The anger for me towards my recovering husband comes from other people calling me an enabler, and as well the fact that I have had to put a lot of dreams on hold while I am waiting for my husband to recover. I have needed to learn the difference between enabling and being supportive (which is healthier and better for me).
I went for so long trusting my husband with his social drinking to get to a point where he lost his job and he was verbally abusive, and my dream of having a child and having a family was put on hold.
And then when he finally took his recovery seriously, it was like God had answered a prayer. The verbal abuse stopped, and craziness of alcoholism went away temporarily.
So when my husband has relapsed since then, he will start to be snappy with me, his words will not make sense (slurred) or his memory is not as well, and I may hear him throwing up in the bathroom. The fear of the verbal abuse and relapse is there, and my only response is emotional distance so that I can feel normal (as one person in Al Anon stated it, he gave his wife an option--either she go to treatment, or he was going to put her on a plane with a lot of money and he never wanted to hear from her again).
Even last night, I had a dream that my husband was at a bar and drank a beer. When he was a social drinker that would not have bothered me, but now that he is a recovering alcoholic it really bothered me--it felt like a failure.
Your husband may be afraid of failing. With Al Anon, it has been helpful, but I am more careful on which advice truly helps me. It upset me when I had someone recently tell me that alcoholics who relapse will most likely relapse again, and that I should just move on and end my marriage. I stood up to this person and let them know that I would make my own decision on this (I am the one who has to deal with the consequences of this). Marriage is really important to me. I come from a family where my parents have been married 39 years.
Have you asked your husband about his dreams? Does your husband have a dream of a healthy marriage? With time, your husband will learn to trust you again. In the meantime, just be the best you can be and congratulations on your sobriety as well.
