The Love You Need to Finally Quit

I don’t know for absolute certain that it’s universal, but I have a feeling it is.  I think every single spouse of an addict, if they love that addict, has uttered the question, “Why don’t you love me enough to quit?”

“Well first of all,” idiot addict says, “I don’t have a problem, so I don’t need to quit.  And secondly,” stupid addict says, “drinking/dipping/drugs is something I simply ENJOY doing.  I LOVE you.”

Blah blah blah.  It’s all lies we tell ourselves.  And we tell them for a LONG time before the lies and the truth and the depression and the anxiety and the apathy and the suicidal thoughts and the irresponsibility and the hypocrisy all just gets scooped up and shoved into the blender that our brains have become and nobody knows what the hell is coming out next.  Even the addict has no idea.

My wife heard it all.  She heard the lies.  Heard the promises that I never intended to keep.  She searched for – and found – all the MANY hiding places I kept beer and dip throughout the years.  She confronted me, and most of the time I would come clean, though often it was after a huge fight. I was always in the wrong.  I’m an addict.  I was protecting myself so I could live to drink and dip another day.

But she got tired.  It took awhile, but she got VERY tired of it.  She NEVER stopped loving me, but she didn’t like me very much for increasingly long periods of time.  But she never stopped loving me.  She even loved me enough to leave me.

We’d been married about a year when she adopted my daughter.   It had been just me and that cool little girl for over six years when I met my wife, and after we got married, that kid deserved a mama.  She got a damn good one.

Through all of that – the dating, the engagement, the marriage, the adoption – I cannot even guess how many beers and cans of dip I hid around the house or in my truck, just hanging on to this first love of mine for as long as I possibly could.  I knew it had to end soon, but it damn sure wasn’t happening TODAY!!  And I said that every day, so you can see how it was on a collision course for an ugly demise.

Little man was born in August of 2016.  Our marriage was just shy of two years old.  I was still a drunk.  It had probably been a good 15 years since I first realized I had a problem with alcohol.  It had been closer to 20 with tobacco.  I don’t recall it specifically after he was born, but I’m almost certain my wife asked the question, “Do you love HIM enough to quit?”

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the wrong question.  It had always been the wrong question.  There is only one correct way to ask it.  And she never discovered it.  She went to one or two Al-Anon meetings, but she didn’t stay long enough to learn the correct way to ask it or what to do when you can’t or won’t get an answer.  She couldn’t stand Al-Anon, though.  She felt embarrassed and out of place.  I can’t blame her.  Who the hell wants to go around saying, “Hey girls, guess what!?!? My husband’s an alkie!!”  Even to complete strangers, that’s GOT to be embarrassing as hell.

But it was the wrong question.  The correct question is, “Do you love YOURSELF enough to quit yet?”  Therein lies the problem with addiction, however.  It is most definitely the correct question, but addicts closing in on rock bottom most certainly do NOT love themselves even a little bit, much less enough to quit.  They do not, as a wise old man at AA once said, “Go sailing into AA on the wings of victory.”  Likewise, spouses aren’t showing up at Al-Anon with kazoos and silly string.  It’s an impossibly difficult time, an impossibly difficult question to answer (whether it’s asked correctly or not,) but it’s also absolutely impossible to ignore.  

But I’ll be damned if that woman hasn’t been my rock.  I don’t have to tell everything, but drunks can do some embarrassing or just plain stupid shit.  She still loved me through that.  She heard the lies, knew they were lies, confronted me before I could tell lies, hell, she probably even told her own lies just to catch me in MY lies.  Because of that, she fought nasty but fair because she knew she was right.  You can fight as nasty as you want when the other party is blatantly wrong and being an irrefutable asshole.  That asshole isn’t fighting the other person either, so it’s very impersonal.  They’re not fighting this person they love.  They’re fighting to save the addiction.

So did I love her enough to quit?  I do now.  I would never do that to any member of my family again.  The thought of becoming that man again nearly sickens me.  I want nothing more than to be a man she is proud to call her husband because she damn sure deserves to feel that pride in her husband.  But I still don’t know how addicts can answer that question truthfully.  I was in love with being an addict, sure, but it is much deeper and confusing than that. 

It’s not that we don’t love our spouses enough, it’s that we’re deathly scared of life without addiction.  How in the hell is there life out there without these two best friends, Bud Light and Kodiak, that are killing me but sustaining my life and giving me something to live for all at the same twisted time?  It’s absolutely terrifying for an addict.  It’s not even a fair question to ask an addict.  That brain is effed up!!!!

She left me for a few weeks one time.  We had a couple of fights that turned physical.  Nothing major, but it was enough to call them physical.  Addiction is nasty.  It’s ugly.  It can absolutely be deadly.  Luckily, one of us was smart enough to run away when the anger turned ugly.  But I can’t say for certain that she was ever really angry at ME.  She was angry as hell at the addict inside me.  She knew I was a damn good man beneath the addict.  I think the part she was most mad at me about was the fact that I’d so successfully hidden who I was throughout our dating and engagement.  She even said one time, “I wish I had known about all of this before I married you because I never would have.”

Ouch.  Talk about sobering.  But she was right.

For the past 15 months, we have had one fight that I can recall.  I didn’t exceed last year’s Mother’s Day gift, and she was on an emotional roller coaster because she had just miscarried, and it became a screaming match.  She stormed out.  That afternoon, I hoped she wouldn’t come back so I could drink and dip.  But she came back because home is wherever her family is.  God, I hate the addict in me.  He wants me to fail.  And he’ll always be there.

But so will she.  I have no doubt in my mind that we’re one of those forever couples.  She’s responsible with bills and paperwork and resourceful with money where I’m irresponsible and wasteful.  She can bake, but only I can really cook.  My idea of cleaning is just putting crap where it belongs, but she can actually clean.  I love working from sunup to sundown these days – I love keeping the yard and garage spotless – but she has to have her snuggle time with little man.  

She can relax for hours.  I’m jittery in ten minutes if there is ANYTHING that needs doing.  She wants her feet rubbed because that miscarriage turned into a rainbow baby that’s coming in January, and I owe her a million foot rubs.  She not only knows my love language, but she speaks it every single day.  I think I know hers, but I’m still stubborn as hell, so I still think cooking and yard work and just generally working my ass off should be enough.  I know it’s not.  I’ll get there.

A lot of people say that their spouse is “better than them in every imaginable way.”  I call horse shit.  If that is true, your spouse is an idiot for marrying a worthless slob like you.  I do a few things better than her.  I cook better than her.  She couldn’t work the magic I work in our yard.  I’m a better teacher than she could ever be.  There’s no debate that I’m funnier.  I’m more rational when I’m not a drunk.

But she beats all of that because the sum of her parts beat the sum of mine.  She’s just a better person.  And most of her superlatives – the little ones that go unnoticed and the big ones I’d almost kill to save – can all fall under the umbrella of “She’s better at loving me.”  She knows the needs, wants, hurts, desires, even that damn love language.  God sent me this woman because she knew how to love and support an addict before she even knew she owned that skill, and she knew exactly how to transition that love and support to a man who finally loved himself enough to quit.

And now he loves her enough to stay that way.