Someone responded to Dov’s piece by asking “then you are saying we should have no relationship with our wives at all and hide our feelings from them?"
Yes, but generally (I do not mean to say this about you - I do not know what you personally have been doing) we do it all backwards:
If we spend an hour looking at porn we hide it from the wife because, "why rock the boat, c'v?"...but when it comes to our feeling sad or scared we run to them and open up showing them our weak (and sometimes pretty crazy-sounding) side? What about our porn-drinking weak and crazy side? Why do we not show them that one?
Answer:
We are ashamed of our porning out and having sex with ourselves (masturbation) - and of our wive's reactions to it;
...but somehow we feel we have the right to scare the daylights out of our wives by telling them the sometimes crazy, usually very immature, and always self-absorbed things that pass through out hearts on a daily basis. Our feelings that are here today when we are in a down mood, and gone tomorrow when we are in an up mood. And that sounds right to you? Not to me.
Yes, I understand that in a NORMAL marriage sharing feelings is very important. And after a few years in recovery I learned what works when I share it with my wife, and what just makes her crazy to hear and hurts her. But if you are an addict - even in recovery - it takes a while (a few years) for the marriage to get 'normal' enough to really work that way. I share more and more with my wife now...but that took years of growth for both of us, and years of sobriety for me. So?...
So in the mean time I am saying this:
Go the safe route. Share the wacky feelings and crazy thoughts you have on a daily basis with a piece of paper first. Then share them with a sponsor or other successfully recovering program buddy second. After that, you can by all means share it with your sh'er bosor, if you like - or if you feel a need to any longer. Usually your hysterical thinking will have been made clear to you by then, you will have chuckled about it a bit, you will have already prayed to your G-d to remove the character defects that led you to feel the wacky way in the first place (cuz you wrote a 4th step inventory on them in 2 minutes or less), and He will have removed them from you, at least a bit. He does that. It's called "working the steps".
And then? Pray for His guidance in how and what to say to your wife - and to everybody..as usual. Then you might talk with the wife about things that are real and really matter....like how her day is going, or whatever...or how much better you feel than you did earlier today, if you must.
And yes, if our wives already know all about our problem and that we are in a program of recovery, then it is often a good idea to remain honest with them about our sobriety by telling them right away if we lose it (after talking about it with our sponsors immediately). This is about priorities - making the real things real and treating them that way by working our program on it, be"H and asking Hashem to help us do the next right thing.