[Nicole jones]

Hi, I’ve just found this site and need help  I’ve been with my husband for 30 years (childhood sweethearts) we have 3 children together and my husband had been in a cocaine and alcohol addiction for nearly 20 years but the whole time I’ve stood by him and supported him, he went to rehab in 2021 and came home last August his addiction had a massive impact on our family as me and my children seen things that were awful and he pit us all through hell but still I supported him. He’s been home now for almost a year and he’s still clean but has recently just admitted to having an affair five years ago and now has a five year old son! The shock and hurt is overwhelming, I just don’t know what to do! I’m so angry after everything I’ve supported him through and in addiction he accused me of having an affair which he now says he thought I’d found out about his and I was getting him back! But how he treated me was unfair and awful, I love my husband and always have but how do I get past this especially with the child being a constant reminder of what he’s done.

[thistim3]

Sorry you are going through this Hell.  I have a similar story and have known for 5 years now.  Last night I woke up sobbing about it.  I recommend that that you change your user ID to something anonymous.  I’m in a better place emotionally then I was when I found out, but it still hurts and probably always will.  Allow yourself to be upset, but also take steps to help yourself accept and find your way through it.  Take care of yourself and try to make choices for yourself that you won’t regret later.  I started therapy sessions recently and wish that I would have when I first knew about it.  We are still together, but I don’t feel like I am past it yet.  I wonder if that is even possible.  This is trauma.

[Nicole jones]

Thank you for your reply, also this isn’t my real name. Did his affair result in a child? And dose he still see the child? I try to talk to my husband but he shuts me down, it’s like he’s told me now so just get on with it, he’s never been one for deep conversation but I still have questions, he’s always going on that he has to do the right thing but so far it just seems to be by this child and not his wife and three children he put through hell during his addiction, when he first told me a few weeks ago he expected me to end the marriage but I have fought so hard through the addiction to keep us together as a family and I’m scared of him giving someone else the best of him, the one I knew all those years ago before addiction, this is what I have fought for all this time and now this. Did you get referral for therapy sessions through your doctor? And is this just for you or as a couple?

Thank you

[paw_x]

I can really relate to what you say Nicole. The not wanting to give up as you’re scared he’ll actually sort himself out and another woman will reap the rewards. I know you’ve said he did rehab, but has he engaged with CA in the process? I’m asking as while my partner did rehab and got clean 5 years ago, he did it without CA. He then relapsed last year and now that he is fully engaged with CA, working the steps and has a sponsor etc, he tells me that he might have gotten physically clean before, but without properly addressing his addiction in CA, making those bonds with other addicts and doing the steps, he hadn’t actually did what he needed for lifelong recovery. Though honestly I’m not even sure if that’s possible at this point.

He should be making time for you and the kids and making sure you know you’re just as important, but it’s completely up to you as to whether this something you can accept after all you’ve been through. Wishing you all the best x

[Nicole jones]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Hi, thank you for your reply, yes he goes to meetings at least 3 times a week and he did have a sponsor but unfortunately he couldn’t commit so he’s currently looking for another one, in rehab he got to step 5 but will need to start again with a new sponsor, he’s got daily books he reads religiously, although he’s has changed now he’s not how I thought he’d be, he tells me it’s a selfish programme but thinks he takes this to another level, he’s been In addiction for so long I just feel our whole marriage is based on a lie especially with the cheating and a child, I’m really struggling to understand as he tells me there was no feelings towards this woman and there never will be it’s just the child but it’s like he’s told me now and just expects me to get on with it and if i try to talk to him about my feelings he gets snappy which then ends up in a row, it’s so hard and I’m sorry your also going through this xx</p>

[paw_x]

I don’t know how you’ve dealt with this for all this time. You must be the strongest woman in the world by now!

It’s so hard and sometimes I don’t think they realise the damage they have done. Sometimes mines acts like I should just snap out of it and go back to how we were before, but it’s impossible. Everything in me is screaming to run and protect myself while he thinks he’s doing better and we can just move on from this and get back to how we were. I have no clue if that’s possible now.

I would keep talking it out as you need to make this right in your head. He’s hurt you and he should understand that, you didn’t do anything wrong here. You might benefit from having a bit of space away from him to process everything? That’s what I had to do as it just wasn’t working with him in the house and I think he’s getting antsy at not getting back in yet but we have a long way to go before I’ll even consider that.

