I married an addict but I am not embarrassed or ashamed about it. My story with Turbo started around 2009 when he added me on a social media app. We chatted a lot about life but never thought about anything romantic. We chatted on and off as friends for years and even though only about 10 miles separated us, we never met in person. One day in 2014 after a stressful day and the worst pickup line from Turbo, I finally agreed to meet him. I told him that because he had made my day worse he was going to buy me a drink from a bar near his house. We dated for a short time, got engaged and got married. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early days I did drink with him. I was fairly naive about the world and did not realize what was going on with Turbo. In my mind addicts did not have jobs, cars, a place to live, a career, etc. I am embarrassed to admit this but I thought addicts were only people who lived under bridges or in homeless tent cities. My marriage eventually gave me a reality check. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was raised in a fairly sheltered world of private schools, limited exposure to pop culture, and I was hyper focused on doing the right thing which meant staying away from drugs. The only addicts I was ever exposed to were the ones who had already ruined their lives or hit bottom. That led me to be blind to people who were functioning addicts or addicts in the early\/middle stages of addiction. My parents also never had \u201creal\u201d chats with me about addiction, how it happened, how to spot it, etc. I don\u2019t blame them for that because I am not even sure they knew the realities of addiction. Some people ask if I would have figured it out if we had dated longer and the real answer is no, because I did not know what I was looking at and never would have learned if I had not lived it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking back I cannot point to a moment when I realized \u201cmy husband is an addict.\u201d There were many things over the years that happened such as; hiding alcohol, lying about substance use, blackouts which led to him gas lighting me, his manipulative behavior, his lying, and his unwillingness to stop using substances\/stop drinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back maybe if I was better at setting boundaries I would have realized more red flags but I cannot drive myself crazy focusing on could have and should have moments. I have also learned to focus on the fact that addiction is a disease. My husband has a disease and the symptoms of that disease can easily cause issues in relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am thankful today that we have been able to get to a place of healing and recovery. It was not easy and it is not always easy because dealing with someone in active addiction is miserable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

• Coco <\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I married an addict but I am not embarrassed or ashamed about it. My story with Turbo started around 2009 when he added me on a social media app. We chatted a lot about life but never thought about anything romantic. We chatted on and off as friends for years and even though only about … <\/p>\n

  Read more “I “accidentally” married an addict”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,12,16,14,13,15,10],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-addiction","tag-drug-addiction","tag-functioning-addict","tag-married-to-an-addict","tag-recovering-addict","tag-relationships-with-addicts","tag-sobriety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharingourrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}