Dear [husband],

I love you with everything thing that I am.  I will always love you. I also care deeply for you and want you to be happy and healthy.

I have incredible hope that one day you will find your way to me and that we will have an honest, open, loving, fun-filled, healthy life together.  If we do not, I am still thankful for the love that I got to experience with you.  It was a love that I didn’t necessarily deserve but it is a love that has brought me so much happiness and hope over the last many years. Thank you for that.

I am very worried about your health and your addictions.  It is time for you to get treatment, the sort of treatment that will completely turn around your life.

There are a few places, locally, that I think may be good options: XXXXX in XXX (XXX) XXX-XXXX and XXXXX in XXX (XXX) XXX-XXXX.  They can help with dual-diagnosis and I believe they will let you keep up with work while you are there.

Addiction is a debilitating disease.  It isn’t your fault.  I know that you haven’t intended to hurt me like you have over the past few years.  I know, clearly now, that it is your addictions that are making you make bad choices, choices that hurt me and our family and friends and choices that have driven us apart.  I know that, if you could, you would fix it and you would stop hurting me.  I see now that I’ve been asking you to fix something that you are powerless to fix on your own; that I’ve been asking you to “pick me” when your addictions are requiring you to pick them.  Your addictions are controlling who you are, what you think, what you love and what your priorities are. This horrible disease called addiction has robbed you and me of joy and has sapped most of our strength.

I remember when I first fell in love with you.  Your generosity and loyalty were two qualities that I saw in you and how you treated your friends and family.  I loved these things about you immediately.  The selfishness and dishonesty that addiction has brought to you are in opposite of these things.  It isn’t you.  I really want to see you get better.

You are my best friend and I want you back.  I am alone without you.  I want to be able to trust you. I want to share a life with you.  I want to grow old with you.  But, don’t do it for me.  Do it for you.  You recently complained that you have lost your home, your family, your wife, your friends and are at risk of losing your job.  Well…. Get help and get it all back!  Get healthy and get all of that back. You really don’t have to keep living this way.  Be happy!

It is, of course, your choice whether or not you go to rehab but I hope that you can make it.  You have my word that I will be there for you fully throughout the process. I’ll stand by your side and help you in any way that I possibly can. You won’t be alone in this.  I promise you.

If you choose not to go to rehab, I want you to know that I will always love you, but I will not be able to stand by and watch you kill yourself and hurt everyone who loves you and cares for you. I believe that living together and supporting you has helped you remain in your addictions. I believe that people don’t change when they are comfortable. I think that my repeated attempts to protect us from your addictions have kept you from facing the truth. I can’t keep losing myself in trying to hold onto you while this disease keeps making you push me away.   It is not healthy for me and I do not think it is healthy for you.  I know that you want to live an open and honest life but have been unable to do that while with me.

Bottom line — I understand that you may continue to choose your addictions over me and our life.  I will love you no matter what, but, please understand, if you choose not to get treatment, that I cannot be with you.  I know that hurts and it hurts me too.

I love you. I hate this disease.  I do not believe that you (or I) are strong enough to fight the battle on our own.  As the person in the world who loves you the most and believes in you the most, I’m asking you to do this.

Always,

[wife]

 

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option. — Mark Twain