Its just a living nightmare isn’t it x

[Nicole jones]

Yes it’s definitely a living nightmare! and everyone says I’m strong but I feel weak putting up with it and not being able to walk away ???? I’ve been to the doctors today finally but there us a 12 month waiting list for counselling and my hubby has agreed to marriage counselling but again waiting list is so long unless you go private, I think I’m just going to take a big step back and try do deal with my own emotions, he’s in recovery which is also important so we just need to find a balance, he’s at a convention this weekend so that’s sending me under a little as the trust has gone but he’s reassured me that’s what he’s doing so I can’t only try and trust he’s telling me the truth, this is just awful I just want it to all go away, i think it’s good that your having your space away from each other it might make him realise what he’s actually got, but must be really hard for you, I truly Hope all works out for you. Take care xx

[paw_x]

It’s so hard. Especially when they’re doing well but the hurt you’ve been through is so much you can’t picture it ever getting back to how it was. I split up with him for a full year when he ruined things five years ago (it wasn’t just the addiction but I also found out while we were together he had given a lift to his ex one night, and I found messages he’d sent to her that night clearly coked up asking her to let him come in for a bit – she refused, so there was a cheating element), I was in bits and had a bit of a party year then put myself back together again. And when we started speaking again it took me a long time to even see him like that, I had to fight that barrier. And we’re back to him having lied for a year, we bought a house that I can’t afford alone, and I’m back to being that paranoid wreck. When is enough enough? I just don’t know anymore.

I hope your partner realises that while he’s doing what he should, getting himself better etc, that it takes more than that to heal the trauma you’ve been through and to earn that trust again. It takes a long time and it’s so difficult.

Thanks for listening to me overshare! It does help to vent x

[Nicole jones]

You can vent anytime, it’s nice to know your not alone.

They say time is a healer but when your constantly getting let down time and time again I think that’s when you have to make that horrible choice to walk away, we’re only human and can only take so much, we also deserve happiness, we’re going to struggle either way if we stay or go but by going you can only get better.

I’m like you, I really don’t want it to come to that but the pain I’m living now, I don’t want to ever feel again, going through the addiction with him and his paranoia and psychosis was horrendous but this now with the affair 5 years ago is on another level of pain, I keep thinking it can’t get any worse but scared to say that incase there is something else, I just want to fast forward a bit.

Keep in touch as it’s definitely helping me to vent

Xxx

[paw_x]

I have that same feeling of “what’s next?!”. I think it’s because you have all this hope it’ll be okay and then you suffer downfall after downfall so you end up with this impending sense of doom!! Even though he’s doing well now, it can turn just like that and it just feels like the ground is waiting to open up again.

Go easy on yourself and don’t be giving yourself a hard time for struggling – this is hard!! I really hope time is a healer, for both of us, with or without them x

[m]

Oh Nicole, I really feel for you, I cannot imagine how you are feeling. Can I ask you about what his behaviour is like with the paranoia and psychosis?

Was any of it aimed at you?

Xx

[Nicole jones]

hi thanks for your reply, yes the paranoia and psychosis was aimed all at me, that’s when enough was enough! He picked holes out of my walls in the house thinking I had cameras on him, he woke me up in thd middle of the night looking at his phone and showing me this random woman on the phone he’d found on you tube saying it was me! He would bang machetes at the side of me to scare me at that point we all had to get out! He’d ring me up calling me a slag saying I’d cheated on him with his cousin and I’m going to get what’s coming to me to which now was his own guilty conscience as I’ve recently found out, I’d get phone calls from neighbours when I was in work to say he was lay in the road and was telling them his has lazors on him it was honestly horrendous, I could go on and on xx

[thistim3]

Remember who you are and what you WANT. Instead of – What he did/does and how that mak s me feel.

This is what I tell myself when I feel overwhelmed.  Do I WANT to be a mess all day – everyday (right now) because of this?  No. I don’t WANT that.

(Your questions can be answered in my earlier posts – click on my user name).  In all the years that I have been in love with my husband (almost 50 now), during the 5 years that he was actively using coke – he was a different person. A person that I did not know, a person that he didn’t know.  He hasn’t been that – since he quit using coke.  Read up on coke, how it is made and how it affects the body.

[m]

Thank you both for your replies.

Oh my god Nicole he really did have full blown psychosis, I don’t know how you got through that.

mine is really paranoid about me cheating and it’s doing my head in, I feel so isolated and I’m not putting up with it anymore, he has massive abandonment issues from childhood too. Honestly he would probably even accuse me of sleeping with a lamp post.
I got a barrage of messages and calls calling me a slag a few days ago after i went out for an hour to a prom for children leaving school and he was convinced I was with a teacher there and I hatched a big plan.

hrs been on it pretty much non stop for a month, he’s a mess. I know he’s been smoking crack too but he probably won’t admit

I’m done with the circus.

he wants to meet and go for food on the weekend and have a talk about repairing things. He will promise meetings this and that. probably go to a few then mess up. Who knows.

This cycle is just crap.

How long has he been clean?

