Alcohol Poisoned Our Marriage ☠️

40Th birthday, and we had four kids, and the youngest was, like, 18 months. And friends were coming over to watch the kids for the weekend. Matt had something special planned. In fact, he kind of, like, surprised me, like, so, I need you to pack your bags. Because I was like, why is he home from our business? And he's like, I've got somebody to cover for you. You need to pack your bags. I've got something special planned for the weekend.

And when you're married to an alcoholic, a surprise is always really welcomed, right?

Yeah. So I was pretty anxious. I was like, where are we going? What are we doing? What are we packing? And, like, those. I don't know if it's just a man thing or if it's the alcoholic man, but he was not really forthcoming. We live in Colorado. And he was like, well, we're gonna borrow a friend's condo. And now my birthday's in August, so that's a good thing. I didn't have to pack a lot of winter gear. It was summer. And he was like, we're gonna borrow our friends, you know, condo, and we're gonna go up to Vail for the weekend. So I was like, okay, this is great. No kids, because we have our own business. We had multiple locations of our bakery. Owning our own business. This is gonna be great. Except he's going.

And, yeah, that's problematic now. You remember it as you thought, oh, this is gonna be great. I saw trepidation in your face right away. Surprise. We're going away. Yeah, you were already nervous. And then, you know, we get on the road, we hit some traffic, and of course, all I can think about is getting to this condo so I can start getting my drink on and getting this party started. And so I get frustrated and anxious in the car ride. And, Sherry, you're looking at this like, what a great opportunity this would be for us to connect and converse and to start enjoying each other's company. And I'm pounding on the steering wheel and honking the wall.

I'm so pressured in then, you know. And then besides the fact that you're so anxious to get there, I was like, goodness. Like, I didn't know we were. Had a time limit. And I was like, do we have a dinner reservation or we supposed to be checked in at a certain time? I don't know. I didn't know the layout of their condos.

No. The ice is melting in the cooler. That's all I'm thinking.

And then I'm thinking, I must be so horrible to Be in the car with that. You can't even just take the time to talk to me. I mean, we didn't get time to talk. Yeah, most of the time. So just like catching up or listening to the radio without being interrupted with kids in the back. We can even just sing the silly songs together. I guess I was slightly hopeful.

Yeah? Yeah. Hopeful that you were married to someone who was taking you to your 40th birthday surprise instead of your 21st birthday, which is the way I was treating it.

Yeah.

I had parties planned from the moment we would get there. There was lots of alcohol to be consumed. There were bars that had bands playing late into the evening. There were dinners go to. Everything was all planned out, which I thought was me being a good husband. But really what I know now in hindsight is my wife's looking for some peace and some calm and some tranquility and some connection. And all I can think about is, let's drink and party and have lots of sex. Which is. Was always high on my to do list. My agenda.

You thought you had planned the best birthday celebration ever.

I did.

You were stoked, I'm sure.

Right.

You're going to feel like you're excited. Yeah.

Amber. The moment I told her that this is a surprise and we. I've lined up this babysitter and get your bag packed. And I saw the terror on her face, the worry, My heart sank. But don't. Don't think that that meant I slowed down by any means. I. I pushed forward with the plans and off we went. And so between the fact that I popped that first beer in the driveway to the condo before we even accessed the building and saw the key work that we had borrowed, and then all the plans that we had, the go, go, go plans. And in my mind, this great plan for intimacy. I mean, we were going to have this wonderful sexual emotional experience. But when I put Sherry on her heels to begin with, it's really hard to get there. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it's hard to connect with someone when you're already mad at him because the way he handles traffic on the way up. Isn't it?

Yeah.

So?

Well, it was just really disappointing to think, you know, we have no one interrupting us. We have nothing but time. We have until Sunday afternoon. This is Friday, early evening. I didn't understand the big rush. And I was thinking, you know, again, I must be so horrible to be in the car with. I must be so horrible. So, you know, I didn't feel Particularly connected to you, because you certainly didn't make me feel like you wanted to be connected with me. And then I started figuring it out in the car, like, you know, oh, well, after I realize and ask questions. We don't have dinner plans. We don't have a time that we have to be anywhere. We're not meeting anyone.

No. But we can't have sex five times if we don't have sex now, right away. First, drinking.

You know, you needed to get to your drinking time because normally in our home life, this would have been a time that you were already drinking. Because I worked in the evenings at that point.

It was your birthday. But I had my priorities and disaster ensued.

So I bet both of you have your feelings hurt out the gate. Like, by the time y' all pull into the driveway, you're both a little uneasy. You're both feeling hurt because you're, you know, Matt, you're hurt because she's not excited and, you know, all enthused about it. And Sherry, you're hurt because you're like, what is your deal? Like, this isn't even about me at all. You know, I can't even have a conversation with you. And so what. What happened then? And I laughed when you said you cracked open the beer, like, in the driveway. Cause that's just so classic I just alcoholic thing. Like, I was. I'm literally surprised that you waited till you got there. Most of the people I see, they. They're reaching around the vet. They got their, you know, like, I'm impressed that you waited.

Well, I had some restraint because again, this all. I don't mean to sound like the. The horniest 50 year old that's ever been on your podcast or your. Your broadcast before, but I knew that I had to have some constraint or those plans would fly out the window. Had I been. Had I been on the highway by myself, I would have reached around behind the seat and found one of those beers. And that's not to say I've never done that, because I certainly have on different occasions. But I was trying to rise to a higher level.

Yeah. If I wasn't in the car. Yeah, yeah. If you didn't have me to try to impress and, and try to reconnect with. But yeah, certainly, like, it was in there before we, like we said, made sure the key worked, and then we got unpacked and went to dinner. And then you were like, why didn't you order a cocktail? Why didn't you order this? Why didn't you order that? And I was already kind of shut down.

Yeah.

By that point.

Yeah, we're both disappointed on the way up, like you said. But I had my solution. I mean, I knew as soon as I started drinking, my disappointment would go away. And my mission had to become to get her to drink with me because I knew that she would loosen up. And I mean, that's, you know, just a fact of our relationship. And I think many relationships, if I could get a couple in her, then things would be smooth, at least for the evening. Even though the long term repercussions were something I didn't understand or anticipate at the time. So it got worse from there. We, I just kept pushing forward, you know, let's go to dinner then let's go to this bar I found and oh, this band's gonna play till 1 o' clock in the morning. We got to shut it down. We got to show these young whippersnappers that these four year olds can party. I mean, this is literally what's going through my mind and, and couldn't be further from what you were thinking. And I think the worst part is because it was your birthday, you're thinking, am I ever going to be consulted on what we're going to do?

Correct.

And you never.

And I never was.

Were you just simmering? I'm just imagining myself in your spot, Sherry. And I could just, I feel like a, like a boiling, just like a simmering. Like is that.

Well, I think sometimes I would like have a little bit of hope. Yeah. Like. So we went through dinner. I didn't have anything to drink. I ordered coffee and I asked for a decaf Americano at the end to go with my dessert. And I think I got caffeinated. So he was already like passed out, you know, and I'm like, still wired, you know, I'm still wired at like 1 or 1:30 in the morning. And at one point he's, you know, I go up and I'm trying to lay in bed and go to sleep. And he was like, well, aren't we gonna have sex? And I was like, no, no, I know you've been asleep for a while, or passed out probably would be a better term. But that next morning, like he's an early riser. He didn't, he didn't get hangovers. So we get up and he was like, I think we had mimosas on the back porch either before or after we were gonna go on a hike. It's been a long time now. I'll be 52 soon. So it's been a while. My memory's fading, but I was just enjoying the morning and on the back porch and listening to nature. You know, we live in the city of Denver, so it's a little loud. And then he was like, we're gonna go on this hike. And then he got frustrated because he couldn't find the exit. And I was like, I could have just sat on that porch all day. I would have drank the mimosas. It wasn't like I was opposed at that point to drinking and just. Just relaxing with him. And I even mentioned that on the hike, and he got real feisty about it, you know, like, what? What? I'm not doing what? I'm not doing anything you want. And I'm like, yeah, because you didn't ask. And I was disappointed because he had no idea even what I would want. And that, I think, was more hurtful. We'd been together for. For quite a bit of time by that point. And to know that he had no idea or it was just that he was so selfish. I don't know what the.

And it just spun out of control from there. I brought a cooler with beers on the gondola trip to the top of the mountain. Now, again, it's summertime, so just up there in shorts and a T shirt. And I couldn't do that without having beer in a cooler. Right. And, you know, just the party kept going to the point where we argued so loudly on that second night that I was afraid we were going to get noise complaints from the neighbors of our friends who loaned us the condo. So I'm thinking we're going to have the police called. It was terrible. We fought in a pizza place the next. I guess that would have been Sunday morning before we headed back. And by the end of the trip, our relationship was in about as bad a shape as it had ever been in. And when you contrast that with what my expectations were going in, that this was going to be this intimate connection and this. This fun, party relaxing weekend, I mean, it just couldn't have gone much worse than it did.

Yeah.

And I think when we got home, we surprised the. The babysitter because we were home so much earlier than they anticipated. And we just said, oh, I was starting to feel sick or something. You know, just one more lie that.

Addiction creates energy into that house. And y' all came back just. I mean, I bet it was, like, oozing off. Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The.

The babysitter was a elementary school teacher, so they had done arts and crafts all weekend. The kids were loving it. And then we are like the black cloud descending on the house, on our poor children.

Because now your kids, now, they're probably excited to show you all their stuff. Right? And so everybody's got all these different expectations and everybody's just getting let down.

Yeah, we. I could spread disappointment like no other at that. At that point in our relationship.

Yeah. And I mean, the babysitter left and we help. We just hold up in our bedroom continuing the argument.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, for our people who are listening, this is Matt and Sherry. By the way, they're from the Intoxicated podcast. And they. On their podcast, they're a couple and they talk about their struggles in addiction and then their journey to recovery. And we are so lucky to have you here because you guys are willing to talk about not just addiction recovery, but just like the personal stuff, the real stuff, the relationship stuff. And we're just so grateful that you're willing to share and use your story to help to help us navigate the situations that we're in.

Well, thanks. Thanks for having us. Yeah, we, we. You know, I'm just like endlessly curious about the topics that we talk about. So rather than view ourselves as having all the answers, we got a lot of questions we're trying to find solutions for. And so the only way to do that is to talk it. And we're just really blessed to have this invitation from you to do some of that talking here on your platform. Thank you, Amber.

I already have a hundred questions just from the story.

