wife. But I�m not in love with him. And sometimes I really don�t want to be in love with him. But I feel that I SHOULD be in love with him, because the alternative is to subject both of us to a passionless marriage, or divorce. I don�t want a passionless marriage. I don�t want divorce. But I also don�t want HIM in a personal way. This is very painful to admit. Go easy on me.


Yes to both.


Yes. And I think that�s a fair belief. One of the �old timers� in my alanon program suggested I practice �gut level acceptance� of my husband. I have done my best with this (though far from perfect) and where I�m at now is that I can �accept� various aspects of who he is, but that acceptance does not mean that I have to �like� those aspects. Which would pretty much mean that while I accept, I do not approve. And even if I don�t say it, I�m sure my actions and attitudes say it loud and clear.


I just asked him a little while ago. And he said that if I have to ask that question, then the answer is obviously yes. And he said he doesn�t think about it.

I believe he does feel like he will never get my respect. And I know how this feels, because there are a small handful of people in my life whom I feel the same way about. They know a lot of my �dark side� and seem to accept me unconditionally, but don�t seem to respect or appreciate my �light side� and that nothing I could say or do would earn that. In the past, my reaction was to either throw my hands up and not bother, or go the other extreme and try to �make� them respect me. Both are flawed. The solution is to do my best, strive to do better, and practice detachment from their reactions or lack of reactions.

I dont see a dark side to you as of yet. Hard for me to understand that one.

Im sorry I edited the crap out of that post. thanks for the quick replys.

I didn't think you would be on this late lol

It doesn't sound like he really answered your question. It was a question I would think would bring out a conversation about what respect was. His response would to me sound like. "Asking me about my feelings is disrespectful"

I gotta admit I have allways had a problem with those "if you have to ask" answers.

How much does that car cost? "If you have to ask.." "Yeah dipwad I wanna know so I can go get the money"


But maybe Hubby just wantedto skrt the issue at that time.

Yeah, he just didn't want to talk. 10:30 while he's painting is not the time for an in-depth discussion. I dropped it No need to LB him.

When I say "dark side" I mean my character defects. They are all over this thread! I've had some success at working on some of my character defects, less success on others.

It sounds like you are a "program person"? I'm still very much in the "awareness" stage of my alanon program, and I know that my character defects will be removed by God if I am willing, and also if removing them makes me more useful to Him. But even St. Paul had a dark side, the thorn in his side that he writes about. I share about mine as much as I'm comfortable, which is actually quite a lot. Bubbles is very good at getting it out of me

What my husband was saying is that if I have to ask, "Am I disrespectful towards you?" it means that I obviously think that I am.

As it is, I DO think I can be very disrespectful.

What I was asking him was does HE feel that I'm disrespectful. What are HIS feelings?

I really don't blame him for not wanting to share his emotions with me. He is probably intimidated. Just like I am with him.

OK, it's late and I need to be in bed

You mean alanon? program? Its a great place but I would rather be a God person and not a religiuos one either. I have been to alanon because my wife was an alcoholic and the child of two of them. My wife wouldn't be caught dead in AA. She was to spirtual.

Let me clarify so ppl don't get me wrong. The people at alanon and AA are angels sent from God to so many of us. Without the support from others who have been there so much pain and destruction would reighn in many lives.

My wife just thought she could skip the work of discipline needed to stay sober and was to proud to admit she was an alcoholic. To her she was saved, Jesus and God forgave her, and she didn't have to think of herself as an alcoholic... so she denied she was...

But that is one of the reasons I was attracted to posting here to you. You are seeking help for yourself, you ARE truly humble enough that even go to Alanon. Even though I am not sure if you are a drinker. I got the impression that you felt your H was and thats why you are going. I went for my wife too when she would not go.

I loved to hear my wife talk about the scriptures and she knew them well but there were things she should have gotten help from from us simple human beings. Not me, I took my place as her husband not her God. She needed to be counselled for so much beyond what I knew. Questions and answers about how God fit into the hard life she had lived before her and I got together.

But there was a time when things were better tan ever and the doors were open for us to get the kind of counselling that is offered here. My wife rejected anyone but her Pastor and church. I loved that God was who we answered to but we missed out on being happy because we did not get the counselling we needed. I kept doing what I do best, sucking it up and trusting that someday...When God had everything right here if we just looked. It was both of our faults really. I could have insisted on getting help, I am here too seeking why I didn't.