Has any of his empathy come back at all?

xxx

[Nicole jones]

Yes I got called a slag a few times lol couldn’t be one if I tryed lol it was definitely not him as in all the 30 years of being together he never called me anything like that. Definitely the drugs and the paranoia.

He’s been clean for 18 months now and when he first came home it was very strange as the last time he was home it was so bad. He looked guilty all the time and kept saying to me I’ve put you through so much  he was really distant though and kept saying I deserve better, but after a while things were starting to return to normal  doing all the things we did before his addiction, there was no intimacy as he’d lost all his confidence and he still struggles with this but unfortunately my happy ending got destroyed with his big secret he was holding back, his affair 5 years ago while in addiction and the result of a five year old child! The struggle is 100% back for me now as this is another level of pain! He sees this child once a week which kills me coz he obviously has to see the mother, he’s reassured me there’s nothing there with the mother but my trust has gone! He said this is why he accused me of cheating coz he thought I’d found out and I was getting him back totally childish but that’s what was going on in his head at the time.

I really don’t know what the future holds for us as its all just too much, he’s trying to stay clean every day aswell as keeping me and his 3 children happy and then this other child plus work and doing meetings, it just all seems too much and I am concerned about relapse.

I just wish I’d run a million miles away years ago and I wouldn’t be where I am today but that’s life!

How long have you been with your partner for?

Xxx

[paw_x]

You ladies are making me feel like I’m not too bad with these stories, what you’ve been through is horrendous.

I hope you both manage to keep your heads up high and you’re staying as strong as you can through this x

[thistim3]

He quit using the coke about 35 years ago.  Knowing what I know now, I should have run for my life.  It seems like he was having a mental breakdown on that stuff.  He slowly came back to me after he quit using.  Back to the person that I knew, the person that I love.  Sometimes all of it really upsets me.  Still.  I need to move past it – for myself.  Recently I have started a list of all the things that I am mad about.  I haven’t shared it with anyone. Not sure that I will.  This list is helping me.  Helping me/us move on.

[Nicole jones]

Wow 35 years, my hubby’s only on 18 months so very early days but yes I still feel I should run for the hills with all this affair and child, it’s a different kind of pain and hell, in addition I knew it wasn’t him and because he wanted the help I stuck with him and pushed for help, it was hell for all them years but we got there, but now I just don’t know how I feel and what to do. I just expected to get himbin recovery and work towards being us again but that’s never going to happen as this child has been thrown in the mix, our own children are 19, 16, and 10, my two older girls won’t talk to him and my 10 year old lad gets very jealous when he knows he’s going to see him it’s just awful, we’ve all been through his addiction and seen things no child should see and now they feel this 5 year old has got the best of him.

We do try and talk to him but he just says he can’t change his past, which we know but how do you explain that to children especially my youngest.

I’m now living a whole new nightmare, would you walk away as enough is enough? I’m sobbing all the time and I can’t function it’s just awful

????????????????

[thistim3]

Try not to constantly think about all of it. I know it is hard, but you don’t know what to do about it.  Trust yourself.  Answers will come to you, and then you will know what to do.  And, you will make these decisions everyday that will help you get through it. I have many happy memories that include my children during the years that he was using.  Get back to focusing on your children and yourself, One day at a time.  One moment at a time. You will never regret it.  My kids are the best that have ever happened to me.

[Nicole jones]

Thank you thistim3 its sooo hard but definitely need to focus on me and my children more, I need a distraction apart from work lol I wish we didn’t have feelings then it would be so much easier ???? I really hope you find your happy ever after as I think after everything it’s the least we all deserve ????

[thistim3]

Hi Nicole.  Thinking of you and all of us today, when I was watching the telly today. And one of the actors in the drama said . . .

‘Nothing good comes from standing there studying the broken pieces. You’re better off picking up the pieces you want and putting them back together the way you want them. They may not fit the way they used to, but you can be proud of the new shape they take. It’s ok if you don’t have that answer yet, but you still need a plan. Start by deciding what you don’t want. A NO pile and a MAYBE pile.’

Yesterday I went with my husband for his visit with his therapist.  This felt like a step in the right direction.  I listened for the most part.  He still is struggling with his behavior from years ago, and he still is struggling with accepting what happened.  I feel this because of the things he says.  It happened. He knows it.  It is scary to realize it all happened.  It feels so weird knowing more about it now and trying to accept it myself.  So when he talks about – I listen. During the therapy session I said that I am in love with him. It is true.  His therapist said that she could see this.  He has mentioned my comment several times since the therapy session.  I think it helps to look at it (the coke years), talk about, and then put it away for awhile until it feels right to look at it again.  Maybe one day, hopefully, we won’t feel the need to look at this thing that happened to us – anymore. It will all still be there, but, we’re over here now.  And, we’re ok – over here.

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