Well, I just want to add one piece that I thought was really fascinating. We've kind of talked about it many, many times throughout since that 40 year birthday party or birthday weekend disaster. I said to Matt, I said, because he was talking about, you're just grumpy because I'm always drinking. And I'm like, no, it's not the drinking. It's not the sex. I was like, we have. And I don't think he understood. I said, we have so many more problems than just the alcohol and sex. You can't even imagine what I'm feeling. And that was the first time I ever spoke that. But I think that had kind of been the launching. And it's always stuck with me, and I think it stuck with you. And that's why we, when Matt got sober, we kind of went this route of being open about the recovery.

Yeah.

I mean, it speaks to how strong that feeling was in you, that even though you could talk about everything that just happened, you know, and Kind of laugh and kind of smile, and then when. Even when you replay that moment, it's still just right there.

Well, you know what? You know, what we've learned that I think is just really fascinating. A lot of people in my position, myself included, early on, when their spouse keeps bringing these pain points up, and it's the same set of pain points, it's really easy for us to get offended. When I. Before I had moved past the shame of the whole thing, I would get re. Traumatized when Sherry would bring up my past negative behavior. And, you know, and I would say, gosh, I'm sober, Sherry. I quit drinking for you. Why do you have to keep dragging this up? And I didn't recognize how important it was for us to process these resentments together for her to heal and move forward. And so this story about her 40th birthday, it's really. Honestly, it's at the top of our list of things that we've gone over and over and over, and for a long time, that made me mad. Why do we have to keep talking about the same thing? Until I realized, until we talk about it to her satisfaction, to the point where we're both comfortable and being able to joke and giggle about it a little bit, then she's not gonna be able to move past it. And so rather than looking, look at it as though she was some kind of a nag and this was her mor. Failing or her inability, you know, to move forward, I looked at it as, this is her trauma. And if I can go there and help her with it. And. And when we talk about resentment processing, what that ultimately comes down to is I have to. It's not about apologizing, because I was one of these. I know you run across all kinds of different people and how they experience addiction, but I was one of these continual apologizers. I apologized not always in the moment, but certainly like the day after or two days. And then I, you know, and I would apologize repeatedly. But when the apology was paired with continual bad behavior, the apology starts to be meaningless. Right. And so this resentment processing has nothing to do with apologies. It has nothing to do with the amends process. It has to do with me acknowledging that her version of the truth is the truth. And so this 40th birthday story, you know, the way we tell the story now is very different from the way I used to tell the story, because I didn't remember it very well, because turns out, as someone who's drinking the way I was, my memory wasn't so great and so Acknowledging that her version of the truth is the truth was part of moving past that trauma for her. So, you know, I look at it when she brings up stories from the past, rather than her being a nag or her being unable to move forward or her being stuck in the past or her having, you know, this is your problem. You need to figure it out and move forward. I look at it as a great opportunity for us to move forward together because she's showing it to me. She's saying, this is where the work is. This is where I need your help. And if I don't reject that and I embrace it, then our relationship gets better as a result.

Yeah, I loved what you said when you said I. She needed me to acknowledge that her truth was the truth. Man, that was spot on. Sherry, can you tell. Tell me about what was going on. You're not during the birthday situation, necessarily, but after that, when you're, you know, when this trauma is still right there and you're bringing it up, what was it that you were needing from Matt to be able to. Because you wanted. You're bringing it up because you want to move past it. Right. Tell me what was going on there.

Well, I wanted him to acknowledge that we did have a lot of problems that were created by the alcohol and that were only being compounded by the alcohol and the sexual. And because I got that list of. Of I'm not an alcoholic because I still can do xyz. Look at all the things we have. Look at our house, look at our family, look at our kids, look at our friends. Like, he was just, you know, showing me everything else. But I knew that it was within us, and I knew that our relationship was really damaged, and I was really damaged because of that, because I. Obviously, alcohol is a very selfish disease or any addiction is very selfish. So I became such a low priority. And it was very clear that that weekend was about his drinking and his desire to have this romantic weekend. But it had to be the way he wanted, and it didn't matter what I was looking for. So I feel like that was like, the pinnacle of. You know, I know that he had tried to get sober before, but it had always come back to, well, I'm just an average, normal person. And I'm like, people don't do this. Normal, average drinkers don't behave this way. They have some idea what their spouse is interested in to go away for the weekend or what their needs are. But I was so far down his list, and I didn't know if we could Recover from it. And I just.

I was just gonna say it's this idea that he. He's not take. He's not even trying to take into account what you might want. He's not paying any attention to you. It's like, yeah, he's saying this is your birthday, but it's. You feel like. Like I'm not even on this radar. And so you just feel completely, like, overlooked and dismissed. That's what the. That's the hurt spot I'm getting, huh?

Yeah. And because of everything that else that I did in life. And I took a lot of the blame for arguments that happened when we were drinking. You know, I was the one that had an issue. I was the one that hated the drinking. I hated his good time behavior. I was jealous of him. Like, all these things that get thrown at the spouse, and I'm cleaning up mess after mess after mess, and I'm like, one weekend, one weekend that's supposed to be my big weekend. You can't even do well.

And let's explain why you took a lot of the blame. It was. I was kind of backed into the corner, Amber, because either I've got to find something about our relationship to blame on Sherry, or I've got to recognize that the alcohol is. It's not. It's not the only cause of all the problems, but it's gotta go. We always say sobriety doesn't solve anything, but it is a prerequisite. So if I can't find a way to blame our problems on her, then I've gotta look inwardly and acknowledge that sobriety's gotta be step one. And until you're ready to do that, you are just not ready to do that. So I didn't, you know, I didn't deny the truth. And I wasn't manipulative and gaslighting because I'm an evil human. I did that because that. That's, you know, I'm a logical person, and I gotta find an explanation that fits the narrative that doesn't include me stopping drinking, because I'm just not ready to go there.

And you have your denial. It's like the way that you're keeping. So it's not even so much I'm. I'm doing this to you, but it's like I'm. This is how I'm lying to myself.

Oh, yeah, well, that's right. It's. I mean, I think sometimes when we talk about gaslighting and denial and manipulation, people picture alcoholics sitting around going, I'm gonna develop my Symptom. I mean, we're just not that deep of thinkers. At least I wasn't, you know, this is just self preservation. I gotta find a way to keep alcohol in my life. And so what can I say? Or what? Or not even. What can I say? What do I think really is the root cause of our problems? Because it can't be the alcohol, so what else can it be? So that's where Sherry, like I, like she said, taking the blame for a lot of this, that's where that came from.

And he had tried to quit drinking before that, but he never gave it a long enough time or never did work, so he wasn't feeling good. So that, I think, was an easy out for you to say, oh, it isn't the alcohol.

Oh, yeah.

Because you didn't feel any better after six weeks of not drinking.

Yeah.

And you were. So you weren't doing any recovery work. So you were locked into the idea of, well, if I'm not happy, then it's, you know, got to be you.

Yeah.

And so you didn't find any solace in not drinking. You just. And it was such a part of your identity.

I had no idea how long it takes. The recovery process takes, not just the physical addiction, but the brain chemistry rewiring, all of it. You know, I thought, gosh, if I quit drinking for six weeks and I still feel like trash, then obviously alcohol wasn't the problem. I just wasn't dealing in reality as it relates to the recovery process.

Okay, so. So you quit drinking. Not like. But you quit drinking at times. It sounds like there was sometimes some trial periods and neither one of you really felt better.

Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely accurate. For one thing, you know, after the first couple of times, I would, I would try that. I mean, I think you were pretty excited the first time. Maybe you thought, oh, yeah, I was.

Pretty hopeful the first or second time. I mean, my father was an alcohol growing up. My sister was married to two addicts. So I knew that it wasn't just a first time around. And you're done.

Right.

I knew there was some trial and error and I knew there would be relapses, perhaps.

The way my relapses went. So there's a 10 year period that I consider to be my active addiction period. And as you know, there's no blood test that you can take for alcoholism. There's no definitive diagnosis. But from the first time that I decided alcohol isn't serving me and I need to get sober until I made it over the Hump to the permanent sobriety that I'm in now. That was a 10 year period. And my relapses weren't, you know, I would just, like, the stress would get too much and I would drink for a weekend and then I would be back into sobriety again. My relapses were like, I've decided I'm going to drink again, Sherry. I've, I've got these new rules. I'm going to put them around my drinking and, and it's going to be okay this time. Yeah. And I, and then I would, and I would drink for nine months or a year and then I would say, no, that isn't working. And I would, and then I'd be sober for three months. And so they were these long term periods back and forth and, you know, I just never found enough relief, I think, in sobriety for it to, to take hold in a lasting way. And after I had done this once or twice, Sherry was smart and she was keeping her walls up and she was staying detached and she wasn't buying into the premise that I had this figured out. And so the relationship continued to suffer. Not only was my brain chemistry not rewired, I had basically nothing brought me joy in early sobriety. So I'm constantly depressed, I'm moody, I'm dealing with emotions that I don't know how to deal with. All of this bad stuff is happening and I'm getting no support because she's seen and heard this song and dance before, so why on earth would she be in my corner, you know, telling me all everything's going to be okay, just keep going. She's going, how long till the next time you start drinking again? Which is painful, but it's necessary for her.

And in some ways, I don't know if it was this way for you, Matt, but in some ways those periods of sobriety when you're able to stay sober, or almost like I've seen a lot of other people that those are just like ways they're convincing themselves they're not alcoholic. See, I didn't drink for six weeks. Alcoholic, couldn't quit drinking for six weeks. And it's almost like they use that as evidence of why they need to be able to drink. It's, it's just amazing.

Yeah.

And that he would be moody and irritable and he was like, well, I'm not this way when I'm drinking. But I'm like, well, you don't know what you're doing when you drinking. Because I did. I never Got a can. You know, I never got my phone out and started filming you because. But you do act like that. And then things wouldn't be better because he was moody and irritable. So how am I supposed to get cozy with a cactus? I think, you know, like, I don't. You're prickly, you're awful. I.

That was a blog post title once. I stole it from Cozy as a Cactus. That's right. I forgot about that.

So, yeah. Yeah.

