I don’t want to tell her “Get out!” because it will go to the core of her fears of abandonment.
My ex had the same fears. It was probably the most common conversation we had when he was drunk: how people always leave him, don't like him, don't understand him, and how I was the only one that did. In my marriage, that was what kept me there -- how could I leave a man who only had me in the whole universe.
I think it's a pretty common "tactic" (conscious or not) with alcoholics, to refer to how "you're probably going to abandon me, too, just like everyone else" -- that way, they remove the focus from
their behavior and tries to place it on
yours. That way, they don't have to take responsibility for their behavior as the cause of you leaving -- you're just doing what everyone has always done to them throughout their lives.
They are almost always jovial and boisterous and have no behavior problems that can be attributed to their mom being an alcoholic.
Just one word of warning here: My children didn't seem to have any problems either while we were living with an active alcoholic. Since I left, two of them have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder -- a very common diagnosis for children of alcoholics. As long as we were living with my ex, they were reining themselves in out of fear -- he was loving and abusive in an unpredictable pattern, and they learned to walk on eggshells so as not to set him off. Do you know what happens when you are not at home?
I can't just let her fall. She is the mother of our children.
Most alcoholics don't decide to get help until they hit rock bottom. What that means is different things for different people. For my ex, losing his job didn't do it. It took my leaving for him to decide that he wanted to get sober. You can't love an alcoholic out of their disease any more than you can love a diabetic out of their wildly swinging blood sugars. As much as we all want to. It is her problem, that she has to choose to deal with.