Wall #4 The Unstoppable March Of Time

"Something needs to change. This is purgatory, and it feels an awful lot like hell."

Wall # 4 The Unstoppable March Of Time

A while ago, I wrote about the 10 walls that every couple will face in this complex and difficult journey. (You can read that one here:, just scroll down to the featured post.)

Today, we're talking about #4, the Unstoppable March of Time. It's exactly what it sounds like.

The kids still need help with their homework.

The inbox still fills up.

Someone still has to figure out dinner.

You are both trying to survive the worst thing that's ever happened to your marriage, in between work assignments and Zoom calls and doctor appointments and grocery runs...

Ain't nobody got time for this.

Nobody sends flowers for this kind of grief.

There's no bereavement leave for a marriage that's still alive but doesn't feel like it anymore.

You're just supposed to keep functioning. So you do.

And you fall apart in the fifteen minutes you get alone. In the car. In the shower. In the dark after everyone's asleep.

On top of having no space to process any of it, you know you're in the room with a ticking time bomb. One counting on you to find the right information to figure this out before it's too late, because he's definitely not feeling the urgency of this the way you are.

So you do the searches. You join the free Facebook groups. You scroll post after post, watching other women share the hopelessness and the reality of this addiction.

Yet there's never enough time to actually think it through, let alone know what to do about it.

Some days you swing left. Manically trying to help him understand the impact of this on you, desperate for answers he doesn't have.

Other days you swing right. It's easier to pretend this isn't really happening, to just trust him to figure this out and make the right decisions on his own.

Both are trauma responses. Both are looking for safety and control over something. Anything. Or nothing.

Because if you just let go, it feels like relief when you have zero control over anything anyway. And that is it's own kind of control.

All the while, time marches on. Until one day it comes to a head.
Again.

And you're faced with what this addiction is doing to your life together. To your family. To your mental and physical health.

Something needs to change. This is purgatory, and it feels an awful lot like hell.

This is the point a lot of couples hit, and never make it past.

Because they just don't know what to do.

She either feels like setting boundaries is too much, too controlling, too unreasonable, or too scary to attempt because she isn't prepared to follow through if he doesn't honor them.

And she has no idea if she's even setting the right ones to begin with. So she stays. Stuck for the long haul in years of betrayal cycles.

Or, she's already tried setting boundaries the way the Facebook feed told her to, and none of it worked.

She didn't follow through on what she threatened, so now leaving feels like the only option left.

It's so easy, in the middle of these extreme emotional experiences, for the brain to think in extremes. Black and white always feels safer than gray.

But the gray is almost always where our real path forward lives.

Knowing that you can set boundaries, and you don't have to set them in a way that feels like punishment or an ultimatum.

Knowing that progress is okay to expect in your relationship, and it doesn't require perfection, just accountability and responsibility.

Knowing that your emotions and your pain are important and urgent, and, it will still take the right steps forward in his recovery for him to have the capacity to meet what you're asking.

Here's what nobody tells you in those Facebook groups: the boundary that actually works isn't found in a one-size-fits-all infographic.

It's found by knowing where he really is right now. Not where you wish he was, not where the internet says he should be by now.

A boundary set for a man in the "awareness" stage is not the same boundary that works for a man in structured recovery.

Expecting Stage 5 behavior from a Stage 1 man doesn't create change. It creates more fear, more secrecy, and more of you standing in that same purgatory, wondering why nothing's moving.

And time continues to march on.

The question is whether it's marching you toward a plan, or just closer to the time bomb going off.

If you're curious how to set boundaries that actually match where he's at, ones that protect you and give you real data for your own decisions instead of another ultimatum you're scared to follow through on, I've got you covered.

Comment BOUNDARIES below and I'll send you the free resource we have that covers the different things you can expect at different stages he may be in.