So I was like, you know, of course. So then the relationship wasn't healing at all because I'm still. Walls are up and I'm closed off. And then I'm like, wow, you're even more of an ass, basically, and moody and irritable. And I have to shelter the kids from you a lot of the times I have to do it when you're drinking. And now I have to do it in sobriety a lot of ways. Or have to let them not get too loud if you're feeling, you know, that witching hour time. So it didn't. So for. From the outside. Yeah. It didn't look like anything was happening for good with you not drinking.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it was bad when the drinking was happening. It was bad. Maybe even a little worse when the drinking wasn't happening. How in the world did y' all get past that hump? You know, there's the let me stop drinking hump. And then, I mean, usually if things aren't bad, I mean, if things aren't good after that, most people go back to drinking or they divorce or they just, you know, something not good happens. So what. What happened? That shifted to the next stage.

And what was. Well, we had. Matt started doing some reading and researching, and it wasn't necessarily like he said. He tried to. For 10 years of active alcoholism and tried to find help and sobriety and recovery. He kind of walked through the stages of, like, I don't think I could walk into an AA facility. I just don't think that's me. I don't remember how I ran across this book, but it was, if you'll love me, you'll stop by Lisa Fredrickson. And it actually talked about the brain chemistry in there. And that really just kind of clicked with him. And then I feel like that was a little bit of the starting point because, I mean, I had books on, like, you know, how to argue fair, like, those sort of things. That's stupid. You can't ever argue fair with an alcoholic. Like, we had a timer, one of those little like game timers. Okay. You get two minutes of talking, and then we flip it over to your two minutes. Like, that was one of the suggestions in there. And I thought, oh, my God, you know, that a timer probably had a flow across the room. If you're fired up, do you think that timer stayed on the counter? No.

You know, like, somebody threw that thing and smashed it.

Yeah. And it could have possibly been me because I was. You know, I still have more to say because, you know, alcohol changes. Yeah. Alcohol changed me into someone I didn't like either. But I think that when we. When I was reading that book and I was kind of finding it fascinating and sharing with him, I think some of it just clicked, and we're like, wow. Because it was also explaining how I was being changed by this fight or flight response. And it was that insight to body keeps the score. Those sort of. It was.

Yeah, we. We both read a lot, you know, before we got to this stage where we'll talk to anyone about anything related to alcohol or just. Just about anything. Before that, I was as private a human being as there is on the planet. And I. I think, you know, a lot of the people that we meet, that's the way they feel until they. They reach this tipping point, they're not telling anybody. So we kept the story very closely protected. Like Sherry said, I wouldn't even go to an AA meeting. So when you're keeping it that close to the vest, what you do is you read a lot and you listen to podcasts and things like that. And so I read a ton of quit lit. I'd say 75% of what I read were memoirs. I loved reading the stories of other alcoholics and how they had overcome the demon. But I also read. I'd say the other 25% was more clinical, brain chemistry stuff. I needed to understand what was going on in the background. I needed to not just feel like the black sheep of the family with some kind of moral failing. I needed to understand, oh, you know, my. And, you know, I'm a firm believer now. My brain actually reacted as our brains are designed to alcohol. I mean, when we talk about neurochemistry, hijacking, that's what's supposed to happen. And so I'm the normal one, because my dopamine, you know, response was what it's supposed to be. And that. That just. That helped me find recovery because I didn't feel like I was just kind of a deviant, a societal deviant. And so that was really important. But I think, you Know, the. The ultimate turning point was we talk about how alcoholism and addiction is. Is a progressive disease, and, you know, it's a. It's a downhill slide. And I finally, the. The. The two components to my permanent sobriety are that I final. Where the depression and anxiety that was both caused by alcohol and also that I was medicating with alcohol because I didn't know that the alcohol was causing it. That depression and anxiety got so debilitating that I was, like, right at the tipping point of not being able to get out of bed in the morning. And so I could see that everything was about to come crumbling down. All the things that I bragged to Sherry about, oh, look, we've got a house and we've got good jobs and the family and all the stuff I would brag about, I could see it was about to just come washing away. So there was that. And then the other piece was Sherry's detachment was becoming pretty complete. So it didn't matter what I brought to her. A new plan for keeping alcohol in my life, or, hey, I'm going to try sobriety again, because I've decided this is what I really need. Didn't matter what I said. She just wasn't having any of it. And so not only did I see the material things slipping away, and I could feel that my own ability to function was slipping away, I also saw my wife, and I knew that that would mean my kids as well slipping away. And so those two things kind of combined to get me over the hump to say, you know, there's no. You know, I don't know that anyone quits because they want to. I just ran out of alternatives.

Like, there.

There was nothing else. There was nowhere else I could go. I tried everything. I mean, I'm a reasonably smart guy, and I did all the research, and I could find no way to keep alcohol my life.

Right.

I just. I hate it when people say, like, you have to. You have to want it. You have to want it for yourself. I'm like, dude, I met. Anybody wanted society or wanted it for themselves. That's not the way it starts. I mean, eventually. So glad you said that. I do want to point out one of the things, like, when you were. When you guys were talking about this period of after you quit drinking, but before things got better, this is sort of an interesting period here to me. And the thing that I think I'm hearing is like, okay, the alcohol is gone, but the shame is still just at top level, like, on both sides. And so that was Keeping you guys like, totally stuck. It sounds like research maybe helped a little bit start to peel some of the shame back. Because it's like, we understand what's happening, we get it now, and that does. Is that part of the process here?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Sherry mentioned it, but she had a better understanding of the fact that there was a lot of work to do besides sobriety. It actually didn't matter how much I read. I was still convinced sobriety was going to fix everything until it didn't. And so there was a big period of disconnect. I think one of the things that's interesting about this mutual recovery process, first of all, we needed to stop working on the relationship. And we didn't know that. So we would, we would talk about how we can fix us. What we needed to do is I needed to fix me, and she needed healing and recovery for herself. And then these two independent, relatively strong and in better health people, then they could work on the relationship. But for a long time we didn't get that. So we would, we would talk about what's making us argue and why we can't get along. And all of that to me was just a waste of time. I needed to work on my stuff and start to be healthier as an individual. And Sherry needed, and I gotta say, for a full year plus into sobriety, neither of us had any idea that she needed any help. We just thought she was dealing with me, and that was difficult. We didn't realize the degree to which my addiction had changed her and traumatized her and all the stuff that she needed to work through as an individual. So you, you finally started therapy. How long into my sobriety was that?

I want to say it was a little over two years. Yeah, because it kind of took like the first year of sobriety and just kind of hid ourselves away. Like, I mean, we still did our jobs and. But you. We didn't have social engagements. We just took like, there was no calendar. We only did the have to things, you know, family trips, holidays, which by.

The way, is, I think, really, really, really important for the drinker. I mean, I had to get away from those triggers. I've learned now, like, there's no social situation you could put me in. You could drop me in Munich at Oktoberfest and I'd be fine now. But in that early sobriety, in that first year, I could get through situations, social engagements, where everyone around me is drinking, but I would drink a few days later because like you said, the shame would build and I would other myself and say, why can everybody else do this but you can't? And that pressure would get to me. And I would kind of drink in the aftermath of the event. And so getting away. Oh, my gosh, Amber. A story for another day. One of my attempts at early sobriety, I decided I was strong enough to take my neighbor. I'd be the designated driver at a Colorado Rockies game. And these guys I knew, they were heavy drinkers because I drank with them for years. And I end up being their chauffeur to the strip club at two o' clock in the morning. This is not a place that the guy in early sobriety should be. But I thought, I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm smart, I can handle all this huge mistake. I didn't drink that night, but I drink a few nights later.

Yeah, just another, you're out of options. And that shame creeping back in. Why can't I be like everybody else? And it also helped me because then I didn't have the worry and anxiety. So it was helping my anxiety level because I didn't have to try to manage situations after the social engagement at home, because that's when things really went bad, was when we would be at home, because then he would drink more, and then he'd be like, oh, you had a couple drinks or, you know, whatever, and. And then there would be that emotional disconnect. He was wanting to have sex and intimacy and create relationship because, you know, it was a fun evening out. And I'm like, no. I had to, like, argue over who was going to drive home. I had to get the kids ready to, you know, for bed or if it was, you know, if it wasn't too late and we didn't have a babysitter and they were with us, you know, I had to, like, kind of keep them away from, you know, you acting grouchy when we got home because the party was over, you know, so it helped me also not have to have those triggers and anxiety as well.

Yeah.

Recently got asked this, and I get it. I get in different forms. I could ask this a lot, but I was asked this. This lady that we were working with asked me. She said, my husband always wants to sleep with me when he's drinking, and I can't stand it, and I don't know what to do. And so this is an issue, I think that comes up a lot for people. Can you talk to us about that? Was that. It sounds like that may have been part of your story. And I want to hear about that maybe from both sides.

Go ahead. You started talking. You surprised me. I didn't think you were going to jump on this question.

I think that because of the relationship at the very beginning, when we were dating and we were young and there's that whole, you know, recording and it's sex and discovery and then that fades off. I mean, I think we've talked to, you know, people are aware of that, but because he. Men aren't necessarily designed like that. Biology wise, there would be that, oh, well, you had a couple drinks or it was a fun evening and let's have sex. And I'm like, well, for one, you smell from alcohol. You going back to my. The story about my 40th birthday. You don't even know what I want. I didn't even know what I wanted and enjoyed in the bedroom because you had been so vocal about. You think you know what I would want or if I even said, no, let's try this, or that doesn't feel good. You would take it as a criticism because you were so immature. You couldn't handle any sort of, like, correction or I just need to adjust, or, you know, so it was so awkward to try to have a romantic time and both of us to enjoy it. And, you know, it was just sloppy mess, you know, like just drunk. It was uncomfortable. And we joke that Matt can't even hear the word fine anymore. Because I'd be like, fine, we can have sex. She.

She couldn't say yes, Amber. For a long time, I would say, do you want to have sex? And she would say, fine.

Yeah.

