Michelle70

I've been married to a HFA for 11 years, and we have two daughters, 2 and 5. With therapy, I have come to accept that I should never have married him, and have wanted to leave for more than half our marriage. His drinking got bad enough that I knew I couldn't stay with him, for my sake and for my daughters'. He's not abusive to any of us when he drinks, just annoying and abrasive. I've tried twice to leave him--told him I wanted a divorce, and he just refuses. He says he'll do anything to keep our family together. Multiple times, he has admitted he drinks too much and tried to "cut back", with varying degrees of success.

All along, I have used his drinking as the primary reason for my wanting to leave because it is something tangible I can point to and use as justification. He now offers to quit drinking altogether and go to AA, although he says he doesn't think it's necessary, he's only doing it to make me happy and to keep me in the marriage. I know that won't work for a number of reasons, but he insists that he can and do whatever he has to to keep the family together.

Right now, it's not financially feasible to leave. We both work, but we are paying a mortgage on a house we moved out of last month so I could transfer back to our hometown from another state, and now we're paying rent on an apartment. No way can we afford to maintain a 3rd home.

So, for the next few months or more (until the old house sells), we are living under the same roof. He continuously tells me how much he loves me and that he won't let me "do this" to our kids, and I refuse to tell him I love him or to have sex with him.

He changes tactics, sometimes within the same conversation, going back and forth between being humble and promising to become the husband I deserve and angrily accusing me of not pulling my weight around the house or in the marriage, and telling me we both have to work together to make this work. I tell him I'm not prepared to do that, that I worked on it for the last 5 years alone and I'm done.

There are times I think I should stay, just to avoid putting my girls through the pain of divorce, but I can barely even look at this man. In the last 6 weeks, since his latest effort to cut back on his drinking, I have caught him sneaking beer behind my back. I know if I agree to stay, he will try to quit drinking, maybe even go to a meeting or two, but within a few months (at best), it will be back to business as usual.

We do have a marriage counseling appointment this week, but I don't know what to say to a counselor. I'm not going to save our marriage, I'm going to try to get an objective 3rd party to help me explain to my AH that I'm leaving. I don't even know if it works that way.

Any advice or encouragement will be appreciated. I'm feeling very stuck and out of control.