I am just at a loss when it comes to being able to talk to her without her feeling attacked. I literally have tried every way we have been told and she still finds it as being attacked. Also, in the past whenever she felt like I was being too controlling because we sucked at communication. She would go and do the thing I was worried about and trying to prevent her from doing.
With apologies for being perhaps a bit too direct (thinking in my second language with a horrible headache at 3 a.m. right now), and sorry to break it to you this way, but let’s actually be direct — she needs counselling, by which I don’t mean a random dude with the word ‘counsellor’ on his brass plate, I mean a real therapist. There’s no beating around the bush, she has serious issues. I’m not going to try and tell you what issues, because I’m not qualified, but she’s in need of serious professional attention.
Just going and doing the destructive thing you were worrying about just to mark her independence, as well as complaining about control all the time whenever you didn’t like something in her impulsive and probably quite amoral behaviour or patterns, that’s just not the way an adult is expected to act, before we even start talking about Catholic wives and mothers. Counselling should be your next stop.
Normally, I would say preventing her from going out to bars with friends and co-workers would be extreme and indeed controlling. However, ‘bad things’ having happened changes things completely and turns the table around. You wouldn’t have been in your right expecting your wife to replicate and obey your private vow (extracurriculars like that need to be absolutely voluntary), but you have every right to expect your wife to avoid near occasion of sin against your marriage.
No matter how she may want to put it, getting intoxicated to the point of becoming more susceptible to temptations of infidelity is not just her own private matter, it’s something that involves you as well and involves the ‘us’ between you and her.
Considering she’s your wife and you have a responsibility to help her reach salvation, you would be in your right to be concerned also about her exposing herself to any near occasion of mortal sin, including drunkenness itself if rising to the level of a mortal sin. (I’m presuming the ‘bad things’ aren’t trivial matters.)
People with self-control issues, who can’t or won’t control their behaviour like an adult would, tend to complain about feeling controlled, so don’t allow that to get to you too much, don’t let it bring you down, unless you’re actually doing something that a reasonable person would deem controlling, even knowing of what has happened in the past.
Of course, being asked not to go to bars feels like child treatment, but in the short term such restrictions are necessary for adults facing certain problems, which she is. It’s because of her problem, not because of her as a person. It’s the same with people struggling with addictions. You don’t leave an unsupervised alcoholic in a liquor store, not until recovery (if ever).