And I'd say, but do you want to? And she'd say, it's. It's fine. I like, she couldn't. She couldn't go there to say yes, I do. Well, because she didn't. And that's one thing that's. I don't know if this is unique to Sherry, but she can't lie to me, which is a huge blessing right now that our relationship's in a better place. But, you know, it caused a lot of pain. I. I've talked a lot about what I call the rejection inherent in consent and in active addiction and in early sobriety. We suffered from a lot of that. Sherry had these, you know, ingrained beliefs about, you know, the wifely duty sex and the fact that this is part of being married. And certainly these are myths that I perpetuated, but they. It. You know, it wasn't just me. Right? I mean, this is. This is what we're taught from early on and so she would agree reluctantly, and we would do the deed. And, you know, I. I would. I would get the release. But it did made me feel terrible. It. Because again, this rejection, inherent consent. She wasn't into it. She wasn't excited about it. She wanted to do the minimum so that I'd be done and we could move on. And it was extremely damaging to our relationship. And what we found in working with other folks is there are really two paths that sex and intimacy take in an alcoholic relationship. Our path, where it continued to be a part, the physical connection continued to be a part, even though the emotional connection was just destroyed. Or there's the physical connection dries up and the couple just doesn't go there anymore. They're both really, really damaging. I used to have opinions about which one's more damaging. I've heard enough stories where I'm not sure that there's any purpose to deciding which is worse. They're both really bad and really hard to come back from. But in our case, we had to rebuild trust. We had to rebuild that emotional connection. And we had poured so much fuel on the fire of destruction because we continued to have the physical connection when the emotional connection wasn't there. I mean, this. This goes back to the beginning of adolescent sexual education. We just don't. We don't understand and teach the dynamics of this properly. Intimacy for Sherry and for a lot of women, you know, doesn't start when we get in bed and start working on foreplay. It starts hours, days, weeks before that. It starts with how we're just interacting. How good am I doing as a parent? How am I reacting to bad news? If we have a big financial hit, do I blow up about it? Like, that's intimacy. But we don't understand that. I am much better at compartmentalizing, and I can turn it on or off pretty quickly. But Sherry and I think. I don't. I don't think she's atypical. I think this is really the norm. Not to say there aren't exceptions, because certainly there are. But Sherry, you know, what happens on a Tuesday is going to impact how we're going to do on a Friday night. And I. For so long, I didn't understand that. And then even when I was starting to learn about it, it just frustrated me. And I thought she was broke. I didn't understand. This is pretty typical.

So.

But, but yeah, you know, the, the question that you started with that, you know, my husband smells like beer and he's handsy and it's, you know, Gross. I'm. I'm actually paraphrasing. I don't think that's exactly what your question was.

Not at all.

But that's. I can look at that now and say, oh, my God. How unattractive is that? We were at a. We were at a party once. Once in my early sobriety. I said we tried to avoid social occasions, and we did, but this is one where we had to be there. And there was a band playing, so it was loud. And this. This friend of mine gets really close to me to talk so I can hear him. And I came away from that interaction. I went over to Sharon. I'm like, oh, my God, you should smell his breath. It's awful. He's been drinking beer all night. And she looked at me like, you moron, this is what I dealt with for 25 years. And you think you're sharing some epiphany with me. And so just imagine that in a sexual context. Let me get my. My sloppy, drunken ass all over you and see how romantic I can be.

That's tricked. Wow, you're going there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. And so, you know, Sherry, for you, the intimacy wasn't there, but you had this maybe like a religious belief or spiritual belief that, you know, this needs to happen, so you would go through with it, but you weren't in the game emotionally. And, Matt, you. You know, even though, you know, you got the sex you wanted, you still felt rejected, because deep down, there's a part of all of us that wanted, you know, and that's. It's equal parts. And so you were getting maybe like half the need met, but not the other half. And then you're both feeling rejected over and over again.

Yeah, And I think it took. I mean, this is something that we're still working on too, because. And now you are over six years sober.

And.

Let's see. So we kind of went through that first year of sobriety low key. Then another year went by, and we realized I needed help, and so I started getting help. And we've been doing our recovery programs for three years now. And I'm. And I'll say we're still working on the intimacy and relationship part of, you know, physical connection piece of it. Because we didn't realize, like you said, he wanted to be wanted, and I didn't want him at all. So he had his shame and embarrassment to deal with, and I had my shame and embarrassment of, you know, sometimes I got mad at myself that I let sex continue when we were. When I wasn't feeling it. So I was feeling very used and abused. And that really hurts your self esteem and it damages the relationship because neither of you are getting that connection that you want emotionally. But I think for me, it was really hard to say, oh, I'm gonna go there, because I totally trust him. I totally feel comfortable around him. No, it takes a long time to rebuild that level of trust and comfort. And so we had to work through, like Matt spoke earlier about the, the resentment processing. And I've had to have repeated experiences of, you know, in his sobriety and long term sobriety of not feeling triggered when I'm bringing bad news to him or we get a financial hit or just last night our refrigerator went out. And, you know, I mean, I'm thinking seven years ago this would have been a disaster, that Wednesday night would have been ruined, Thursday would be ruined. You know, I just. But, you know, I still will be like, wow, you know, he's handling it well, but, oh, what's gonna be the straw that breaks the camel's back? So I'm still, even still six years, still a little timid.

Yeah, okay.

But, but the, the process of rebuilding the intimacy you talked about, you know, I want to be wanted. She, like, first of all, I'm a firm believer that in a romantic, committed relationship like marriage, intimacy is really, really important. And it's not the kind of thing that you can just say, okay, we went through this traumatic thing called alcoholism. My spouse is sober now, and we're just going to mutually coexist for the next 40 years until we die and everything's going to be fine. But I'm never, I'm never going there again. I mean, you can do that, but that's not going to be a satisfying recovered relationship. I think intimacy is a part of how we are as humans. It's part of the human condition. And it's, it's important. And that that statement right there is often rejected by people who say, listen, I've been through so much trauma. I don't want to talk about that ever again for the rest of my life. That's a closed door. And I think that's, that's really sad because it is a mutual need, for sure. Now, how we approach that mutual need, that's where all the learning has taken place. And one of the reasons that we're comfortable talking about this, I don't know if I'd say comfortable but willing to talk about it, is because there's so little information that's out there on the intimate side of relationship. Recovery from addiction. But again, it's not like something you can just brush aside and say, oh, we'll be fine without it. I don't believe it is. And so what the stages of that looked like. Yeah, we had the period both in active addiction and early sobriety, where, pardon me for being crass, but I was getting mine. But there was nothing mutual about it. And there was that rejection inherent in her consent. And then. But I would say, okay, especially in sobriety. Right. Because now I'm more aware and more attuned. I would say, okay, that felt physically good, but there was nothing emotionally good about that. Actually, I feel worse now. You know, we're done. And I feel worse than I did beforehand. Okay, so how are we going to figure that out? And so the next stage would be, you know, I would push her to open up enough so that I could create that physical. The. The physical pleasure in her. And so she. She learned how to let us go there. And. And. And she could. She could. So we're. Now we're both being physically satisfied, but neither of us are being emotionally satisfied. And Amber, I was shocked. I'm like, gosh, we're both, you know, it's mutual now. Why isn't that the solution? And so we just had to keep pushing and learning, and it had to get to the point where it wasn't just the final stage, but it was the arousal and even the expectation and the looking forward to it. And this is why it takes years and years. And it's so intertwined with trust, like, they're inextricably linked. And we all know, I think, whether. Whether you've tried to repair the intimate side of your relationship that has been damaged by addiction or not, I think everyone can understand how hard it is to rebuild trust. We've just got years and decades of bad experiences where she trusted me or tried to trust me, and I squashed that. And so getting to the point where she can trust again is really difficult. And that is so tied to intimacy that it's like the same thing for her to. To open up and, you know, feel desire. It's just not a place she was willing to go because the trust wasn't there. And it. Again, just repetition and reading and learning and thinking and talking. And, you know, we've made a lot of progress, but it's certainly. I. I think it's the kind of. The last bastion of this is where the work still is for us in the relationship recovery. I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, it Seems like there's just sort of this theme, just listening to the story, and it's like, Matt, you're trying. You're trying so hard to, like, get it, but you're totally missing the mark.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and both of you are just so exhausted, you know, and frustrated and disappointed. It's like you're trying. You're trying to do the birthday. You're trying to, like, get her interest in sex, but totally not even close to the. And so I'm wondering, Sherry, for you. Did, you know, were you, like, aware of what was going on with you and were you communicating it, or were you not exactly sure what you needed, so you didn't know how to communicate it? Can. Where were you at in this process? And while you answer that, I'm gonna open the door.

Okay. Yeah. I think I didn't really even know what I wanted or. And my desire was so. Was missing. I mean, I. Why would I want this guy right here who has just damaged the relationship with alcohol and pushing, you know, intimacy and sex on me, so I didn't even really know what I wanted. And like, I mentioned earlier, like, if I. Early in our relationship, there were a couple. I have a really good memory. So that's what makes some things really difficult. And they're always negative. Right. Like, we don't always remember all the good stuff, but there were some in times where it was like, this was. We were, like, in our new apartment. We were first moving out, and it was our own, like, real place, no roommates. And I was, like, trying to say, this would be fun. You're like, no, that's not gonna work. It's uncomfortable for me. So I was like, okay. You know, so those things that happen. And it was just as much about me being able to take, like, his suggestion, but it just squashed my desire to be open and adventurous and fun and willing to try things. So that over years and years and years of that complicit. Like, okay, we'll have sex because I don't want you to cause a scene or start an argument. You know, I guess you would cause a scene. Yeah. At home. Like, duty. Yeah. You know, just so then you'll be like, oh, or maybe you can just pass out. You know, and then you're just.

Yeah, often that was your easiest choice. Right?

Just.

You can sit here and argue for three hours. You can have sex, and then I'll go to sleep.

Yeah. So. So I didn't even really know what I wanted. And then when we were trying to talk about it. It was so uncomfortable for me to talk about it. And Matt's always been okay with, like, confrontation and talking and discussing uncomfortable things. Like, I made him have the sex talk with all of our kids because I just couldn't go there. And it still is slightly challenging, so we just had it. But we had to talk about other hard things where I could say what I felt. And he. I had to watch him be able to process it and believe me and even try things my way or agree with me. Wasn't that I needed him to suck up. I just needed him to believe that I had value and worth in the relationship. So then it made it a little easier to bring it in, that conversation of intimacy and romance and sexual desire, because I had been very dismissed in a lot of ways for so many years, that that's part of that trust rebuilding.

One of the best parts of our recovery has been that I have learned how incredibly smart and intuitive my wife is. I have learned how blessed I am because as a drinker, I mean, I was really arrogant. And when we would argue, when it was Sherry's turn to talk, I used that as, like, a refueling period for me to build the next thing I was going to say. I never listened. I don't think I listened to her once in 25 years. And so, you know, it was all about, if I can just convince her how right I am, then everything will be fine, as opposed to actually learning from her. And this carried through when it comes to rebuilding the intimate relationship. I mean, there was a period not even that too terribly long ago, when I thought when she would talk about attraction and I'm just not attracted to you anymore. I thought that meant this, right. That has nothing to do with physical attraction. She may or may not be physically attracted to me, but that's not what attraction is like. It's, how are you as a parent? It's how are you as a listener? It's how are you, you know, are you gonna rub my back when I'm sore at the end of the day? Are you gonna let me sleep in If. If it's been a long week? It's.

