Reconnecting After Sobriety

I think one of the scariest things about getting sober was not knowing how it would affect my relationships. How to show up in relationships where alcohol had always been the liaison, the common interest, the eraser of differences, the thing that made intimacy seem easy. 

The thing I learned was that true intimacy isn’t an “easy” thing to achieve. In the stark light of morning, any feigned closeness is always revealed to be a harsh, distant divide. Feeling raw and vulnerable again, we retreat back into ourselves to hide - quiet, tired, and perhaps lonelier than if we’d never pretended in the first place. 

Noah and I met when he was 22 and I was 24. We both loved to party really hard. This continued well into our 30’s. 

We enabled each other. We took care of each other. We hurt each other. We forgave each other. We grew up together. We grieved together. I supported him when he was going to school. He supported me when I quit my job to start my own business. 

I’ve gone through a lot of change in the last five years. And while Noah’s been unimaginably patient and supportive in all my decisions, our interests have started to diverge. He’s not into the things I’m into, I’m not into the things he’s into. 

This gave me a ton of anxiety during the first few months of sobriety. Of course, I was just experiencing a ton of anxiety overall during that time. I was scared and deeply uncomfortable to see people I’d used to drink a lot with. It was like I had gained back my teenage awkwardness and shyness. Unsure how to behave or what to say. 

My mind jumped to all the what if’s. What if this is it? What if this is what drives us apart? What if this was the glue that had kept us together all these years? 

I know, looking back, this fear had been one of the reasons that had kept me for a long time from voicing out loud that I wanted to stop drinking for good. Up until then it had sounded like, “I just need to cut back. No more hard alcohol. I’ll limit myself to 2 drinks maximum. I’ll only drink on weekends. I’ll only drink one day a week.” And so on. So many concessions. So many “compromises” to avoid the change that I knew I wanted, and needed. 

Change is hard. Uncertainty is hard. It’s hard to change our habits because no matter how dysfunctional, they feel safe. We know exactly where the path leads, where we end up. We know the outcome. It becomes effortless to hurt ourselves. Thoughtless. And it's the same thoughtlessness that begins to hurt those around us. It’s this part that is hardest to swallow. It’s this part that might eventually, finally, be the driver to change. 

I changed because the pain of staying the same was greater than the pain of changing. I think that’s usually how it goes, for many. And like everything else we’d faced together, we chose to be softer with each other during the hardest times. For Noah that meant giving me a ton of space to process my backlog of numbed and suppressed emotions that came rushing to the surface during those first months of being sober. For me that meant not panicking and reacting to every anxious thought about us that came up. Sometimes this meant really looking at my thoughts and saying, “Is this true? Or is this a story I’m telling myself? Does this feel like a loving thought? Or is this a fearful thought, trying to protect me?” Like everything else, the intensity dampened with time. And as we fell into a new routine, as I grew more comfortable in my new skin, as he allowed and made room for yet another shift in my way of thinking, and being, we fell into each other again.  

How much of ourselves is shaped by being each other’s home for the last 14 years? We were like children when we met. He taught me how to forgive myself. Every time I thought he’d leave me for my imperfections he held me closer. He found stability for the first time in the home we built. I can still see the chaos of his past in his aversion to stillness. He can still see the frustration in my impatience to achieve. Both of us being gentler around each other’s wounds that we can’t change, but only to allow and support as we heal on our own time.

One of the most beautiful things I’ve learned from Noah is how to fully accept things as they are. To remain steadfast in one’s own faith in oneself. To be resilient to change because of his own resourcefulness, intelligence, and relentless optimism. The safety this has brought into my heart to know that I can choose to make changes, I can be imperfect, I can have all these wild, illogical thoughts and still, what remains is the same love we chose again and again, year after year, to be in.