I guess my concept of God was he didn't have time for me. What do ya know , here he is in MB giving us just what we were waiting for thru his people.

yeah me 2

No, I'm not a drinker. I drink occasionally, but not alcoholicly or to self-medicated. AA is for the drinkers, Alanon is for anyone who has been affected by someone's drinking. There are plenty of peopleIt is a spiritual path, not a religious one. However, there ARE people who find true sobriety without ever setting foot in an AA room. It's a spiritual disease that needs a spiritual solution, and some people find that spiritual solution through their religious faith.

And no, I don't think my husband is a problem drinker. I waver on that. He uses other things rather than alchohol. Mostly I went because of family of origin issues and the fact that both my husband and I come from families where drinking, drugging and sex are rampant. In his family it is out in the open. In my family, it is more of a secret thing.

As far as God goes, I believe he does everything in his power to bring us closer to him, as well as bring humanity as a whole closer to him. This, I believe, is the will of God. He lets us have our will, and the consequences of our will, even if that means other people get hurt. But he uses every mistake we make and every consequence we encounter as another opportunity to bring us closer, to help us become more aware.

If you didn't find MB back when you were married to your alcoholic wife, it's not because you failed or God failed. We don't always get to know "why". We just have to trust that today, I'm right where I'm supposed to be, and all the decisions, mistakes and loss of the past are part of the path that got me here today. And so I am grateful even for the mistakes, the losses, because they are part of who I am and I love who I am. Even when I don't.

I believe that also . If I were not set free to choose and be forgiven I would never be able to make good decisions. I would be so wrapped up in fear. This is how God works for me. I have to operate from a place of truth and accountability for my actions and I need to be forgiven for my mistakes. I am not keeping the world spinning. If somehow I got fooled into thinking I was, I was decieved. If I try to manipulate the surroundings to suit my own fears, I spin my wheels and only hurt myself and who is around me.

I thank God first and formost for his grace to allow a flawed person like myself see past the fears and guilt my mind had lived in as a child. I take no credit. I understand that I needed to draw close to him to be set free. I believe that all of us need that. Maybe not through religion but definatly thru something higher than ourselves.

So because my wife had a similar experiance I had a problem with why if she was set free by God, she was still chained to the alcohol. I also would not doubt or interfere with her relationship with God. That was hers. Bottom line after she had stopped her drinking there was something deeper in her that she needed to deal with. I was hoping she would realize that in her humanity she needed human help. Practical help. Stuff like AA offered. Help with triggers and introspection. She saw AA as a chain to her past. I saw it as a practical help to keep her away from drinking. I gaslighted myself and/or was gaslighted to belive God would change it/her. I should have seen the trutth. She had issues that she was not going to deal with and she did every dance to get around them.

My big question was. "If God has set you free then why are you not free?" The answer was she really didn't want to be free.

I cafound this site looking for answers to what had happened to me. Dr H said that until substance abuse was ended there was little hope of recovering the marriage. because they are in love with the drug.

I see that I did the marriage at any cost thing and a Plan A for years. ,(although I am sure I threw in LBs),Thats why I am empty now. I still know what love is but feelings are pretty much just screwwed.

Its all good I am doing well and its ALL a spiritual journey huh?

Im alright TTT, I really am gonna befine. This is just one of those times in life when we reflect and learn as we go. I am confidant I am in Gods hands

I�m not so sure I agree with this. I know that Dr. H has extensive experience in addiction as well as marriage. But his experience (unless I�m wrong) was in working with TREATMENT CENTERS, which have a notoriously low long-term success rate. Because they may stop the drinking itself. But do very little to deal with the problem that caused the drinking in the first place: the spiritual disease.