And.

And I just had no idea that this had anything to do with attraction.

And so safe with you. Do I feel, yeah, you're gonna take care of me like you care about me. You know, just all those things are such a. I wanted to ask you this right when you were talking about the birthday story. Sherry and I wanted to come back to it because I really related to it. And I think this is something that a lot of women relate to is you said, he had no idea what I wanted or needed or what I would think was fun on a birthday weekend. And it really hurt me that he didn't know that. And I. When you said that, it really resonated with me because it's like a thing. I'm totally guilty of this. As women, we get upset. Not only, you know, did they not do the right thing, but what it says to us is you don't even pay enough attention to me to know what I want for my birthday. Because I think as women, we're sort of culturally trained to pay more attention to the other person's needs. So we don't understand that they don't filter like that. And it feels very personal. You know, it's like, you know, like. Because we automatically do that. So if they don't do it, it's. I was like, I mean, it's just like an insult. Is that a piece of what was going on with you? It's like, not only do I want you to do the right things, but I want you to figure them out. Because you figuring them out and paying attention to me is a big part of what I really want is the paying attention.

Yeah. And I thought, God, it couldn't have been more simple. We had kids that were 18 months to 8 and a half years of age. We had. We had. We had several locations of a bakery, a bread store that we ran. How is that hard that getting away from the children in a quiet place to just relax and focus on one another.

Yeah.

I didn't think it was that hard to figure out. I just wanted to put my.

I'm a regular woman. Yeah.

I mean, we can order pizza and it's here. I don't care. I don't want to do dishes. Like. Like, I don't want to, like, go running my ass off. And we joked about that, like, from our early relationship between kids, we had friends that would. Before they even had kids, they had stressful jobs, but they always went to all inclusives. And we laughed that they vacation and we travel. You know, we like to go and do things. But as we built more things into our lives to make it harder and complicated things. We love our children and our business. I was like, yeah, now I can see why they do that. And I thought, my God, we have two and a half days to like rest up and be ready. But so I thought, well, for one, you're not nearly as smart as you think you are. Was one thing that was going through the back of my head. And Also, you know, 18 months old is not terribly far away from breastfeeding age still. So I'm still in mommy recovery mode and always on. So why could you not see that? I just wanted to relax and be kind of taken care of a little bit and nurtured and pampered. And he already knew at that point in our relationship that I wasn't drinking that much because I was getting. I got terrible hangovers, and I was. I was. I would throw up, you know, and have headaches for days. That. So he knew where I felt and how I felt about alcohol at that time, that it just wasn't for me anymore. So drinking was. Was something I didn't do. So obviously he wasn't paying any attention because he was so selfish.

I don't know why it surprised you, though, that I had the plan and we were going to stick to my plan. We had a much earlier experience when, I think we were still in college, when you planned a birthday weekend surprise for me, and I hijacked that and said, your plans aren't good enough, Sherry. We're gonna. I didn't say that. Right. But that's what I said.

But essentially, that's what I said.

We're gonna do it this way, and it's gonna. It's my birthday, so we should. I mean, I just. I didn't have the end. There's a maturity component, but there's also the alcohol component. I just didn't have the capacity to consider her wants and desires because I thought I knew best.

I just. Yeah. And that was just. That proved to me how dismissive you had been to me throughout that time in our relationship to not even grasp that. What I want or even think that maybe you should ask. When we're in the car, when we're stuck in traffic, you could have asked me what I was looking forward to, and I would have said, I don't know, I'm not there yet. But some relaxing time, some downtime, that would have been. I would have been totally fine telling you, but just that you didn't pay attention.

This is kind of like one layer deeper. But this is probably like the therapist mind, because I'm thinking, you know, like, I talk a lot about how, you know, alcoholics, they'll do these things to test themselves to prove I'm not, you know, they'll stay sober for a week, prove they're not alcoholic. I'm like, well, only alcoholics do that. But anyways. Anyways. But I'm Almost wondering to you when you're feeling like this and you're feeling so just sort of dismissed, not care about. Not paying attention to. I don't know if this was happening or not, Sherry, but I must get the impression that you were so simmering that he wasn't doing that, but you weren't saying it either. And he was, like, failing the test. And so, like, you're. You're almost just, like, watching him fail this test. And what kept you from saying, dude, that's what I want for my birthday? You know, like what? Because it's almost like, were you setting him up to fail somehow? Like, proving your own theory to yourself?

You know, I. I would love to say that part of it was perhaps that. But I remember I started even playing along, like, okay, fine, he wants a party weekend. We'll get a party weekend, and we'll be flirty. And we were telling a little bit of a story on myself, but we're in the gondola going up to the top of Vail Mountain, and he mentioned that we had had a six pack, you know, in a little travel, like, cooler. And I, like, flashed him, and he got so mad. And I was like, I thought, I'm being flirty and fun and hanging out and doing all the things.

Being cool girl or whatever.

Yeah. Like, acting like I'm 19 again, you know, and then here. So then I'm like, God, I can't win for losing. And I did remember telling him, you know, I would love to sit here on this deck and just drink the mimosas and chat. But he was like, nope, we've got plans. We're gonna go do the gondola thing. So I was like, okay. So I don't know if I. I think I was simmering, but I think at that point in the relationship, I was still really eager and hopeful. And I really wanted it to be a good weekend because, you know, as I mentioned, we had four kids in many locations. So I really did want to make this happen. I just was hoping that maybe he could see I'm trying. Why don't you try?

Gotcha. Did you ever say that.

Probably towards the end of when the arguing had really started? Because I. Oh, I. Yeah. Like, I think that next morning after breakfast, you said something that really fired me up. You said, well, if I didn't plan anything, then we would just sit around. And I said, that's what I wanted, but making it seem like I didn't. And that's one of those things that was just a cut at Me and my level of intelligence and my worth. And what I appreciated, what I liked was not worthy of any attention or any time for that.

You were walking a minefield all the time. Being married to an alcoholic, I think marriage is this compact of mutual trust and protection. You can definitely look at it from kind of a traditional patriarchal standpoint of I'm her protector. But I think it's mutual. We're protecting each other, we're trusting each other. We're bonded together. This is the thing. You're my person. I'm your person. There's nobody in the world I trust more than you, and theoretically, there's nobody in the world you trust more than me. That's what it's supposed to be. But then addiction takes hold. And in all of her interactions with people out in the big, bad world, you know, work, you know, friends, neighborhood school kids, all of that, the most unsafe person she ever encounters is me. So I'm supposed to be the mutual protector, and I'm the most dangerous person in her life. So how can she possibly feel comfortable speaking her mind and telling me what she thinks and what she wants and what she likes and what she doesn't like when she knows there's a chance that I'll go along with what she has to say, but there's a chance I'm gonna fly off the handle and create a scene and wreck the weekend. So I think that that's. This is really stuck in my head a lot lately. How can we expect these relationships to flourish and even survive when the person that you're supposed to feel the safest around is the most dangerous person in your life?

How and when did you get that insight, Matt?

It's taken a lot of work, and it's been, you know, relatively recently. We do. A lot of the work that we do is with the loved ones of alcoholics, with the spouses. And I've just heard the same stories over and over to the point where, you know, I have a much greater appreciation for the trauma that you go through. And I'm talking capital T trauma. I'm talking as bad as anything else out there. When you live with an alcoholic in active addiction or in early sobriety, it's not something to be, you know, brushed under the rug. It's, you know, a lot of the spouses that we talk to say, yes, it was bad, but. Right, but, you know, he didn't beat me, and. But, you know, we raised our kids and they were healthy. All the stuff I used to say. Look around you, Sherry. Everything's fine. But the. The nervous system, dysregulation from constantly being on high alert. You shouldn't live your life in fight or flight. And when you're married to an alcoholic, you largely are. And the biological changes that creates the damage it does to other parts of your body. This is like serious, serious stuff. And we as a society, you know, when somebody gets sober, no. Almost nobody ever asks the spouse, how are you doing? They always say, you know, how's Matt doing? Is he still sober? You know, I bet that's hard for him. How's he doing? Nobody ever says, how are you doing? You know, what's your recovery look like? How can I help you? And so I've just. We've just been experienced enough cases of this where we're like, holy cow, this isn't minor. This is a big, big, big deal.

And you kind of learned it not necessarily in the context of your relationship. You figured it out watching, because it is easier to watch sort of. Of third person. Right. And then you see it. You can see it clearer, you know, when you're watching something. So you learned it from working with people? Like, from. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, I. I always. When I think of what it is that we do, you know, I think of myself as a researcher as opposed to, like. Like, I've never called myself an addiction coach. It's not about me telling people what they should do. I'm just constantly. I'm just endlessly curious and want to see how many pieces of the puzzle fit together. And we talk a lot on our podcast and with the people we work with, we talk a lot about universalisms. So this isn't book learning. This isn't. I've read this, and this is what the, you know, the psychology paper says should happen. A universalism is. Well, we've heard it a hundred times out of 110 people we know, so that's fairly common. And that's a trait and a characteristic that we can apply to addiction in a broad sense. And so we're constantly looking for those. And, yeah, I think that kind of just thirst for knowledge. Everyone's got an area they're interested in. And this. I don't know, maybe it's demented or warped or something, but this is the area I'm most interested in. So I learned a lot from the stories of other people and try to put the puzzle pieces together.

Yeah.

And we're very open with our conversations now. We have a weekly talk that's been going on for many, many years. In our relationship. But as we were both in recovery and working on ourselves, as you can tell, Matt likes to talk a lot, so you cannot not talk with him. And he's. He's very curious and his questions, questions, questions, questions. And sometimes, I mean, for very, you know, very good things have happened when he's, like, drew me out of asking questions. As I've gotten more trustworthy, the trust is built back up and felt more comfortable talking to him about it. So there have been lots of things that we've kind of figured out and that we're kind of in the background. And then working with people were like, oh, it is that. Because like you said earlier, I can't lie to him. And if my face just tells the story, I don't have to say anything if I don't believe something. So he will really push and draw it out, and I can feel confident that he's not gonna react poorly. You know, for the last several years, we've been like this, But I think then just hearing it over and over and over again, we're kind of realizing that that is that, you know, like sleeping with the enemy, that sort of. That, you know, taking that title from that movie, like, that's how we as the partner feels a lot of the time. Because the only person that we feel the most unsafe with is the one that we're sleeping next to. So how can you have trust and intimacy and rebuild unless they somehow figure out how to acknowledge that? The addict figures out how to acknowledge the pain and the trauma that we've gone through. Because I think getting that validation, that was the only way that I think that this relationship could have recovered was that he was willing to take the blame, hear the hurt, hear the shame, live through it, work through it. I don't think if. If he was as open, we wouldn't be sitting here.

