Navigating a Relationship After Sobriety: Addressing Betrayal and Change

Question
Hi,

I sure hope you can help me.  My husband and I have been married for 20 years, together for 25.  He has been an active alcoholic all of these years until recently he got in about a year of sobriety.  All of these years my family and me have supported him financially, emotionally, medically and other wise.

Now that he is sober I have found out he is not a very good man.  He tells me he loves me to my face then sabotages me behind my back.  He tells people behind my back that he does not want to be with me anymore and work things out he sayes he wants another woman.  He has not met another woman yet but he just sounds likes he hates me, I mean absolutely hates me.

I have loved him and have done so many good things for him.  He has no gratitude for me just hatred.

What should I do.  We have had a lousy marriage but it has been a long marriage and he has been good to me at times.  I thought things would be better when he got sober instead of worse.

Please help.  I would like to save my marriage.  I have loved him and taken care of him for so many years.  This whole thing is starting to make me very angry.

Thank you in advance for your response.

Answer
Julie,

Thank you for contacting allexperts.com.  I hope that I can assist you with your question.

Judging from what you have told me, you have had a very long, and extremely complicated marriage.  There has been a lot of bad behavior on both parts - him for drinking, but you as well for being an enabler for those many years.

Naturally, when you are both changing your lifestyle so dramatically after so long a time, there are going to be some serious problems.  Unfortunately, they are problems that are far too complicated for me to tackle here.

The best thing I can offer is to suggest that you both seek out professional counseling.  There is so much more at work here that you can even imagine.  It is like a very complicated dance that you have been performing for more than 20 years, and now someone wants to change the steps.  You both need extensive therapy to makje it through this transformation successfully.

Hopefully with therapy you can discover why your husband is so angry.  This is all very complicated and it could take a very long time to work it out.

Best of luck to you.

R. M. French