Because alcoholism is a spiritual disease. For some it manifests itself as addictive drinking. For others, it manifests itself in other behaviors which are socially acceptable and justifiable but are equally as addictive and damaging. And while behavioral modification is probably a very important part of recovery from the effects of alcoholism, whether you are a drinker or a non-drinker, I personally do not believe it is enough. We say in alanon (and I assume in AA as well) that it is not a self-help program. It is GOD who removes the shortcomings, in HIS time, if it makes us more useful in HIS plan, of which we have limited understanding. My job is to make myself willing through steps 1-7. That�s not to excuse me from working on my shortcomings in terms of becoming aware of them. That�s not to let me off the hook in terms of making a list of people I�ve harmed, and making amends. But no where in the steps does it say �Step 7a: God removes my shortcomings.� In fact, the only thing we get if we finally get to step 12 is a �spiritual awakening.�

Sometimes God removes the compulsion to drink from the alcoholic. And sometimes He doesn�t. It�s not ours to understand why or how. Same with my own addictive behaviors. I may be able to abstain from the addictive behavior, but God may never remove the compulsion. With regard to marriage, I may work MB perfectly but God may never give me the desire to want to be in love with my husband. But I will never know unless I work my programs. Because ultimately it�s not about saving my marriage, or wanting to save my marriage. It�s about connecting more fully with the God of my understanding. And I accept that my marriage, even if it�s a bad marriage or a mediocre marriage, or an OK marriage or a good marriage or an exceptional marriage, is a path to God and therefore happiness. Regardless of what I want, regardless of the outcome. I already know the final outcome is deeper connection with my Source of life.

Take the alcohol out of the alcoholic, and you are left with the �ic�.

It is the �ic� that causes problems in marriage. In many cases, the alcohol serves to mask the �ic.� So a spouse stopping their drinking is only one small part. They remove their primary coping mechanism, which is drinking. Without a spiritual solution, depending on God, they will continue to suffer from the �ic� that drove them to self-medicate in the first place. And they will likely find new ways to self-medicate, like working, gaming, sex, depression, compulsive behaviors, angry outbursts, etc. In fact, removing the alcohol VERY often makes the marriage situation feel worse than ever.

Removing alcohol alone does not make the spouse ready for MB, in my opinion. Others can disagree. However, I do think that many aspects of the MB can do for a couple the same thing that �anonymous� type programs do for individuals. Even if only one member improves, that improves the relationship 50%. Still, improvement may actually be dissolution of the marriage. (I�m not saying this as a justification for divorce, though).

Thats why in my opinion its really a social disease. Yes I agree that this "social" disease manifests itself though both the way ppl think and act even before they pick up alcohol and regaurdless of whether they are drinking or not. Its "Why" they choose to drink or act in the ways they do not that seems to be the real issue. Hence spiritual.
What DR H was saying was that someone activly drinking is currently in love with the alcohol. Here is the link.
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5048a_qa.html
The first step in getting cured from alcoholism or any blind path we find ourselves going down is laid out in the first step in Alanon, (or AA too ), "I have agreed that my life has become unmanagable" After that its a gutwrenching soul-searching process and ppl can go as far as they want in the s[/quote]earch. . Its allways been my opinion it takes a belief somewhere inside that gets imparted to people who suffer that they are worth the effort. That to me is the spiritual part. Its important that we/they know that its not people orbehavior that people want from you, but that yet something larger in life than us that loves you and wants to set you free.
I am having problems with the PC BBL to continue

Ok so we both agree that it all starts with our spirtuality. not religion itself but what is behind our behavior. If I may simplify this....
God does not want us to burn ourselves on a stove. When we are children we don't know any better. We have a group of adults that keep us away from the stove. Its our belief system to protect ourselves and our children. Its our religion about the stove. Thats just simple.

When it comes to human relationships God also does not want us to get burned. This is what we call emotional maturity. When we can recognize thoughts borne of fear, anger, frustration, or just plain indifferance and selfishness that are destructive to ourselves and/or others. The rules that God gives us, say, spiritual law. (ten commandments) are good but we struggle with keeping them. We are shown we cannot keep them based on our own strength. We must trust that the rules will protect us and we won't unless we get something out of it. Most of us want something more than to be alive and watch the beautiful world spin around. So we pick the ones that benifet us and complicate the reasons we break others.

Point is the behavior is a result of not feeling safe or important to anyone and the rules are there to protect us. People are conditional and give conditional Love. Gods Love is the only love we can trust. In the end all the dopamine and seratonin chemicals CAN be present in our lives if we trust Him but many people seek to get a glimpse of that prior to trust. Our imaginations are the gift we have that can be used in many ways. "Lean not unto your own understanding" is not a blanket statement saying all you know now is bunk. Some things we experiance we understand. Its those things we desire we can only imagine that bring hope for internal change of our current state, whether it be practical or emotional.

