I married a man with a drinking problem. Like others here, I thought he'd get better with marriage, mature out of the behavior, or (insert magical process here).
I, too spent my thirties and forties hanging on for the good times, and insulating myself from the effects of the bad times.
You think at the beginning, "I can deal with this. I love him." Let me tell you, one day you'll have a bad day at work; or a family member will die; or something catastrophic will happen. You'll come home, thinking of it as Dr. Phil says, 'a soft place to land.'
When I came home on those very bad days, I did not have a soft place to land. My AH was drunk. He may have been just drunk, which meant he was emotionally unavailable to me. Too drunk for me to even vent to, if that was all I wanted to do. He was not someone I could call if the car broke down, or if I was stranded some place, because if he was conscious and cared enough to answered the phone, he was too drunk to drive and pick me up.
I was scheduled for a short business trip. My husband told me he was too sick to wait around the airport to see if my flight took off, but had stopped to drink on the way home. My flight for the trip was canceled. It was 11 p. m. I kept calling my home, but no answer. Imagine my embarrassment at calling my boss, and asking him to drive me an hour away to my home.
Sometimes it was not a soft place to land, and I was spending additional time and energy picking up after a drunk. He tried to repair things around the house, and would have to do the same thing two, three, or more times because doing it drunk didn't have a very effective outcome.
One night I noticed he stood and stared at the toaster for 5 or 6 minutes. He couldn't figure out how to make it work.
Since it is a progressive disease, AH progressed from functional alcoholic to a non-functioning one. He lost three jobs in six years.
When I married him, he was an ace computer programmer, making double what I did. When he died, he'd been fired from a maintenance crew, after being fired from a hardware store, after being fired from computer programming.
I had a cancer scare three months after AH died. I remember wishing he was there for me. I realized, though, it was just as likely I'd be taking care of both of us, instead of just me.
I miss the person he used to be, you can't imagine how much. I don't miss the drunk he became.
I am 54 years old, and the chances of meeting another man and having a long term relationship are nil, given the ratios of men and women available.
You will miss him if you leave. You will be lonely. Being lonely by yourself is hard. Being lonely and having an obligation to a spouse who provides nothing in return is soul-killing.