Hello Weasel and welcome.
I am happy that you are trying to work through this together and hope that this time works better for him and for you. We don't really have the answeres to your questions about how this works for him, but we have lots of love and support here for how this works for you.
Take a read around and you will see that addiction and alcoholism are diseases that affects the entire family, and most of us are here because someone we love is addicted (for me it was my son). We learn how to maintain our balance, regardless of how they are doing, and we learn new healthier behaviours, and most importantly we learn that we cannot control whether they drink or don't drink, it's simply out of our hand. We can't love them into quitting, it's something they have to decide to do for themselves and then work their own recovery program to stay sober.
You have told us a lot about him, but how about telling us about you as well, and how you are doing with all this. We're here and we care and we're happy to have you join us on our journey.
Hugs
Ann