Expert: Clyde - 8/23/2009

Question
My partner and I have been together for 6 years and both of us have struggled with alcoholism all 6 years.  He recently left me and has now admitted himself into treatment out of state.  Is it true that couples can't get sober together?  If so, why?  I feel completely cut out of his life and feel like he will never come back.

Answer
Sharon,
    Thank you for your question.  You do not say, but I assume that you may still be drinking as you mention only his rehab attempt but not your own.
   
    I do not believe that it is necessarily true that a couple can not get sober together.  I know many couples who have survived active alcoholism only to move into sobriety together as a happily married couple.  What probably is true is that each partner of a couple can not get the other partner sober.  It must be done by each partner separately and for themselves.

    Your partner has left and entered treatment.  I wish him well. Is it perhaps that you were not willing to work as hard on yourself to get sober for you that caused him to leave?  This is not intended as an indictment of you but only to help you look at his sobriety from a different vantage point.  If he is serious about sobriety he will do whatever it takes to make that a success.  The best way for you to have this relationship back in the future (God willing) is for you to embrace sobriety very seriously as well.

    I say 'God willing' because the relationship may never be a healthy one for either one of you.  You must keep in mind that as he sobers up he will be discovering more and more about himself and perhaps he will learn that he does not like you or, as happened in my own story, my wife decided she did not like me as a sober man!  We eventually divorced when I was two years sober because I would not go back to the old Clyde I was in my drinking days.

     One last thing, couples can stay happily sober but they must be respectful of each other's own recovery program. Much truth and honesty is brought out into the open in a good program of 12-step work but that honesty and openness may not be for the spouse to hear.  You see, spouses in the program succeed because he allow the other autonomy in recovery.

     I hope this may have helped and wrote again if I may answer any other questions or clarify what I have said.

Grace and Peace,
Clyde