What you've all written really resonates with me too. I guess we all end up asking ourselves at some point, why did I put up with this. Loner1968, I can really relate to what you're saying as I stayed 16 years in a relationship where we had a series of episodes like you described. You just get so worn down after awhile and just welcome the calm and try to pretend you have a 'normal' relationship......until the next chaotic episode. You do end up feeling like a train wreck. For some reason, I hung in there thinking I was strong and could endure anything to see him get well. Well, it took it's toll. At the end of those dramas I'd always feel like it was me that had the problem and I was just an ungrateful, emotional, controlling woman and that I should be so luck he stayed with me. I would do anything just to have peace. And when the words come, you know they are yet another series of meaningless promises that will be broken very shortly. But I would hang on to them and keep thinking, "Maybe this is the time that he finally 'gets it.'
It's only been 6 months that he's been gone and I, too, think of hiim every day, many times a day. I don't want what we had but am still at the stage of fantisizing that maybe he could come back a changed man. From everything I'm reading here, I don't think that is likely. And as someone said, his brain would be such mush from all the drinking that who knows how many years it would ever take him to start thinking rationally. All I can say is that this disease truly is devastating as it affects so many people around them, not just us. I am very grateful for the lack of drama in my life and will do everything possible not to ever attract a situation like that again.