i miss her…

something tells me i shouldn’t be viewing it as two separate things, or rather i feel like i shouldn’t separate the two, but the circumstances about my current situation with my wife have me missing her…in a certain way. it’s no secret that i’ve had trouble with addiction in my past and very heavily recently. it’s also no secret that my addiction has taken its toll on my marriage. what i haven’t divulged on here is what exactly the 2 by 4 i took to the face was that stopped me in my tracks and gave me the moment of clarity i sorely needed. i came to realize 1) what i was doing, the damage it has caused over the years, and the damage it will continue to do should i continue on that path; and 2) i desperately needed professional help not to just get sober but to sort through a lot of emotional and mental baggage that i never realized i hadn’t dealt with before, much less that i was continuing to let it weigh me down.

my wife came to me and told me the romantic part of our relationship was over. i can’t exactly remember the specifics of what all was said, or screamed out in anger, but i know divorce was very strongly an option at that point. now, for whatever reason, my wife had a small change of heart and decided to give marriage counseling a go, approach it with an open mind, and see if we could rekindle some sparks. but from that point forward, all romance has completely ceased. now, i may be an idiot, but i wasn’t born yesterday. i know it’s a really good idea to not muddy the waters and complicate already terrible communication conditions. so i am in complete agreement that putting a pause on that side of things is a good idea while we navigate through this storm, so nobody gets the wrong idea. only, the situation has left me feeling terribly lonely and like my wife hasn’t really rallied around me while i’m course correcting and trying to re-center my life around living sober. (am i being selfish here?) we’ve been to one counseling session, and that was the free consultation. the therapist suggested that i do the things i’m already doing to course correct and said it was a good thing that i took responsibility and ownership of my actions and that i was course correcting the identified issues. beyond that, she kind of took a hard focus on me and completely left out my wife. from that point, it was about getting me evaluated for some neurodivergency or something (the assessment revealed i’m heavily leaning toward ADHD) and so i took those assessments and we paid for it. then, without even checking in with my wife to see where she was with things, and after a second one-on-one 2 hour session with me alone, this therapist just decided to go ahead and give us her opinion that we both seemed like we’re going to be able to salvage this thing if we both do some work. the sticker shock of the price tag hit us both in the gut pretty hard. over $4K for only 4 weeks? you gotta be shitting me bricks. it makes me wonder if she was just blowing smoke up our asses to get that money. i mean, after going through what she suggested – and let’s be honest here, a lot of it was centered around me – it became really sales-pitchy real quick after i took those assessments and it looked like we wanted to continue. so we backed away slowly from that and ever since we’ve just been sitting on it.

we’ve been living in this LIMBO state. we’re definitely still friends, and we both want what’s best for our two girls. but i’ve just gotten the feeling over the past month and a half that my wife is dragging her feet on this. couple that with the recent incident that further worked against my trust and i just don’t know what to think. we’ve all but researched and considered one other counseling option since that horrible experience and i just don’t think she understands what this is doing to me. i miss her. i miss smelling her hair. i miss feeling her next to me in bed. i miss HUGS. i miss random moments of grabbing and holding hands in the car whenever we’re just going to the store or running some random errand. i just plain miss…her. our relationship is hemorrhaging and bleeding out, and it looks like she’s just letting it. we’re obviously sleeping in separate rooms. that’s weird as fuck. it gets incredibly lonely when the kids go to bed, my wife goes to her room, and i don’t have to go into work. (i work overnight shifts) there’s a part of me that’s starting to wonder if it actually might be a good idea for us to part ways. i miss her like hell. i’ll be brutally honest here. i miss the sex. but none of that really matters to me if i’m not seeing her do any work on the things she knows she’s done to drive me to addiction in the first place. (i know a lot of the blame rests at my feet but we didn’t arrive here in this place by just me doing what i did)

so am i being selfish here? is this me being stupid?  i’m not just moving into a new season of my life, or turning over a new leaf, or closing one chapter and starting a new one here. i’ve closed the book i was in and i’m writing a completely new one. and i haven’t been able to decipher what’s going on with my wife. we’ve been able to hang out and do things as a family, but as far us getting alone time to work on us, it’s just left as an unmet desire from me. i just plain miss us.

48 days sober today. i’ll take another 24 hours!

-michael