Ok, so, in hindsight, clearly not the most righteous
stance I've ever taken. But I still don't think I did anything wrong. And I just can't help but bristle at the idea that my attempt to view an explicit media with
clear artistic merit has caused me to get lumped into the same group as the guy who spends his lunch hour spanking it in his office. And it really bothers me that, because of this, I now have to fear for my job. That just seems wrong to me, but I'll drop the subject now, I swear.
In other news, I think I'm going to go back to a SMART meeting tonight, if I can get home in time. (Yesterday's Inauguration has snarled traffic all through the surrounding area.) I haven't been to a SMART meeting in months. It got to the point where they became more of a hassle then they were worth. I never got very much out of the meetings, and I often felt worse afterwards, which struck me as rather counter-productive. And having to give up every Tuesday night (and Tuesday morning for that matter, as I had to get to work early to make sure I could leave early so that I could get to the meetings on time) became rather tiresome. I wanted to make sure I attended enough meetings on a regular basis to establish myself in the group, and to be sure to give them a fair chance (and not make any decisions based on first impressions), and get a sense of what I could expect from SMART in general, and from this group in particular. And I accomplished that. And if I'd felt as if I was having trouble maintaining my sobriety, or that attending these meetings would help me maintain my sobriety in any way, then I would've continued to attend. But, as neither of those were the case, I decided to take my Tuesday nights back, knowing that this group was always there, should I ever need help again.
And now, I think I do. I had always assumed that, in regards to my sobriety, the only person's reaction I needed to be concerned about, was my own. It never occurred to me that other people that I care about might have as difficult a time dealing with my sobriety as I did. I've known that my wife has been missing her "drinking buddy" since I sobered up; we established that early on, in just the first couple of months. But, honestly, I didn't really think much of it; it just didn't seem that important. She didn't seem all that upset about it, and my focus, frankly, especially in those early months, had to be on maintaining my sobriety, and not on whether or not She had someone to get drunk with on Friday nights. I don't think either of us realized just how important it really was to Her, or that it was actually about much more than just missing Her "drinking buddy" - it was about my entire personality changing, again, and for the first time, changing in respect to the ways that I treat Her. And as the months have dragged on and on, and the situation has remained unchanged, Her feelings about it have apparently grown worse and worse, until we are at the point now where it has become a painful and difficult problem in our marriage.
And I don't know what to do about it. I thought things had unarguably changed for the better. I'm much more even-keeled now than I ever have been before. Yes, I still have my ups and downs, but everyone does. But whereas before every emotion was turned up to eleven, now I never get much higher than a four or five. I used to be full volume every minute of every day. Every high was the highest high possible, and every low was the lowest I could get. And in terms of how I treated Her, that meant that when I was happy with Her, she was the Sun, Moon, and Stars to me, and I loved her more than Romeo ever loved Juliet; my entire world revolved around her. (Which sounds beautifully romantic at first, but try living up to such ridiculous and fantastical standards for ten years. It can't be done. And I did a lot of damage to our relationship trying to keep her up on that pedestal for so many years.) But it also means that when I wasn't happy with her, I
hated her, because she was completely ruining my entire fucking life.
Now, my feelings never get that ridiculously, over-the-top intense. I still love her, and I still sometimes get angry with her, but I don't treat her like the be-all-end-all of my existence, nor do I treat her like the worst thing that ever happened to me. All of my feelings for her, both good and bad, are much softer and quieter, much more reasonable and responsible, much more practical; and so completely fucking boring. Because while both of us are clearly glad that I no longer feel such intense anger at her every time she makes me feel anything bad, from her point of view, my
world used to
revolve around
Her. And now it doesn't. And that hurts her. It hurts in a way she has a very difficult time understanding, or articulating. And it's very confusing. Because while she's certainly glad that I don't yell at her anymore, and while she is definitely very proud of me for all that I've accomplished these past eight months, she's also really hurt and upset; she feels rejected, because, from her point of view, I don't seem to love her as much as I used to. Which isn't true at all; I still love her just as much as I used to, I just don't express it as intensely. But how can she be expected to know what I'm really feeling, if I've completely changed the way that I express those feelings?
And then, on top of all of the hurt and rejection she's already feeling, she ends up feeling very guilty, too. She feels guilty because she understands that my sobriety is clearly a good thing for me, and she wants to be able to support me in that and feel proud of me. And by feeling hurt and upset in response to my sobriety, regardless of how else she feels about it, she feels like she is doing something wrong, and hurting me, and undermining my sobriety. Which, unfortunately, I have to agree with, in a sense. It definitely hurts me to know that I'm hurting her. And it definitely makes me want to drink, because I feel like that would make her happy (and I'm kind of hard-wired to want to make her happy). But I don't think she's doing anything wrong; on that point we disagree. I can't blame her for how she feels, at all. I would almost certainly feel the same thing in her place. And I think it can be said that, almost certainly, she has been the one the most hurt, she has been the one who has lost the most, she has been the one who has sacrificed the most, for my sobriety. And I could never expect her to just be a hundred percent happy about that. I feel horribly naive for not anticipating it ahead of time.
But now, what do I do? How am I supposed to respond to this? How should we deal with it? What can we do about it? In the addiction/recovery cycle, most people end up feeling like they lost their loved ones to the addiction side of things, when the addict reaches the point where the only thing they are capable of caring about anymore is using. We're really fortunate that we've never had to face that problem. But I've never heard of anyone feeling like they lost their loved one to
sobriety. In all of my experience with addiction and recovery, I've never heard anyone say, "Now that you're sober, you don't love me the way that you used to." And now that we're unfortunate enough to be faced with
that problem, I have no idea how to deal with it. I have no experience to draw on.
And, so, back to SMART. I'm hoping someone there has some experience with this, or has at least heard of it before. At the very least, I'm hoping to come away with some perspective.
Will me luck.
