Recovery Nation

My husband has been seeing a CSAT for 3 months now. He's been going to meetings and supposedly working the steps (and RN), though he admits that he's totally stalled during the last month. He finally made his first phone call to a SLAA member on Friday. I've told him repeatedly that I'm dissatisfied with his efforts. I feel like I don't know who he is. He still hasn't done full disclosure, and admits that there's information he's not telling me. His attempts to be open and share his current life with me have declined in the last month.

He says his CSAT thinks we should do couples counseling - that a lot of our issues can only be worked out together, in couples counseling. The CSAT says that he can help my husband with his own issues, but the joint stuff.. he can't do much about that.

I agree. And my therapist says the same thing (that a lot of these issues won't get resolved until we're able to do couples counseling). However.. I don't think we're ready for that. I think he has to do a lot more work on himself before we can get anything out of couples counseling. I don't know how I could possibly expect to work on our relationship when he's still keeping things from me, and still showing a huge lack of effort and motivation in his recovery. We did couples counseling back in the fall, immediately after D-Day #1. We worked through one of those Getting Past the Affair books. We read, and read, and read. We even did an Imago workshop. And it was all a waste of time as far as our relationship goes. We spent so much time, energy, and money.. and we're still stuck in this horrible state of limbo. So I think doing couples counseling now would be similarly pointless and a waste of money we don't have. But he feels hurt and rejected that I don't want to do it.

What do you guys think? I'm totally new to dealing with addiction of any sort, and I'm not sure if I'm being unrealistic, in thinking that he should make a decent amount of progress before we do couples counseling.

Thanks!

I tend to agree with your statement. My H and I did Couples Counseling first and, even though she was very good with him, I felt that I was out in left field. We were nowhere close to saving our relationship. After five months, my H and I decided to take a break - we were both frustrated. After my discovering more information, we determined that he had a sexual addiction. A good friend and former counselor told me that he needed a specialist and I needed my own counselor and eventually meet for joint sessions with both counselors present. We did find our own counselors who helped immensely on our personal issues. We both joined RN - it took us over a year to work through the RN program and my H stayed in counseling long after I was done with it. We never met for any joint sessions. I think we decided that my H had too much work to do first. We both continued with RN - took over a year.
I do feel that full disclosure works better in a safe situation like a counselor's office. Is he open to that in the present situation with either his or your professional there to help you both get through this? However, it seems premature to change to Couples Counseling unless you find someone who has had a lot of experience dealing with addictions and can get him to talk openly about his past behavior. You would have to do an interviewing process to determine who that would be.

It's tough no matter how you do it. There is no quick fix to healing or recovery. It's a long hard road with lots of ups and downs before you become healthy enough to work on your relationship, in my opinion. If he is doing the RN Recovery Program, one lesson specifically deals with full disclosure. It's OK to ask him if he's done that lesson yet. His response may be revealing as to why he's dragging his feet on this and wants to do Couples Counseling instead. That said, you each can work to recognize any obstacles that are getting in your way which takes personal awareness and action plans to change what isn't working. No matter how you slice it, he has to commit to doing the work if he hopes to get well.
Hmmm. Well, he's not getting his way, is he. You each have a right to your opinions, but you also have a right to honor your values and your gut. What is your gut telling you at this point? Also, because you VALUE his health as your life partner, you have a right to communicate to him how important it is to you that you see him actively doing the RN program and any other programs you have discussed together and agreed upon. You can't force him though. It's got to be his choice because he wants to become healthy for himself otherwise it won't work.

Hope this helps a bit.

Nellie James

Thanks Nellie! It definitely helps.

The start to your story sounds similar to the start to mine.. after a few months of couples counseling (he was doing IC with a regular therapist and not making progress), we decided to take a break so I could do IC. After another two months, he disclosed some more and I insisted he see a CSAT. We did meet with a great couples therapist prior to the disclosure because we thought we were ready. She pointed out a lot of his issues are very common in adult children of alcoholics, recommended a book by that name, and he started attending Al Anon. I think if we do disclosure with a therapist present (his CSAT recommends that as well), we'd probably choose her. I don't know how much experience she has with sex addiction, but she's quite knowledgeable about addiction in general.

I know he hasn't done the RN lesson on disclosure - he stalled out a month ago after doing the first five or six lessons. We had a talk the other day and I told him that I'm trying to give him time to find the motivation on his own, but the time will come soon where I will tell him that if he doesn't work on RN and SLAA stuff that there won't be hope for true reconciliation. I can't force him, but I can be honest about the fact that his lack of effort and motivation feels like he just doesn't care about me and our relationship.. and that there will come a point where I've had enough, and lost what little positive feelings I have left for him.

