crystal226

I posted here once before and I got a bit of good advice. I am also planning on going to Al-Anon on Thursday for the first time because that is what some of you recommended, but for the time being I wanted to see if anyone had any insight. I have been with my husband for 10 years (married 5). We have two kids 2 & 5. He has always drank since I've known him, but when we met it wasn't much. Over time his drinking has increased and he would binge sometimes, but then he would also go for periods of time without so I never worried about it. Over the last two or three years, however, his drinking has progressively become an everyday part of his life. I think for a long time I didn't really notice and I thought we had a great life. I was distracted by my kids or my friends or any other number of things and him being drunk everyday didn't seem to phase me. Over the last six months to a year though I have started to see more and more problems come up that relate to the drinking. Lying about spending money, drinking at work, drinking in the car, drinking daily and drinking in excess amounts. At first I approached each problem very casually and he would make little changes, but then slip right back into old behaviors. I was seeing all the little problems (like that he was being risky by having beer in the car), but not the big picture in terms of that his drinking was slowly getting out of control. Then, at the end of July we had a huge blow-out while camping. It was two days of arguing in front of family and fellow campers. The argument started because we couldn't afford beer and the next morning after getting trashed drunk he was hungover (my mom got him beer because he was being so obnoxious about it) and we started arguing again. He was following me around yelling at me and being verbally abusive and wouldn't let up about some small issue (I was "naggy" when he asked if I packed a belt). That was the last straw for me. I was humiliated and angry at his treatment of me and I was worried about just how important beer had seemed to become to him. I also started to draw a possible correllation between drinking and some of the meanness that had popped up over the years. All the drinking became a problem for me in that one moment. Ever since then there has been a lot of tension in our marriage and neither of us ever expected that would happen. We have tried over the last couple months now to work on things, but I am fed up. He did cut down drinking for two weeks because I gave him an ultimatum to cut down or I would leave for a while, but since that time period ended he is back to his usual drinking. He claims he is willing to cut down, but won't give me an idea of what that means or follow through. I have tried distancing myself and setting boundaries (i.e. when you drink I won't hang out with you--I will leave the house or find an activity for myself to do), but now I feel lonely. I don't know what to do because it was a lot easier when I didn't see the drinking as a problem, but now that I see it's impact on my life I can't let it go. We were so happy before and now I feel lost and like I am a bad person who is destroying ten years of marriage because of one difficult weekend. I want to take things slow and work on things at a reasonable pace, but I feel a huge level of anxiety and that leaves me wanting to deal with it immediately. I am especially vulnerable because my father is a drug addict and I lived in the chaos of that growing up and I'm afraid of repeating that. Also, since I started evaluating things I have discovered other things about our life together and our dynamic that I am not happy about and I feel confused because I used to think everything was great. It just seems like out of the blue we have all these problems and handling them is starting to feel too big to handle. I decided a few days ago that I am going to spend 2 weeks at my parents house to relax and get away from the negativity for a while and try and sort things out. I'm worried because i'm not sure I am going to want to come back unless I see some drastic changes, but it just doesn't seem right to throw ten years down the drain in two months and I'm not sure what other options I have because living with addiction is not the life I want for myself. My husband is also quite upset because according to him he was blindsided by everything. He feels I have never really complained about the drinking and that he thought up until two months ago we had the perfect life. It is hard and I feel so guilty because he is right. I hadn't complained much and when I did complain I played it down. I feel a lot like the "walk away wife" that people talk about and I am worried I'm not being fair to him in my suddenness, but I don't know how to approach things at any other pace. Any advice would be helpful.