QuestionDear Bill,
We will celebrate 10 years of marriage next month. Celebrate is not excatly the correct term. My husband just recently attended his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. He has been clean for 60 days this week.
There have been a series of drunken nights, huge yelling matches, him leaving for the evening and "not remembering" where he went and steady constant fighting over his lack of interest in sex with me, not wanting to talk to me, do anything with me, basically not wanting anything from me except to keep the house clean and do the household bills.
Both of us have struggled with alcohol abuse and come from backgrounds where there has been much pain and inabiliby to keep and maintain any kind of meaningful relationships.
Neither of us drink anymore, at all. It's a prescription to disaster as we both can't seem to stop and usually the evening escalates to something very ugly. That's the good thing about our lives right now.
However, the issues of our serious lack of sexual itimacy, and his not wanting to have any kind of emotional life with me keeps rising it's head as we are both sober and I am very much aware of it and not able to hide behind alcohol anymore to avoid dealing with it.
He comes home every night and I'm so proud of him as he is serious and determined to remain clean and sober, as I am too.
We have sex maybe 1 time every two weeks and that's after I practically insist. He prefers to play poker on line to spending the time he does have at home with me and rarely has "wanted" me to go anywhere with him or do anything with him.
Yet, he saids he loves me. This is such an empty marriage. I've struggled all of my life with relattionships and now that I'm sober and he is too I really don't know what to do. Another divorce and ended relationship of 10 years scares me beyond belief.
He will not go to counseling and really thinks our marriage is "ok", not good, just "ok."
PLease help me.
AnswerWell you both been through some tough times and damages naturally occur, quite frankly quitting will be the easiest, having a good marriage is going to be starting over all over again and working at it. You have a good point, using substances to mask reality has it's consequences when it's gone. Your husband has his point, for some people their marriage is "good enough." So what to do, both make a list of pluses and minuses in the marriage and each other and work through them and come to a consensus. Do the easy ones first so you can have some successes, then the hard ones. Try to have some sex once a week, and then get it going more if possible. If there is enough love left you should be able to do it, if not I guess think of moving on.
Bill