My H stalled in his RN lessons, too, but not on Disclosure. He went through with the Disclosure to me, but it was more like reading a laundry list or classroom assignment. I was shocked because of his lack of emotion or empathy for me but didn't know how to respond at the time. I eventually complained but later learned how he just didn't know how to be empathetic which is just one of the skills many SAs don't have because they never learned. Sad but true. The disclosure wasn't complete either. He hung onto bits and pieces which eventually fell into my lap - took about a year and half to get it out but never volunteered anything.

He stalled on later lessons that were especially hard. I read them myself and thought WOW. I wrote about it on this Community Thread and received great advice from a coach. She told me it was OK to give my H a time frame in which to complete the lessons because his health was important to me as my life partner. I did just that. I clearly stated that I needed for him to complete the lesson within the next two weeks. I didn't make it heavy handed with an "or else" attached. He completed the lesson within three days. However, he did drag his feet on other lessons. I didn't react at all but left him to himself. He eventually saw the benefit of his work and ended up completing the Recovery Workshop before I finished my lessons. I got hung up myself.

We had an up and down journey during our time on RN. At one point I realized I had to focus just on myself and turned him over to himself setting a six month check in date to see where we felt we were in terms of progress. I learned to detach. It was hard at times but I came to realize how much I valued my healing and was able to put the future of our relationship on hold with the help and wisdom of Coach Mel. She helped me a lot with specific advice for specific questions.

Eventually, we did the Couples Workshop and found that we still had work to do. We were hoping to continue with that program but much of it was lost when the site crashed. Now we feel we have tools to use as we work on building a new relationship.

My first DDay was August 13, 2008 and this was preceeded by three months of couples counseling the year before and immediately followed by five months of couples counseling with the same counselor. She had her strengths but it wasn't enough. We found private counselors in March of 2009 and joined RN in April of 2009. My H eventually became a mentor on the Recovery Side but never seemed to get into it. For me, mentoring has been a way for me to continue healing myself and reaffirming what I have learned. His private counselor worked with him for over a year. it's been a long journey for both of us individually and as a couple. I feel we're still a work in progress. Whew.

Nellie

I was advised to wait for couple counselling as we each needed to do a certain amount of our own healing first. I think it was about 10 months afer d-day. I'm so glad we waited as I don't think it would have worked otherwise (for us anyways).

In my opinion, rushing it doesn't do any good at all, and will just cost precious money which could be used for individual counselling for the both of you.

As for your husband feeling hurt and rejected, well, he's just going to have to learn to cope with that. As Nellie said, you are entitled to your feelings as well. Holding off on couples counselling for a while is not a death knell, its simply holding off untill your ready. This type of reaction is why I think its best to hold off - your husband needs to do some work on his emotions and how he handles them. If he feels rejected because you want to wait, what will happen in a counselling session when the hard conversations are taking place?

Take care
Starry

A couple of thoughts to add to the feedback of our mentors.

RN does suggest that you wait until you both have reached a level of success in your individual healing/recovery before attempting couples counseling. The most sensible reason is it takes two healthy people (or at least healthier) people to make a relationship really work. It also requires honesty, transparency and patience on from both parties. This just isn't present in early recovery/healing.

But that doesn't mean you put everything on hold. You have to still work on boundaries, consequences, patience and understanding if you want to stay together. Yoru partner needs to be working towards full disclosure and he can get a lot of help on how to do this on the Recovery side, building trust, and being transparent going forward. It's also a good idea to have a weekly time where you meet for an hour and talk about your struggles and wins from the week. This is considered a "safe time" where you both allow the other to express themselves without repercussions. If the energy gets too high you step away for a couples minutes but come right back to it. What this does is allow you to first build communications skills, second to be aware of where the other is in their journey and third to practice being transparent with each other in a way that is not meant to harm the other.

One caution from reading your post. You want to be careful not to define for him what he needs to do for recovery (meaning which programs or such) but rather that he needs to be doing something and whatever that is he needs to be consistently working on it. SLA (12 step) is not for everyone, RN is not for everyone, there is no catch all program (though I feel we are the closest to it) but it has to be something that he connects with or it won't work. He'll just feel pressured to show you he is working on what you want him to be and not really seeking and working on something that works for him. So a boundary of he needs to find what will work for him in a specific time frame and that he has to work on it consistently (defining what that is and keeping in mind life has to be dealt with also) is not unreasonable.

Hope this helps,
Coach Cheryl