When I heard "Without a vision the people perish" quoted from scripture it rang so true to me. It spoke to the inner self and told me we must allways be living a life that seeks more. Its how we are, we allways want more. Without that spark of hope for more, or should I say better if we are talking about circumstances, we perish spiritually because we lose hope.

When I heard you state in the beginning of this thread you would never compromise your relationship with God I was happy to see it. I do my best to live the same way. To me what would be the point to ignore what he is teaching me? If I ignore the rules he has laid out for life and just say,"Ah im just human and so-in-so did that ..." sorta life I will be throwing away what I allready have been blessed with to begin with, an understanding of right and wrong in relationships.

Knowing I am loved by God causes me to respond to his rules. I don't allways feel loved but I know I am. If I don't allways follow his rules but its ussually because I don't "see" yet where the love is in them. But my trust is in those rules. The world won't change to my design and God loves me to much to do that anyway. Its I that need to change if anything and it starts with my thoughts. Moves onto decisions then actions. If my thoughts are not clear and my decsions are not settled and my actions are somewhat forced it makes it difficult to see the love behind them. Eventually though, like the Alcoholic who stops drinking but is struggling to regain themselves, it becomes more clear. Then those rules that felt like a cage become a hedge of protection.

I wanted to say that I respected my wifes relationship with God above any she could have gotten with AA. Its true that the most sensitive and intelligent ppl fal victem to substance abuse. Its not just the abstinance that they need, its thier own journey that I would say is thiers with God alone that is the real issue.

There were three periods of time where alcohol was involved in my life with wife.

1. 3 years drinking till I left
2. 2 years later got back together and we started attending church. she was sober for ten years with only a few problems.
3. the last ten years after she relapsed.

The only problem wife had is she wanted to shortcut the steps to sobriety. She would not get help in dealing with triggers and tried to ignore all the issues that had brought her to "think to drink" in her life. During those ten years I lived as though all the drinking was in her past and never brought it up. It was a past issue and God had forgiven her. The other deep rooted emotional scars were still there. I encouraged her to seek help because she had all the signs of PTSD. She responded with stubborness and because I believed in her, and I was one of the few ppl who was confidant enough in myself not to take it personnaly I watched her fall, picked her back up and dusted her off. heard her say how bad she felt about it and encouraged her again.

It wasn't untill her last ten years that she relapsed that the children saw she had problems with substance. For most of thier lives what they saw was a Mom and Dad that loved each other and them. We acted like we should have even though we didn't allways feel like we should have.

The emotional/spiritual issues eventually caught up to her but the denial that she needed help from us humans, (which God put here), was so strong she made the choice of bitterness and entitlement that comes when you think you are not loved enough and I and the children were expendable.

You can know that God loves you and stand on that truth but you can't deny that your human and falible. Somewhere inside my wife was convinced that she deserved special compensation because she suffered. This bloomed into bitterness when she continued to entertain it and then she would engage in selfish acts that hurt others. I knew that she loved me as much as she could and there were some amazing times when she was healthy. What she failed to see is that I was happiest when she loved herself and took good care of herself. Those were my good times and the best memorys of my children.

To add on to what you said, it is more than just following the rules because I trust that I am loved. Because that was not enough for the Hebrew people (according to my Christian faith). God had to send someone to SHOW us the way. Knowing the rules and following the letter of the law was actually keeping many of the scribes, pharasies and others from achieving alignment with the will of God because they had forgotten that God desires MERCY (read compassion) not SACRIFICE (read self-righteous acts).

So while the rules are a good starting point for guidance, they are not the end all be all. And the WORDS of Jesus are also a good starting point, as is the whole of scripture. But human beings can use the words of scripture to justify anything. The words of scripture are filled with contradicition. What I have found is that the ACTIONS of Jesus offer the best guidance. Jesus calls us to follow him, to "love one another as I have loved you." He himself calls us to action. To "caring love."

Ok next time I/we discuss about how MB and God can bring you and hubby closer together spiritually. Which is what I think is lacking in your intimacy. Do you think the same?

Yes and that has been my experiance too. Its Christ who is the saviour. "Because he first loved us" that inspires me to trust him

OH BTW I still don't see a "dark side" lol.

Can you splain? Your intellectual engagement with people or willingness to challange ideas or concepts is a enlightening thing, not a darkening one.

I can go back and read the whole thing if you wish its just so long.

Don't worry I wont be shocked