I find that sometimes people have to get. Because a lot of times families will say, well, when am I going to get my amends? You know, when are they gonna say they're sorry or acknowledge what happened? We. I get that question a lot, you know, and I feel like a lot of times people have to get well enough and build theirself up enough to be able to hear that and do and. And acknowledge that and really be present for someone else. Because I feel like in the early stages of recovery, the person's self esteem and self worth and self confidence is so low, like they. Sometimes they literally don't have the capacity to hear how they've hurt other people and. And the bad things they've done because there are. They're just so fragile that it does take a while to build yourself to the point to be able to hear and acknowledge your spouse without it crumbling you.

Well, I even had to learn that when it came time to try to talk about our sex life and trying to rebuild that intimacy, I had to hear how my behavior and my dismissive attitude and my negative attitude towards what he wanted and the way he was feeling, I had, because I was always ready to say, yeah, well, I only said that because of, you know, X, y, and z. So I had my walls built, and I was defensive, so I had to be able to listen to him to say, this is how it makes me feel when. And I had to be okay with that, too. Even though I wasn't the one that was feeling like I was drinking and shaming him and making him feel in a position that, you know, I had. That he had no choice. You know, I wasn't the dominating force in the relationship, but I had to hear that. I did play a part in neglecting his emotions and dismissing them, even if he was drinking it. You know.

Because a lot of times when you talk about, you know, trust and that kind of thing in recovery, people automatically assume, well, it's the loved one that has to learn, you know, they. They're the one. You know, the addicted person has to work really hard to rebuild their trust. But it's a trust issue on both sides because the addicted person also does not trust the loved one at all. Either. They, you know, they have been hurt. You know, their trust has been broken, because infrequently, you know, the loved ones. I don't. I don't know that you did this, But a lot of them do. They do a lot of sneaking and lying and spying and manipulating, too. They just feel more justified in there. So there's like, a trust break on both sides. Gods. And it's really hard to get two people well enough to let those walls down, to let the healing happen. So it's just so impressive that you guys got there.

Well, you said the word self esteem just a little bit ago. I have come to believe after researching and listening and our own experience for all these years, that self esteem is the key, the absolute pinnacle of the things we need to think about from both sides of it. We have to feel good enough about ourselves to maneuver this and to have this communication. And it applies just in general addiction recovery. It also applies on the intimacy side of it. And I'll just give you a Quick example. I had to learn and believe that my needs for intimacy were justified. That I wasn't just a horny man who should be ashamed of his horniness, but that, yes, this is okay to desire that intimate connection. And once I got there, then I was able to communicate it in a way that Sherry could understand and she could come along with me and say, okay, you're right. Intimacy is an important part of relationship. You're not just this horny dude that wants it more than I do. And when we could recognize that each other's starting points were both legitimate. It's okay that I think intimacy is important, but it's also okay that you have been crushed by what we've been doing for the last couple of decades. We can meet in the middle now. We can work toward that, as opposed to just rejecting each other wholeheartedly and saying, you're not trying hard enough and you're trying too hard. Let's try to find some common ground. And so, again, I just don't think there's anything more important when it comes to recovery. And I don't think this is just addiction. I think this is any kind of trauma or kind of life event. There's nothing more important than that self esteem component. And so on the just kind of pure addiction side of that, that meant I had to separate the addiction from me as a human being. And some of that came naturally with time, right? I could say, look, I don't have the desire to call you nasty names. It's not like I am holding back that desire. The person who used to do that, it was clearly the addict. Because, you know, if I was suppressing that need to call you gross, horrible things, then I'd be like, oh, I'm just a bad person, you know, kind of inherently. But because that, that all went away in, in long term sobriety, I could separate it and say, yeah, all those things. Let's talk about your pastor, let's talk about your 40th birthday. Let's talk about how badly that went. Because that's not the human being that I am anymore. And I can look at that, you know, kind of taking a step back without feeling bad about myself, doing so, because not feeling bad about myself as we relive and acknowledge the truth of past events, that's the only way my self esteem can grow. And you know, the difference between self esteem and arrogance is huge and really, really important. But I can feel good about myself enough to have these conversations so that hopefully you'll feel good about the outcome.

I Love that. We are getting a lot of questions over here, and it's not very often that we get a couple, two people willing to be so open and talk about these things. So I do not want to, like, make our viewers and listeners miss out on this, like, super good opportunity. Is it okay if they ask you some questions? Because I see one right now that Matt, I already know you need to answer, and I might just. I don't know if you guys can see them, but if there's. You see chat on your screen.

Yeah.

If you hit it, you'll see all the comments that are coming.

All right, let's see. Comments, maybe. Oh, yeah, here we go.

Here's one. I'm going to pop it right here on the screen from Joy. And the reason I'm going to hop this over here to Matt is because he hasn't said this yet as a result of all this stuff that went on. You went back to school to study these things, right?

Yeah, I'm in a master's degree program in sexual health at the University of Minnesota. Not halfway through.

So this question is for you. Pop quiz.

Yeah. In multiple addictions, it's common to mistake intensity of sex drive is intimacy. Oh, you know, absolutely. You know, alcohol poured fuel on the fire. Right. And a lot of what we've talked about, when I talk about emotional intimacy and how important that is to me now, when I was actively drinking, I didn't even understand that concept. And so it was. It was more, more. More of everything. More alcohol, you know, even more, you know, more work, more, you know, any entertainment. Just more, more, more of everything. And sex certainly fell into that category. I mean, this is why, you know, and I might be going too far with this, but I don't think alcohol is good for anybody, even if you're a moderate drinker. Like, it's a toxin. And I mean, think. Think about what a buzz is. Think about what, like, what we consider it, what we consider moderate and acceptable drinking. It's toxifying your brain so that it doesn't work quite right. That's what a buzz is. Right.

And so, yeah, yeah.

So when we. We use this substance and then we have negative consequences, like, you know, the. The intensity of desire for sex elevates, and we, you know, that's just inherently a bad thing. So there's no question that alcohol, again, just like pouring fuel on the fire, it's bad.

Right. And I like that you said it. It's really not good for anyone. People think, oh, there are these, like, alcoholic people out There they can't control their alcohol, and then there's the rest of us. I'm like, no, dude, if you pour addictive substance in someone's brain long enough, they're going to get addicted. I don't care who you are. And now some might get there faster than others, but it's just biology. That's just what's going to happen.

And it's going to have negative consequences even before or, you know, different. Different from addiction. You know, you mentioned it earlier, but when. Whenever somebody is spending time trying to determine whether or not they're an alcoholic, I think you've already got your answer. Like, if that's. If that's a question you're exploring, I always say that, you know, that you would be better served with alcohol. Not in your life. If alcohol is causing negative consequences, it can be big negative consequences or small ones. And if you think about alcohol when you're not drinking, if those two things are present in your life, you'd be better, better served without it. Right?

Because the thing that you said in this whole talk that literally hit my brain the strongest as far as, okay, is there alcohol? Like, like, you talked about. You talked about everything. But the. The. When I knew that you were for real was when you said about the. The birthday weekend, and you said, oh, no, I hadn't drank on the drive up because I had to get at this right sweet spot. And I knew if I had too much alcohol, I'd be over the sweet spot. Not enough alcohol. And. And the fact that you're having to, like, have, like, do blood alcohol math and, like, think about it so hard and find the sweet spot. What? That's when I knew, because that is alcoholism. It's the preoccupation. It's the, like, having to work so freaking hard at it. It's the amount of mental space that it takes. Yeah, I was like, that's it right there.

The mental gymnastics in active addiction and in early sobriety is just overwhelming. It's incredible.

Exhausting.

Exhausting. That's right.

And it's this just constant try to hit the sweet sweet spot, never ending, like, quest. And then always sort of overshooting it, you know, like, sweet spots here. It's like, damn, I miss it again tomorrow and we'll get it, you know, like, and it's just, like, constant. And that's, you know, that's what it feels like inside. And so for the partner to be like, why aren't you paying attention to me, dude? They're doing, like, blood alcohol math. They're figuring out, like, really complicated, hard things, and how can I get in the house? And she not know that I'm drunk. And, you know, like, their mind is so busy. That's why they don't know what you want for your birthday.

Exactly. I didn't understand that. Also, I have to just throw out there, I think, because there's a lot of people in my position that don't understand the hold that alcohol had on him for years. I'd be like, why can't you just drink like a normal person? Well, hindsight's 20 20, but also, it did not affect me the way it affected him. So for me to even try to understand alcoholic brain, I mean, maybe some people want to. I also had to just say, I can't understand because I'm not you. And I had to be okay with that. I had to let him say, I have these feelings about it. And I think that letting him be an individual and say, okay, that's how you feel about it. I maybe have something that he doesn't quite understand and that we have. That we have the confidence now to be okay with that for one another. Because. Because it would be years of him trying to explain, you know, how great it is, how great alcohol is. But I wasn't getting it, so I didn't. And I had to be like, I don't get it. But I am going to respect and appreciate how this has a hold on you, because I kept thinking, why can't you just quit? We've got great. We've got a great life. Why don't you just quit?

Yeah, this. This experience has made us both have a ton of empathy for other people with other struggles, whatever they may be. Just because my brain works differently than yours doesn't mean you're not really struggling with something. And so we've got a lot of appreciation for, you know, different challenges people face.

Here's a question from Paulina for Sherry. What best helped you acknowledge and honor the trauma you went through by living with and loving an alcoholic?

That's a good one.

That is. I. I feel like it was a lot, and I feel like. Like not everybody is maybe as. As lucky as we are in kind of the setup for this. One of the things which is kind of out there that Matt did a year after you were sober, you wrote this coming out letter. You had been trying for 10 years, and there were people that were a little bit tuned in to what was going on. We had a couple of couple friends that knew your struggles and that were Empathetic. But you wrote this email. You sent it out to everybody in your contact list, and it was terrifying. He just told everybody he was an alcoholic, he'd quit for a year. I don't even remember what all was in it, but I had several people reach out to me, and I know a lot of people reached out to him, and that made me feel very good. That reached out to me and either shared that they were living that same life, which was. Which was someone that I knew. And I was just shocked. And I was so mad for her. I wasn't mad for myself that I, you know, I was mad for her that she had to live this. So I guess, you know, I was like, oh, I'm much tougher than this, and I can handle it all. But then when a friend of mine, she'd been, like, kind of fallen out of our lives a little bit, and she was a social worker, and she approached me and just was just there for me and was like, you know, I want you to understand that you've gone through a lot, and don't ever forget that. And, you know, try to be true to yourself. It was a very, you know, it was a very nice, intense conversation we had. We haven't, like, stayed close or anything. Our kids have kind of grown apart, and then she lives in a different part of town, so I don't see her. But it was. It was nice to have someone validate that kind of early on to feel seen and heard. Yeah.

