Trust

When I first discovered my husband's secret life of addiction earlier this year, I grieved the loss of our relationship as I knew it. Everything I thought I knew turned out to be untrue. Our lives had been built on lies.

Then, I thought: This marriage is over. It was too devastating to think about. Now, I can look back and think with relief: That marriage is over!

All the things that I suspected weren't quite right, I knew now were in fact not right. The times I thought I had been lied to, I discovered I really had been lied to. All the redirection and distraction techniques my husband had used as an addict to protect his addiction, which made me feel crazy and made me doubt my own powers of observation and my instincts...I learned that I wasn't crazy, that something else was going on. All that time I spent alone, miles from my partner, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, when I was going to find out that something terrible was happening...the shoe had dropped. It was a relief in many ways.

The fear and the grief were awful, but at last I felt that I could live my life in an honest way. And for the first time ever, I had been brought so low that I no longer had the energy to pretend to others that everything was just fine. I could finally be real about what was happening in my life with at least a few friends.

I made a decision early on after discovery to stay with my husband. At first it was "just for today," that was about all I could do. And after 10 months, we still can't say what will happen tomorrow, but at least now we know that, thanks to recovery. The illusion of control has been lifted. I have learned something simple but profound: there is no shame in being loved by an addict, and there is no shame in loving an addict. We are all broken in our own ways. I have a partner who is facing his problems directly and is doing some extremely difficult personal work, through working the 12 steps and through very intense therapy. We are both more committed to our own health and sanity, and to our marriage, than ever before.

I am proud to say we are finally living a marriage that is open and honest. I hear newer members of our S-Anon group ask, "How can you trust your husband again?" The answer I usually give is, you can't, not the way you used to think of trust, which was blind and unquestioning. The best you can do is compare his behavior to his words. Some people make agreements with each other for the addict's partner to periodically check the addict's documentation--emails, web history, cell phone records, etc. We did that at first, but for me the process was very triggering, as it was the kind of "crazy" that I went through when I first found out about the addiction. And my husband is savvy enough that we both knew if he didn't want me to find out, I wouldn't find out through any of those sources (and I'm pretty savvy too). Some people have the addict take a polygraph test, but I personally didn't see much value in that for us. The only thing I could really trust was comparing his behavior to his words, and being more observant myself, and asking more questions.

The truth is, how can you trust anyone? That is something that I have to learn as part of my recovery about all people, not just my husband. There is a fine line between trust and willful naivete and denial, and I have to be more cautious and practical about that.

To trust others, I think you must first be able to trust yourself.