rmm

I'm new here and have been reading and reading and reading for days and I finally have gotten up the nerve to share my story and hope that someone can tell me that what I'm experiencing is "normal" because right now I feel about ready to lose what's left of my mind.

What's gotten me to the point of writing is that I am pretty sure my husband is an alcoholic and I just don't have any idea how to interact with him anymore. He's not violent or abusive. He's great with our children. He's a responsible man, has a good job, is intelligent and kind, but has a definite drinking problem and it has caused a rift the size of the Grand Canyon between us. To the outside world I come off looking like a pissed off, bitchy wife who is unfairly critical of my husband, but I think that my anger comes from being so sad and lonely and tired of the distance that has grown between us. I am not proud of who I've become and I hate that I am a sad, scared, paranoid person now. I am constantly checking the recycling, trying to smell if he's been drinking, I get uncomfortable whenever others are over and there is drinking going on because my husband always gets the most bombed and acts like a fool. Time after time I've said to him that it seems he's out of it and I've asked him how much he's had to drink. He always tells me he's just had a few beers and that he can't "take this again" from me and we wind up fighting about something unrelated. I go to bed sad and feel like crap for being suspicious and feel guilty for accusing him of being drunk when he claims he's not.

Well.... we went on vacation to the beach last week. My mom stayed with our two little girls one evening and we went out. During the course of the evening my husband told me that for the past almost 2 years he's been lying to me about his drinking. He told me that all the times I thought he'd had too much to drink, he had. He told me that he hides the beer bottles/cans so I won't see them in the trash. He told me that he's been seeing a therapist (which I knew though I didn't know what he talked to her about b/c he wouldn't tell me) and he's told her all of this and that she told him he had to come clean to me. He told me all of this but then just as quickly, said that he thinks the reason he's been drinking more (and lying to me) is because things have been tense between us. He told me that when I am critical of him it makes him want to drink to alleviate his anxiety and that while he thinks he might be "on the verge of possibly having a drinking problem" (his words), he thinks just as much of the issue is me. I got really upset about this and told him that the reason I've become a person I hardly recognize is because there's been a growing distance between us (which I now attribute to his drinking and lying) and that the lack of closeness between us, the feeling I've had that he's been putting walls up with me and the apathy I feel from him are all the things that have caused me to be angry, snippy, full of rage, pick fights about non-important issues etc...

I feel like I've been questioning my sanity and my integrity for the past two years and to hear from him that everytime I've questioned him and been right, he's lied and convinced me that I was wrong (and mean to boot) for questioning him, is not sitting well with me. I want to be supportive and I want to do whatever I can to help him but I'm not sure he's actually really ready to get help or get better. He's still making excuses, he's saying I'm responsible for his drinking and his attitude toward my expressing feelings about all of this is "you're being selfish- I don't have the ability to care about how you feel right now".

Honestly, even though he's gentle and kind 99% of the time and I have no reason to leave, that's what I want to do. I am on an emotional rollercoaster day to day with him. I am afraid to tell him how I feel, or express any emotion other than happiness (and even then I have to be nice and calm for it to be okay-- no emotional extremes in this household). Whenever I start to talk to him about my thoughts or feelings about anything related to us, he takes every word I say as a criticism (even when I am not being critical, that's how he hears it) and he shuts down. He gets defensive, angry and nasty verbally. He doesn't listen to what I say but instead he interprets the first few words I saw and jumps to assumptions about what I must be saying.

I grew up in a really screwed up family (no drinking but behaviors of an alcoholic family-- a dry drunk type of setting) and the way my husband has become is just like how my mom was to me my whole life. I was always told I was imagining things when I said that I was hurt by how I was treated, I was told I was a liar, I was told I was mean etc... and it was never safe to talk about emotions. Now, I'm in a marriage that has become a mirror image of the emotional hell I lived my whole childhood.

I don't know where to turn, what to do, how to help my husband or myself. I am self-destructing as I write this. I'm developing a raging eating disorder, am exercising 4-6 hrs a day and am a mess.

How have others of you found peace for yourselves while still supporting your spouse? I don't want to up and leave him but if I stay and things continue as they are, I am going to literally drop dead eventually. The stress, panic, anxiety I have is coming out as anger and frustration at everyone and everything around me. I hate the kind of parent I've become to our two little kids (3 and 1), I hate how angry I feel at my husband all the time, I hate the resentment I feel constantly... I don't know how to help him or me....

Thanks for reading all of this. It was cathartic to just get it out. There's a lot more to this than I said here-- this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think this gives a good sense of what's going on.