ReRaising My Wife

Prologue: The Fall

It had been 6 months since the first time my wife disappeared. She's come back three times and the last time she agreed to get help. My wife had fallen in with an old group of "friends" who got her hooked-on drugs. The first time she disappeared for 2 months before coming home for a few days then disappearing for a couple more weeks. After she disappeared again, I sent her a message that she had to get help with her drug problem before she could come home. After a couple more weeks, she called me crying and told me that she had been attacked and needed me to take her to the hospital. This led to a week in the hospital and she agreed to go to rehab as soon as she was discharged.

I thought she was doing well when she came home this time. She had been home for six weeks and I didn't see any signs of drug use that I was seeing before. She was active and engaged. She seemed to be on the right track. While I was at work one night, she asked if her dad could take her over to spend time with a friend from rehab. I agreed since she had been doing so well. I knew when I got home from work at 1 AM (My work shift ends at midnight) and she wasn't home, that she had gone back to the drugs.

I didn't know what to feel. I was feeling too much and nothing at the same time. I didn't know when (or if) I would ever see my beautiful wife again.

Three days later, I got a call from her while I was at work begging me to come pick her up and take her back to rehab. My boss was already on me about all my attendance problems with her disappearances and had told me that if I have any more problems I would be fired. I was trapped, there was nothing I could do. She tried her parents but couldn't get a hold of them. She started calling anyone she could think of. Eventually she found a friend who paid for a taxi to get her to rehab.

When she called me back to tell me that she had a ride and was on her way, she couldn't stop crying and apologizing and promising that she was going to rehab to get better this time. The first time she went was only so that she could come home. This time she was committed to getting better.

I told her that I love her and will always fight for her. I told her that we would talk later and to focus on getting better. And I told her that it would take work, but we would rebuild the relationship that we used to have. It wouldn't happen quickly, and a lot of changes would have to be made, but I would do everything that I needed to help her succeed this time.

What she didn't know is that a plan was already forming in my mind. She had told me repeatedly that she felt like she had to raise herself because her parents were always "too busy" and they never really taught her what she needed to learn to be successful and productive as an adult. I was going to have to fix that, if I was going to get my wife back from the pit of pain, shame, self-hate, and depression that she was in when she hung up the phone. I would have to start over with my wife, not from when we first met, but from where her parents should have started.

When I woke up the next morning, I started getting everything together. I created list of rules for her to follow. I ordered everything that I would need to re-raise my wife. And spent the next four weeks putting everything in its place.

During my last visit to see her a few days before she would be released I asked her how committed she was to staying clean and repairing our relationship. She told me, "I will do whatever it takes to stay clean. I can't handle going down that path again. And I can't lose you. If I lose you, I lose everything."

I asked, "Do you need me to take control of you until you can learn to control yourself?"

"I don't know if I can control myself. I've tried to stay clean three times and I have failed three times. I can't fail a fourth and I've learned a lot this time around, but I don't know if I can control my addiction."

"Do you need me to control you, until you learn to control yourself?" I asked again.

"I think it might be better to let you take control and be in charge for a while. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to take care of myself or of my family. I don't even know how to stop myself from doing something that I know will just cause me and the people I love pain."

So, I explained to her that when she came home, things would change a lot for a while. If she wanted to repair our relationship and learn how to be an adult, how to do the things that her parents never had time to teach her, I would help her with that. She would have to trust me 100% and rely on me 100%, she needed to understand that I would be in charge and that she would have rules to follow and any rule breaking would result in punishments that would be discussed when we got home.

She was still scared of what was to come, especially since she still wasn't sure what our relationship would be like when she came home. She knew that I loved her and would never turn my back on her. She knew that I was only worried about taking care of her and making sure that she was safe. She trusted me, and she knew I wanted to trust her. She also knew that I was hurt by what had happened over the last six months and that she had destroyed all the trust I had in her she knew that it was going to take a long time for our relationship to return to balance. She knew that we both wanted the same thing, though...for her to be safe, sober, and happy.

So, she agreed to let me take control of her and make sure that she stayed on the right path. To allow me to set rules for her and punish her if she broke those rules. And she agreed to do whatever I thought was in her best interest until we both felt that she could make those decisions for herself.

As I hugged and kissed her goodbye, I told her "I Love you, Baby."

And she smiled andreplied "I Love you, too"