This is a great thread,
fiveyearzen; thanks for posting and sharing. It sounds like you have a lot of things going on all at once that you are trying to sort and make sense of.
Originally Posted by
fiveyearzen 
Leaving is an absolute last resort, and I'm not even so sure it's an option then.
I hear ya' there. One thing I have learned is that I have to stay true to myself. And that includes my values and morals, and no one else's.
What you have chosen for yourself is a tough road, I know, as I have 42 years of front-row experience witnessing this with my parents. My mother will never leave my alcoholic father because of her values. It is not a life I would personally choose for myself but I have to respect that HER life is HER choice, but I also know that she has had 50 years of living with a horrible disease. It has been her faith and her unfailing self-care that I believe has seen her through it.
I too, am a recovering alcoholic, which is why her drinking bothers me, just as being in relationships with drinkers bothers you. But she is my wife and the mother of my two boys.
Our personal commitment to an alcoholic is a dilemma we all seem to have. But yours, like mine, is a double whammy. There is our own sobriety at stake. I must do what I must to protect myself from relapsing. I hear you say that her drinking "bothers" you but what do you mean by that? In what way does it bother you?
I also hear you say that you do not want to go to meetings and you do not want to leave the relationship. So, what other things can you do to take care of you and your sobriety, despite what the alcoholic is doing? Do you have a strong social support network that you use on a regular basis? There are other kinds of non-12-step groups. There is church. etc.
I do tend to agree that she is probably an alcoholic, although I wouldn't have when we got married. Behavior like what you mentioned changed my mind.
It sounds like there may have been some red flags when you first met that could have indicated that the person you married is alcoholic. Many people do not realize that a person they are interested in is alcoholic. And alcoholism is a progressive disease so if the alcoholic does not stop drinking, the symptoms of the disease get worse as time goes on. I think probably all of us affected by drinking have been "tricked" by the disease in this respect.