Day 479

Wednesday

Just wanted to share some joy.

After almost a month of sobriety thanks to Dry January, C told me that he’s thinking about moderating, admitting that 8-10 drinks/night was probably too much. His hope is to stay dry during the week and drink moderately on weekend.

This is HUGE!!!!!!!

My heart is so happy right now. His drinking was hurting our family and our relationship to such an extent that I was starting to think about divorce, but now I have hope.

Who knows how this will play out, whether he’ll stay committed to this idea (he seemed shaky about it initially) or whether he’ll have more success than I did when moderating, but the important part is that he’s admitting his drinking was unhealthy and he wants to do something about it.

He’s also talking about taking up an exercise regimen, and was receptive when I shared my own experience on the road to overall healthy life improvements post-quitting. All of this is without any prompting from me, which is HUGE!!!!

I have stayed as quiet as I possibly could since quitting, knowing that this had to be MY journey, alone, that had nothing to do with him… and that I needed to leave him 100% alone if I could expect him to make any change himself. Any nagging or complaining on my part would only make that more difficult for him. And I can’t say I’ve been completely successful (I admit to rolling my eyes more than once when he forgot a conversation – a big pet peeve for me – or was unable to get through a whole TV show without passing out etc), but overall, I’ve worked very hard at staying quiet.

And it’s paying off. Big lesson for me there.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut.