Take on whatever you can that you can control.
You can never control another person.
Work, garden, clean, take time for real friends. These are the things you can effect. Your husband’s problems are his and God can help him, but, in my experience, no one else can.
My own familial problems are different from yours, but, like yours, they are not in my control. I am learning to hand over those things to God and to pray for the other person. It does become easier, once the shock, anger and exhaustion pass, but it doesn’t disappear. All the things you held in common and your family and children are going to not only stay in your life, they will manifest in ways you cannot even foresee, now. The weaknesses of those we love/loved echo throughout our lives.
The worst, for me, is that when someone you loved is exposed as a liar, you begin to question all of the past and to become almost disoriented over what was real and what was part of the betrayal. I haven’t found the answer to dealing with that, yet. It will take decades, I fear, to sort it all out.
One step at a time. You aren’t alone. So many are dealing with the weaknesses of family members that my own answer is that we are as caught in the culture as they are and we simply need to find those things that we can accomplish, no matter how trivial they might seem, and get them done.
If he chose his addiction over his family, there is little left to work with. I see these painkiller dependents all the time. Until they hit a real bottom, usually when they can no longer find their drug, and commit to going without them, there is little chance of rehabilitation. The worst of this is that the painkillers seem to exacerbate the original pain, so when the pills wear off, the pain returns at an even higher level and the cycle continues.
Prayers for you, Diana.
Thanks for your insight. I do see that everything he is doing now is all in an effort to hit rock bottom. He’ll get there, and then he’ll either stay there or get back up.
I can’t make that choice for him.
That was a wonderful post. I too have personal experience with addiction; in my case alcoholism in a close family member. So true what you said - the lies are the worst, even worse than the drinking itself. I find myself doing mental adjustments - because of lying and hiding, I find out after the fact that the narrative of my life isn’t what I thought it was, and to compensate my brain flips through memory after memory, inserting things in where I think (emphasis on the word “think” because we never know what’s true or not, never feel like we get the whole truth, ever - a hard pill to swallow) they ought to go, trying to shift the past to merge my reality with his.
It’s such a battle and so very hard not to take personally. How can they love you like they say they do and still do what they do? The eternal question. But the Almighty God of the universe never slumbers nor sleeps. Countless times He has shown me He’s there - unshakable, immovable.