i totally agree with vicki595. Be happy and do what you have to to make EACHOTHER happy dont worry about what anyone else says. As long as you have eachother as support thats all you need no one will ever know what you have gone through to get were you are. My mother was an addict and still is till this day but the way i see it is i love her to death but me trying to change her when she doesnt want to change is only going to make her resent me i'd rather her live the time she has happy as she says she is and i know i tried to help her but i love her and i accept her for who and what she is even if i dont like it i accept it.
A MAJOR problem in marriage and relationships is FAMILY. Just in my opinion but I've seen it so many times... So,what I have to say is: screw 'em! If they don't trust you,"feel" like you two are destined to eternal addiction,and keep telling you that...then it's on them!
Keep on doing what you're doing! It sounds like it's working and it WILL work if you don't let the turkeys get you down! Live your own lives...things tend to work out given time and history.
Good luck to you both!
Thanks. We are trying to make it work. There is nothing wrong with our relationship. Family just feels like we will use together again. We are just going to have to prove to them that we are loving our new life and still love each other.
my wife and i have been together nearly 10 years. i have a barbiturate problem and a drinking problem...although i no longer drink, EVER...she has a drinking problem but will not accept it. sometimes she knows its there but she spends most of her time saying everyone else drinks more than her. not true, given her weight and frequency of drinking.
anyway, i don't push her because of my own flaws. she can point the finger right back at me. however, we never get wasted together. it's never our intent to spend time together wasted. i work evenings and she works days, so the time we usually DO spend together that we're sober. unfortunately, i'm aware that almost every night i'm not home, she drinks a lot...and when i'm on my own, i tend to have my own problems. right now i'm doing good....but i has nothing to do with her.
in essence, what i'm getting at is i think it depends on the relationship you have in the first place. when we came together in our teens, we partied all the time...and got wasted together all the time. then we grew up, got sober, and got jobs, then got married. eventually the pressures of the real world edged us back towards substance abuse, and here we are...but we do not party together. it is more of a very bad way to relieve our stress. i think our relationship will be strong totally independent of substance abuse or not. when she gets to a level of drinking that i think is really pushing it, i tell her and she cools off. same goes when she notices i'm popping too many pills. i'm working very hard on sobriety right now, and sometimes failing....but the success i see is independent of my wife. she supports me, but it doesn't have to do with that. its all about me wanting to be clean. she's in counseling and i support her 110%....i make her go when she thinks we don't have the money because i know how important it is for her to get to the root of why she drinks. so yes, i don't doubt our relationship could exist once totally free from substance abuse. we love each other very much despite our (mainly MY) many flaws.
if, however, your relationship began as one of mutual drug abuse, i think it would be very hard to continue on sober....especially if the level of abuse was very high. the only reason i think this is because you never really get to know the true person. drugs make us a shadow of what we were before them...and that would be what your relationship would be based on. it would be a challenge...but who knows, maybe it would only serve to tighten the relationship.
you should do counseling. you both need to go through the recovery process individually and make sure that it doesn't leak out into your relationship. addiction recovery is a very difficult process, especially when going through it together. sometimes, though, it can be the very reason you maintain success.
i like punkinheads response. it can work, but it takes effort.
work on your recoveries and show with facts that you can be trusted, this is the way so that your families will see the changes