And what you needed this whole time.

Exactly. And then when I did reach out and got help from a counselor, I just. I found one that did work with alcohol addiction and other types of addiction from both the standpoint that he and his partner were both addicts, so he kind of had both sides. So I think that we just. I just lucked out in finding the right therapist at the right time. And then, honestly, I think because Matt's so curious and with. Is just has that question or brain, he just wanted to learn a lot more. And that really helped because he had the understanding that there was a lot of work I think, you know, that needed to be done. But we're talking, like, four years. Three. Three or four years into his sobriety. And the work that we do with our Echoes of Recovery group, that's that I know I'm not alone anymore.

It's one of the things we love so much about you, Amber. You treat the family as a whole organism. Even in areas in addiction recovery where they do have a family program, often it's just Like a kind of a side note, like a, hey, we feel pressured to treat the family or to acknowledge the family.

You actually, the insurance company requires they do some kind of family education. Yeah, that's why it happens. And it really is like a few hours of, like, a brain talk, which is helpful. I've done the brain talk, but there's so much more.

Well, you.

You.

You treat the family as an organism, and you're one of the few people that do that. And that's why we love you. And I think that's probably why people a of lot of these people love you, too.

All right, Sher, you're like a superstar here. You're getting all the questions. Here's you another one from Michelle. Sherry, as a mom, do you feel the stress that you constantly had to be the guardian of your children?

Yeah, I was definitely the protector. And you could tell this is a pain point.

And I feel so guilty.

I feel really guilty doing that, keeping the kids away from their dad when he would be drinking. And that was stressful. And it made me not want to go and hang out with friends anytime that I did have friends that could meet up during the daytime because most of the time Matt worked at our businesses, and I just worked a couple of times, but it was worry towards the end of my shift, and I would come home wondering what condition he would be in. That was a lot of stress, and that was a lot of anger. And that was something that, like, I think really made me really upset that he in sobriety, couldn't figure out why I carried that guilt. And he, early on, did not understand that the kids were affected by that. Because my behavior, you know, I couldn't hide all of the shame and pain and the argument and the stress that had happened the night before from them, it would leak out and leak over. And kids are very intuitive, and they would understand when there was arguments without even hearing it, you know, like at night.

So.

One of the things that kind of helped me move through that was our children were older. I think that our oldest was 16 and a half or 17 and then on down. And I could not move past. I was kind of at a stuck point at once in our recovery. And I said, you, we need to talk to the kids about this more, and they need to tell you, you know, what they experienced and what they felt. And because he was not understanding that, the kids needed to have at least a chance to say a little bit and have an open door. And so we had a family meeting, and the oldest one is a Girl, and she kind of let him have it. And second one was a couple years younger than her, and he just kind of held her and held his, you know, because he had tried a couple times to speak up when Matt was drunk and behaving poorly, and it didn't end well. He got snapped at or, you know, yelled at. So he kind of always just kind of been closed off. And the third child, he was probably about what, like 10 at that time, but he had. He has really good hearing, and he just was always hearing the. The. You know, the whisper. The whisper fights, as we called them. He could hear that and then just the walking around at the house and wondering what was going on. And so I said, you know, they didn't know what was going on, so I'm sure I can only imagine what was running through their head. And our youngest, he didn't hear a lot or didn't experience a lot. He has a hearing loss. So I think because he was such a sound sleeper, and then he would take his hearing aids out at night to sleep, he didn't hear some of this stuff, but he definitely felt the tension and the anxiety, and it made him react in a way that he doesn't remember. But he has certain behavior patterns that I think are very, very familiar of children, adult children, of alcoholics. So we had this family conversation and yeah, that was one way that I kind of let go of that I could move forward because I felt like the kids knew that they were in a safe space to talk to us about anything. And then it's gotten better. But I had to have that. That before I could go anywhere, because if he wasn't going to acknowledge that, then I don't know if we could have continued on. Because I. There was a lot that I did.

Right. The. One of the hardest burdens I think the spouse carries is constant guilt. You feel guilty for staying. Am I, you know, am I enabling? Am I screwing up my kids? Am I being weak because I'm letting them do this? And then you feel guilty for going, you know, I. Did I abandon him when he was sick and he needed me? Am I ruining my children by taking their. In a way. And it's like you're constantly stuck in this no win situation, and it's just awful. And those are the really hard decisions. And. And on the other side of that, because I usually work with. I did the work with the addictive spouse, they rarely see how it affects the kids. Kids. And what they do see, they almost always tell me, well, it's My spouse turning them against me. Like, they don't. You know, they. If their kid is saying something to them about it, then they say, well, it's because their mom is, like, putting that in their head. And it's very difficult conversation to have.

Yeah, There's a gender component to this that I. I think gets glossed over a lot. And it's not universal. There are cases that are different from this, but the mama is a nurturer in a way that me, the father, can't understand or doesn't have that natural, instinctive, nurturing component to us. And, I mean, that continues today. Our kids will be. I mean, they're older now. Right? And they'll be out of the house. They're teenagers. They're not like grown adults. Well, some of them are, but they'll be out of the house. And while they're gone, I won't think about them at all. And Sherry will come in and wherever I happen to be sitting and working, and she'll say, it's cold out. I hope they. I hope they brought a sweatshirt with them. And I'm like, oh, my God, I wouldn't have thought that in a million years. And so, like, dealing with that and experiencing that in a normal, healthy way helps me see how hard that was for her when there was nothing normal or healthy about it. When we were, like I said, whisper fighting, and one of them could hear, I would think, well, they can't hear what we're saying. So. So what's the big deal? And she would know, oh, no, they can feel the tension. And we're, like, destroying. Crushing their young lives. And no concept of that.

Excuse me. I think that because. So I grew up with my parents divorced. I was 2 when my parents got divorced. My sister was 8. My father was an alcoholic. So I see in the chats, there was like that, you know, and a lot. We experienced a lot like that, should I stay or should I go? Which is better for the kids. So I had that guilt of not wanting to break up the family because I grew up in a broken home. But I think that the broken home was better for my mom and to get us out, because looking back, you don't know it. As a kid, looking back, my mom couldn't have dealt with some of the stuff that was going on with my dad because there was a physical abuse in our relationship. It wasn't like that. And Matt wasn't such a. A heavy, heavy drinker a lot of the time or every. Every day of the week. And those sort of things that I kind of had to manage. Excuse me. Like, I kind of had to, like, weigh the good and the bad. And so I would think about the things that he did with the kids that were really good and that he really did have a good influence and role model on it. It was just maybe that once a month when he was drinking out of control. But I weighed my options and talked to my mom and talked to his parents over the course of the years and decided how much could they tolerate? So I started kind of talking to the kids a little bit. I tried really hard not to degrade their dad and. And say, I just said, dad's drinking too much tonight. And when he drinks like this, it's really hard for him to behave. Right. And I'll never, like, put you in a situation where, you know you're in harm's way. That was really scary to have to do. But I feel like I did talk to them about alcohol or, like, what happened the night before or that we're going to be okay and be reassuring. Where I grew up and my dad would come back to our house, maybe he would show up drunk on the Friday night when he was supposed to pick us up for the weekend, and there would be arguments. My mom was very negative about it, and she used, like, really derogatory words. Like she would say, oh, he's just a drunk, and he's, you know, booze. And just the way she would, like, imply those things made me really aware that I was not going to use that. And I wasn't so much on board at the time when I was saying that. That alcoholism is a disease. But I just kind of. I guess intuitively kind of used it like it was poisoning him tonight because, you know, he. He and his family, they drank socially and, you know, happy hours and stuff. So I didn't want them to grow up negatively thinking about people who drank alcohol.

Right. It's a fine line. Right? It's a fine line between acknowledging what they're seeing is true. Because sometimes parents try to protect by saying, well, you know, that's your dad. He loves you, you know, and that can feel very invalidating, you know, and sometimes parents try to protect by telling them, oh, no, like, it's not really happening what you're seeing. It's gaslighting. It's an effort to protect. And that's not helpful. And it's not helpful, like you said, to talk derogatory to them, but you have to acknowledge it and sit. Fine line.

You. You absolutely have to communicate age Appropriate figuring out exactly how you're going to do it. Probably going to be some of the hardest decisions you'll make in your life. But you can't sweep it under the rug. It's got to be addressed for the long term success as a human adult of your children. It has to be addressed.

All right, let's get. There's a couple of other questions and I don't want our viewers to miss out, so I'm going to Rapid fire. Catherine Said says, how do you separate the alcoholic from experiencing rejection when you don't want to be with them, when they're intoxicated or high? Is that possible?

Say it again. I'm sorry.

Basically, how do you not hurt their feelings? Like, I don't want to mess with you tonight. That's my translation.

Yeah, well, you know, I'll, I'll say one thing about that. We say again, sobriety doesn't fix anything, but it's a prerequisite. There's just gonna be hurt feelings as long as the, the person's still drinking. I don't think there is a way to avoid it. I mean, alcohol's gotta go away. Then you can start to. To work and repair.

Yeah, we just dealt with alcohol. But I know, you know, my sister and her experience too. Like if they were in a mood and they wanted, you know, her husband wanted to be around her, but she would try to politely step out, that there was no winning with it. And for diabolical, you know, so I just, you know, I just tried to avoid our family room that was in the basement a lot of the times and busy myself with other things. And I don't, I don't know if he. I don't know if there's ever any way I could have said, no, I don't want to be around you tonight without him, you know, kind of chasing me down. Be like, why? And wanting to talk about it, which would then end in an argument.

It.

Yep, somebody's upset. No matter what your decision, no matter how you handle that situation, I mean.

