How I Saved My Marriage

Many factors came into play when it came to saving my marriage. I had to ask myself is my marriage worth saving? Was I only staying married because I had children? Did I truly love my husband unconditionally and want to spend the rest of my time here on earth with him. Was I truly happy with this him? Did he make me smile, make me laugh, support my decisions, my hopes, my dreams and most important was he honest with me?

Obviously, I answered, "yes" to all of the above, as did my husband. We then began the journey to have our marriage saved and with it build a future, where we were both happy, content, fulfilled and looked forward to our time together as a husband and wife, also as parents.

This was a very long journey we survived through. My husband was addicted to OxyContin pills. I did not know this until it was to the point where it was almost too late. I believed he had sleep apnea and made excuses for his constantly falling asleep, even into his food. When I found out he was an addict my initial reaction was anger. We had two children and I was angry that he put them, as well as me through this nightmare. He knew that he had a problem and agreed to go to rehabilitation. During the time that he was gone, I was not ready to continue my life with him. It would take a long time before I could trust him again and feel that we could be together again as husband and wife, also as parents.

Our first step was to become more involved with what the other was doing and share time together with our children. In the beginning, the focus was mainly on being parents and making sure the children understood what their father had gone threw and to feel secure that he was not going to do drugs again. We began doing things together again as a family. As time went on we did more and more together and I was able to build back my trust.

The next step, which would be to begin to rebuild our relationship as a couple and not just parents. This meant for us to go back to the basics and back to becoming friends. We spent time together doing a lot of talking about what we needed and expected from each other. It was approximately 10 months after his admitted addiction that we took a trip as a family and I was actually confident enough to let him do the driving. This was major as in the past I would never let our children in the car with him.

As our time apart had made each of us very independent and not used to that daily living together routine, we would have to rebuild and make compromises. We had to find common interests again other than our children and build on those together. When it came to television time we find things we mutually want to see and watch them together. The other shows we watch are done when our personal time allows, example while I am food shopping he watches shows, or when I am writing, such as now.

A key phrase has come to my mind many times over our journey back to having a good marriage is that you need to agree to disagree. We will still have fights, all couples do, but it is learning from them, compromising them and doing everything we can to not go to bed angry that will keep our love growing more each passing day. Everyone deserves a second change and in my case it made my husband a better person, since he almost lost his family and his life. I believe completely in my heart that I have made all the right decisions and although our journey was very difficult it made us into the people we are today and I can't even begin to imagine my life without my husband.