Posting on behalf of a community member
What to do? My husband has been sober for almost 2 years now. Or so I thought. Just found a baggie of Xanax.
He is on suboxone and his addiction was pills and alcohol. I threw them away and I’m sure he knows by now. I have not yet brought it up. I have had my suspicions but he swears he is sober, doing great, not taking anything.
The part I hate the most is that he is so good at lying to me right in the face. That was one of the biggest issues I had with his addiction. Constant lying and I hate it. I thought he was being honest. What else is he lying about again? This is round 2 of the sober life.
Any advice is appreciated.
What to do? My husband has been sober for almost 2 years now. Or so I thought
Jane
#1
My husband is a recovering heroin addict. I struggled a lot with the lying - more than the actual using. We went to couples therapy to build back trust in our relationship. I couldn’t believe anything he said anymore, especially when he was actively using. For me to start gaining back trust, I needed completely transparency and accountability on his part. That meant access to the drug test results he was getting from his treatment center, access to his location via a family location app, access to his phone password and his phone whenever I asked for it.
Putting these into place helped a lot in building back trust because I knew he was where he said he was, and I felt like I had this safety net. As things got better, I checked his location less out of trust issues and more to see when he’s coming home (he can see my location too and uses it to see when I’ll be home too). I haven’t asked for test results or looked at his phone in months. But now that he is more in the maintenance stage of his recovery, I am struggling. I don’t want to have to rely on these methods forever, but I can’t seem to let go yet. Maybe it’s still too soon into recovery - maybe it will take years before I am able to let go of knowing where he is at all times. I suppose there’s no right or wrong timeline. This week he broke his phone so I can’t see his location, and today he said he was going to stay late after work. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for us and when he said that I immediately wondered if he was going to take this opportunity to go into the city to pick up drugs. I’m worried, but I’m also just trying to focus on the progress we’ve made, communicate my fears with him, trust my gut, trust the universe, trust him. 
Sarah
#3
The lying is the worst for me. I knew he would get upset when I would ask him if he had been drinking, but the signs were all there. Flushed cheeks, chewing gum to cover up the beer taste/smell, different look in his eyes. Even though I told him after our last argument that if I had to deal with the lying one more time, I would leave, he still lied straight to my face (and I didn’t leave, go figure).
We had a major falling out two weeks ago and I asked him if he had been drinking and he yelled at me “Yes! And all those other times you have asked, I had been drinking then too.” When I would ask him prior to his admission, he would literally turn it around to make me feel like the “bad guy.” He would say things like, I will never trust him, he can’t be in a relationship where I don’t trust him, I need to just believe him and so on and so on. I would leave those situations feeling like there was something wrong with me. All along I was right.
We are trying to slowly mend our relationship, and he is all into his recovery and trying to be positive, but I have been here before, so I just sit back and wait for the fall. I know I should be supportive, I am and I have been in the past, but lately, I just feel like I don’t have any more fight left in me for this relationship. However, I can’t see my life without him. It’s such a mind f**** for me. He know there are times when I am feeling the hurt from his lying and how he has been acting and he tells me the only way we can move forward is if I move on from the past. What if I don’t want to?
Was couples counseling helpful? I am at the end of my rope.
gina1014
#5
Couples counseling did not work for us. He want for about 4 visits and then when the work really began and we had to talk about how he treated me and what he did to my son he never went back. I still go alone and he tells me that I’m that I am telling lies about him. I have lost feelings for him and I can’t get
Them back and I am trying to figure out how to leave and why I haven’t.
I keep looking at apartments and making my plan and giving myself a day that I will just tell him I’m
Leaving and I don’t love him
The same I jus want a better life for me and
My son
@Sarah yes, couples counseling has been extremely helpful in teaching us better ways to communicate, practicing empathy and building back trust. Trust involves work from everyone. While my husband had to be more transparent, I had to learn how to let go of the past. It’s something I still struggle with and will probably always be working on.