dw,
I apologize if I have said anything that hurt you. I know that you are confused and you are trying very hard to do the best thing you can for yourself and your kids.
I meant it earlier when I said there is no judgement from me; I have done way too many crazy things during my marriage to ever judge you or anyone else. Good grief, it took me 25 years to figure out what in the world I had been doing....
Our situations are just so eerily similar and so many of the things that you post about that your ah says or does are almost exactly the same things I have gone through. Like I posted on one of your threads a couple of days back, reading what your ah said, I could literally hear the words coming from my ex, and see the expression on his face. And I believed in him, too. And I was wrong....I hope you aren't, I really really do.
It helped me get my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds to hear what others had gone through when I first came here, when I was beginning to accept the reality that my ex is an addict. I take the time to share my experiences in hopes that it might help you in the same way.
As far as your kids, I know you want the very best for them. So did I. But what I have only now come to understand is how very badly my boys were hurting all those years when I was doing the codie dance with their dad and trying to manipulate and control every thing that happened. In my mind, I was protecting them. But that is not how they felt. (They are both adults now, and we can talk about all this.) Both of my sons have cried bitter tears in recent months while telling me how they felt; how scared and confused and angry. And how alone they felt, because as their dad was out doing dope, their mom was a basket case trying to keep everything from blowing up. I thought what I was doing was right. It wasn't. I should have protected THEM instead of their dad. It still breaks my heart that they don't have the father that they deserve. But I have had to accept the fact that it is not within my power to give them that father. Maybe it will be different for you.
Your life is yours and no one here can tell you what to do. If anyone offended you, just try to remember that you are amongst a bunch of world champion codependents here, and we all have this compulsion to try to help. We are an emotional lot, as well, and sometimes things get dramatic with us.
But we all really do care, or we wouldn't spend the time reading your posts and offering our experience.
((((hugs)))))