Hey, folks, I’d like to know if there’s anyone out there who has experienced recovery from abuse while continuing to live with the person who abused them. Five years ago, my wife began taking medication for her depression, and about a year later, she sought help for an addiction. With the help of medication, a 12-step program, and therapy, she has become a much healthier person and has stopped abusing me. She has acknowledged that she abused me and has expressed remorse.The problem now is that I have not recovered my ability to trust her. I still love her, and forgive her, but I cannot let down my defenses enough to let her get close to me. I haven’t been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’m sure I have it. I have no desire for intimacy, physical or emotional, with her or with anyone else. I’m hypervigilant and on my guard around her. When she offers helpful advice, I hear hurtful criticism; when she makes a reasonable request, I hear an unreasonable demand; when she laments something that has gone wrong, I hear her blaming me. Recently, she told me she was concerned about how much time I spend on the Internet. She said she’d like to spend more time with me and do things together, like a family game night or a date night, and it took me over a week to talk myself down. I had flashbacks to when she decided she needed me to quit the community choir I sang in because it was too time-consuming and she “missed” me when I was gone (never mind that she treated me like crap when I was home). I also flashed back to playing table games with her and our son (now 15), when she would spend the whole time angrily barking at whoever’s turn it was to “Hurry up and GO!”For the past five years, I’ve been living on relief that the abuse has stopped, but now I realize that I need to be more proactive about my recovery, because I’m not at all healthy at the moment. I’ve known my wife since middle school, and we were friends for about ten years before we became lovers. We have two fantastic kids, age 15 and 7. I don’t want to leave my wife, and it would devastate me to leave my kids, but even worse would be for me to remain the way I am for the rest of my life. I know that I can become a lot healthier with therapy, and Al-Anon has already helped after two meetings. What I don’t know is whether I can make a recovery while living under the same roof as the person who abused me.Have any of you done this? Does it work? Is it even possible?