akrasia

Hi all,

I've posted before that my husband had some spectacularly bad binges with alcohol and sobered up in July.

It's been almost three months now and he's been sober, seems to be doing a lot better. Still seeing his counsellor. He's tried to talk to me about the alcohol; the other day we were in bed and he was saying, "I want to go back to drinking casually again someday."

I just tried to stay calm and say, "Well, that's something to talk about with your counsellor I guess. I don't see why you couldn't just stop altogether if it's caused so many problems for you." He wanted to talk about it more but I told him I felt too nervous to talk about it.

My whole body seizes up when I hear him even suggest the possibility of drinking again, ever. Immediately I see another bender and all the damage it causes.

It's a strange position to be in: on the one hand we're enjoying things and making plans. And at the same time I live in constant fear of a relapse. We went to a dinner party on Friday and I was terrified he would say "yes" when the host offered him wine (he told the host he was "on the wagon," but people forget). Last night he went to a meeting at a pub (everything's held at pubs here!), I was terrified that he would come home drunk.

As I've said in my other posts I got myself an apartment during his last bender. The only reason I cancelled it was because I heard him say, "I want to stop drinking forever," and he started medication and counselling.

So I stayed because I thought, "Okay, now this is when we move on to happy times together. This is when it ends."

And yet, oddly, it hasn't ended, not for me. Not when I literally seize up with fright each time there's even the remotest possibility of a relapse.

Maybe I'd already gone past the point of no return, and I just hadn't realized it. Like a woman who's been hit by her husband: sure, they might reconcile, but once he's hit her she can't stop thinking when it might happen again at any moment.

So should I just find myself an apartment now? Now that we've been through all that together and he's been sober for three months?

Ugh.