I think it's gonna be a little hurtful. I mean, I think they're more hurtful ways and less. Yeah, you can say, you know, I'm just, I'm just not attracted to you the same way when you're drinking. And I mean, that's gonna sting, but it's not going to sting as bad as some other ways you could say. But I do think, I mean, sometimes you can't. So that is a natural consequence of the addiction. Yeah, they're not as attractive, and it is going to hurt. So I think, you know, trying to avoid it might be like plan A and then coming out and saying it might be plan B. That's supposed me this one. If you're willing to share what ages of your children currently, and can you discuss what addiction has manifested in your family? Well, you sort of answered some of that.

So we have a daughter who's 21 or will be 21 at the end of May, and we are not naive thinking that our children will never, ever drink or try things. I think she, for the most part, doesn't have alcohol in her life regularly. She is around people that, you know, will drink at parties and stuff. She's had to get therapy because she has a lot of anxiety issues. And she's told us recently that when she was little, she used to think if, you know, she. She has expressed that she took on a lot of the burden, thinking that she somehow was causing him to drink. If she didn't clean her room well enough, or if she asked to go and hang out with a friend, she was afraid that that was gonna make him drink or over drink and act poorly. So she took on a lot of that responsibility. And then just being the oldest, I think she felt very responsible. And she kind of felt like she kind of had that little bit of. I don't want to say savior complex, but trying to help people who were in a bad situation.

She always sought out friends that were broken, thinking she could fix them.

Yeah. So she. And then it was almost like she rebelled a little bit in some ways. You know, when she started middle school and there was middle school drama, she just cut people out of her life. And she has done that a little bit more, I think, instinctually, as she went through high school and college, and we kind of had a discussion about it. She had a boyfriend that they just maybe wanted to be friends again. And there was some behavior patterns she didn't really like, but he was diagnosed with OCD and thought, well, maybe this is it. And I said, well, it doesn't hurt to go back and try to give somebody a second chance just to be a friend. I think that was a hard step for her because I feel like after she cut them out of her life, she really just wanted them to be done. But I said, you know, look what has happened with your dad. What if we had gotten divorced? You never know, like, where we would end up. So I think that it's kind of weird that she either tried to find the broken people to fix or Just was like cutting off. But I think with therapy and maturity and us, she knows she can talk to us. I think she's really gotten herself in a really healthy place.

One of the big drivers for us is to end the cycle. And our participation in that, we think is making sobriety a valid option. When I was growing up, sobriety wasn't a valid option. Alcohol was tied to manliness and career success and being a spouse, it was just ever present. And so the idea that I wouldn't drink never entered my mind. For us, not only as a. I hope, as an attractive and possibly preferable option, but they underwent too much trauma in their childhood for us to break the cycle alone. They're gonna have to do a lot of the heavy lifting too. They've. They've been through a lot. We, you know, I used to tease the boys a lot in. In what I thought was a loving way, but that's hurtful when you're getting teased all the time and, and being driven academically, athletically, all that. Well, when you're constantly being driven, you're gonna look for a way to kind of self medicate that and soothe. And alcohol is an option for soothing. And so we've changed the way we parent completely. You know, we. We tell our kids all the time we love you and we're proud of you because you are you, not because of what you've accomplished and. But we started too late. Right? They've already had some impact, so they're. They're gonna have to carry on our work to bring. Break the cycle so that their kids hopefully can be healthy.

Yeah, sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say, and I think like, with our youngest, even though he didn't remember a lot of the trauma and arguments that could be overheard, he has a lot of anxiety and nervousness and some like OCD or ADHD tendencies that, that, you know, we. We're trying to really watch and keep hold on. He just turned 13, but I also know that puberty can really elevate those things. But he has outbursts of anger. He has a hard time kind of controlling his feelings and temperament and always has, but he's always been more bonded to Matt and I. I don't know if that was something. Just the level of stress at the time that I was pregnant with him and that he was. Was born in his formative years, that was some of the worst of our relationship. So I think that he will definitely be seeking a lot more support and therapy and managing some of those issues. And we also worry that because he didn't see the alcohol and the impact necessarily that maybe he might try to be a self soother later on with something. And we've seen like a little bit of technology addiction that he could get really sucked into that. So that's a worry for our young.

As you can see, we think and talk a lot about this. The, the impact on the kids is at the top of the priority list at this point.

Episode on your podcast about this that I've, I've heard and listened to. So if you guys want to hear more from Matt and Jerry, definitely check out their podcast. It's called Untoxicated. But we're not done yet. We still have another question or two. Val says how would you suggest approaching a situation where the alcoholics only six months sober and has already stopped going to needles?

Well, that's, that's tough. I mean the recovery process in my humble opinion is never ending. We can get, we can get, you know, healthier as we go, but it, at some point it becomes not about alcohol anymore and it's just about self growth. And I'm a bit big believer that you're either growing or you're dying. There ain't no third direction, to quote one of my favorite movies, Tommy Boy. But, but if you've, if you've stopped going to meetings and you've replaced that with other something else like therapy or there's some other kind of group connection that you're participating in, then that's great. But if you stop going to meetings because you think you're fixed after six months, you're not. Now the tricky part is as a spouse, you can't fix your husband. Like that's not in the cards. So, you know, detachment is a technique that is sometimes effective. It certainly was effective for us when Sherry stopped listening to me and stopped wanting to hear about my profound pontifications about how healthy I am now, that was, that was helpful to me because, you know, it caused enough pain that I looked for the solution. But nagging them and begging them to go to meetings, I don't think that's going to be successful. The biggest mindset shift for me is I had to recognize that growth is a forever thing. And growth might, for right now, that might mean quitting alcohol, but eventually growth just means what's on the next horizon. What's on the next horizon? How can I become a better human human being because stagnation or thinking that I've conquered everything, that's certainly not going to, not going to help.

I love that You, I love that you put it that way, Matt, because I, I 100% agree with you. As long as you're growing, you know, keep yourself connected to whatever helps you be your best self. And sometimes people can hear that easier because a lot of times when people are in early recovery, this is sort of how it's understandable. Maybe not the best thought, but they want to sort of put that chapter behind them.

Yeah.

And it's an understandable feeling, but it's scary to hear or think that they think that because you think, oh my gosh, if they put it behind them, it's coming back. And there's a little truth in that. But something that people can usually hear is okay. But what helps you be your best you, whatever that is, whether you want to study this or grow in this way or take on this new project, something so that you, you are focused on you, so that you're growing and being a better person. Because that's going to keep you busy, it's going to keep you distracted, it's going to give you better serotonin, which protects you from addiction. It just helps in so many ways. And sometimes people can hear that easier than like been. You gotta go to your meetings, you know, like. Because that feels like an insult in some ways. Kind of like asking someone, did you take your medicine? You know, you may be trying to be helpful, but it's not helpful. You know, it feels like, you know, you're saying something negative. So it's a, it's a tightrope as the spouse to walk. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Maybe I was just saying maybe they stopped going to meetings after six months because it wasn't the right group for them within the aa, you know, so maybe even it's just checking out a different option other than AA or finding a different group too, because sometimes that, that, that connection, they're not getting there. So it's unfulfilling and it's not building up their self esteem because we've heard that from people. It was like, you know, my spouse had to try different groups within AA community or had to try something completely different, like smart recruiter.

That's funny, because I was. That was exactly what I was gonna add. You're right.

It's.

It's really interesting.

Or even listening. Like I tell a lot of people who don't want to go to meetings for various reasons. We listen to a podcast every day, some people. And I'm actually, I would consider myself one of these people. I do better by learning if I've got A problem. I want to read everything about it. I want to listen to everything about it. I want to learn everything about it. I need to study it one way. It's always. I don't really need to like talk about it with 50 people. I gotta almost understand it to be able to talk about it with 50 people. So some people feel like, no, you gotta talk about it with like your AA friends. And some people are like that. But there are different ways people learn, grow and heal. And so I encourage people to find their way. And there's a hundred ways to do it. And people are usually a little more open though, you know, whatever way it is for you. So find alternatives that the person might be more open to, I guess is what I would say.

Yeah, yeah. Matt never went to groups. He was bibliotherapy that he's like you, Amber. He has to learn about it.

And what.

But there was a couple connection component in that for me that a lot of people don't understand. Like, I'll have AAA old timer say, you did what you read a lot. Well, we'll save a seat for you at AAA for when you relapse. Like, they have no faith in this. But you know Caroline Knapp, who has written one of the best selling quit lit books, drinking A Love Story, it's titled. That was my favorite. I've read that a dozen times. I mean, I felt like she was my sister by the time I got done reading the that a few times. She'd been dead for 10 years by the time I picked up that book. But I felt like we were best friends. And so there is a connection available even in that kind of isolated research and learning.

Understood?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Like, you get me. Oh my gosh. Like there is a feeling of that. Yeah, absolutely. Even more powerfully because I'm just gonna. For the family. Because we have a lot of you that listen. I'm a big fan of all types of recovery groups. I am a huge fan of 12 Steps. But. But I'm also one of the things that helps clients is for me to be able to say, yeah, there are some negatives, right? You go to the meetings, you hear the same dang things 50 times. It's the same two people that talk the whole time. It reminds you. Sometimes it makes you want to drink. I mean, these are legitimate things. And I'm a big 12 step fan. I love go. I like if I want to go, I like to go to a speaker meeting. Because like I said, I like to learn. I like to absorb that Helps me. But there are some reasons why someone might not want to go to meetings that doesn't. That don't necessarily mean it's because they want to drink, but that's what it feels like on the other side. Like, oh, you know, it's the best time. They're just, you know, planning to relapse or whatever it could be, but it doesn't have to be.

Yeah. The one that scares me, though, Amber, is when they say, oh, well, you know, I've been in recovery six months. I went to meetings.

I got it.

Oh, yeah, I got it. Oh, got it. Yeah.

That's not good. I'm agreeing that when. When I have clients that tell me things like that, that scares me. When I have clients that say, oh, my God, ever I want to drink so bad yesterday, I'm like, all right, good. That means, you know, that this is hard. You better stay focused on it. Right?

That's right.

Exactly. Yeah. All right, guys, thank you so much. Will you guys tell everybody where to find you? Are there other places to look? How do they find your podcast? Where is it? How can they get more from you guys?

So our podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, as they say. It's called the Intoxicated Podcast, and so that. That's a great place to start. Our book is called Sober Evolution. Just we cram two words together into one. So if you look for sober evolution.com, you'll find all of our resources, the different programs we run, the blog. You can link to the podcast from there. So that. That'd be the best way to find more about us.

And I will put the link to your website in the description and also in the comments, too. So for those of you who are looking, thank you guys again. And we'll be back next Thursday at 1 Eastern.

Thanks for having us, Amber.