Wife2Kids,
Thanks for you post. It's comforting to hear similar stories.
I told my AH 2 weeks ago that he stops drinking or I am gone, told him that I never wanted to get to the point where I have to defend the children from his drunken behaviour. As it is now, I already try to shield them from it by trying to ensure that they are in bed sound asleep before he gets drunk. Bit harder with the 14 year old though. My gosh I've witnessed my AH at a friends Sons 18th Birthday ask all the boys, while my son was present, as what age did they all start masturbating!! I was mortified! Told him to stop it, that it was none of his business to be asking such things and that it was totally inappropriate. But he wouldn't let up until each and everyone of them had "fessed" up. So totally disgusting! Gosh only knows what my son was thinking! I never asked. Until this week I've never said anything to him. And really there is a part of me that through my AH conditioning me, has made me feel that I have no right to discuss such things with the children.
When I told my husband I was leaving, he put it back on me and said "how would you like it if I threatened to take the kids of you because you smoke cigarettes?, you have an addiction, yet I don't pull that crap on you, smoking will damage the kids as well"
In a sense he does have a point, I know it's a bad thing on many levels. But like I pointed out to him "Smoking does not make me act like an idiot, it does not alter my personality, it doesn't give me a hang over, and I talk to my children about it, the effects that it has etc, but mainly it doesn't turn me into a nasty so and so. And hello fool, you smoke too!"
I say to my husband, you can have all the excuses in the world, but it wont give you any good reason.
We live an hour away from the nearest city that would have alanon/alateen. I am seeing a psychologist, we are at present working on me, so that I can get away from this madness and do it with a healthier state of mind which in turn I can pass onto my children.