I had to stop focusing on his recovery or else risk spiritual bankruptcy

With her flat now a building site, Charlotte Cripps finally moves into Alex’s apartment – but she soon discovers it isn’t necessarily a dream come true

(Illustration by Amara May)

I remember the day Alex asked me if his men could start on the extension at my place. We had been discussing it for ages. I had some equity in the flat to pay for it and, as Alex said, it was a no-brainer, an investment. Within a day, his team was inside my flat ripping out the kitchen. By the afternoon, they had knocked down a dividing wall. The dust and mess was full-on. I was packed into one room. The bathroom would be left with running water. But how was I going to eat? Or stay sane?

That’s when Alex must have had a change of heart. The rest of the water had already been disconnected for a few hours when I heard the beep of his horn outside my window. Usually, that sound signified he’d mounted the pavement in a road rage incident. But as I peered out looking bedraggled and weary – my spirit sucked out of me at the prospect of the next four months of building work, possibly much longer – he threw me a lifeline.

“Come on,” says Alex. “You can move in with me.” Finally, in a split second, my dreams had come true. Everything that had led up to this point made sense, as if it was destined. “I told you it would all come together,” said the psychic lady when I told her the mind-blowing news. “I just couldn’t see exactly how it would all pan out.”

Ok, he hadn’t quite built me a walk-in wardrobe like Carries’s Big in Sex and the City, but he must have really liked me if he’d prioritised me over all his designer clobber, which he’d managed to ram into one side of the existing space.

He may not have been drinking but he had all the ‘isms’ of his alcoholism... the self-centredness and doing everything to the extreme. And I was definitely irritating him

It was a whirlwind house move with no time to get excited. It felt more like a getaway, but that night as we got into his bed together I realised I had many more nights of heaven to come. Now I wanted the building works to go on forever. As I snuggled up to him I thought, “he may think it’s temporary, but it’s not. We have arrived.” It was only later that I started to question where I had arrived? Had living in two separate houses but always seeing each other been the perfect scenario? Was it a case of being careful what you wish for?

He may not have been drinking but he had all the “isms” of his alcoholism... the self-centredness and doing everything to the extreme. And I was definitely irritating him and overreacting to everything. It was like living at Problems Central and we needed an in-house therapist to untangle it all. I knew first-hand that the illness of alcoholism involved doing more than not drinking. The “ism” is what the successful recovering alcoholic addresses daily in their reprieve... but was he actually doing that?

I listened out to hear if a phone call was to his sponsor but was disappointed when I heard him talking about football rather than his recovery. He was smoking so many cigarettes I could hardly breathe. I kept telling him to go to the hypnotist I went to but he barked back: “Stop nagging me.”

I could handle the intensity but he couldn’t, which might explain why he started going out a lot. I was missing our romantic evenings in when everything was so much simpler. I was obsessing about his sobriety – had he done enough meetings? Why was there a half bottle of white wine in the fridge? He didn’t even like wine. Was is meant for cooking?

Why was he back so late? Recovery meetings end at 9pm. While I was focusing on him, I was losing sight of who I was. I was taking his inventory – as we say in the programme – when a friend told me I needed Al-Anon

Why was he back so late? Recovery meetings end at 9pm. And all the while I was focusing on him, I was losing sight of exactly who I was. I was taking his inventory – as we like to say in the programme – when a friend told me I needed Al-Anon.

“Oh god,” I thought, “isn’t that crossing enemy lines?” That’s where my parents went when I was in my addiction and learnt about tough love. Now I’m going to be labelled a double winner – somebody who is on both sides of the fence.

The meeting was so much calmer than NA. Everybody was so thoughtful and it was less frenzied. We spent 15 minutes voting on whether we wanted to open a window – that’s how civilised it was. I was faced with a three Cs slogan lying on the floor. I wondered if it meant cool, calm, and collected? But as I read the small print – we didn’t CAUSE it; we cannot CONTROL it; and we cannot CURE it – I realised it was a valuable tool to remind me to detach. I was going to have to work hard at my recovery, not his, or else I’d be faced with “spiritual bankruptcy” and drown in resentment and fear.

I now had all these Al-Anon recovery books that I hid under Alex’s bed. “Hi honey, I’m home,” he said as I hurriedly slipped Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage under the duvet. I didn’t want him to think he was a problem – but I did want to keep my side of the street clean.