I can sympathize with you very much. My ex bf is a recovering addict, and note, I said "ex".
When he went through rehab, he and I both had so many optimistic hopes for our future together, and for several months tried working things out in our relationship. However, he wasn't going to meetings; I wasn't going to meetings, and soon he left the relationship.
We continued to date periodically, but then he got into REAL recovery, going to NA meetings, got a sponsor, went on retreats, started working the steps -- and I mean REALLY working them - his sponsor has him spend over a month on each step, in fact.
But as Cyranoak stated, recovery is a selfish venture. If the addict/alcoholic is to be any good to anyone else in their life, they first have to be good for themselves. They have to go in and totally re-evaluate things, find themselves and really do a great deal of reaching and soul-searching. Like I said, it's a very selfish venture. Some relationships don't survive this, and I totally understand why. I am still in love with my ex, and I wish so badly that things would have worked out for us, and I am so incredibly proud of him and happy he is doing so well in recovery. But I am incredibly co-dependent, as well, and I enabled him and protected him a lot in his active addiction, so when I didn't get help with my codependent tendencies, I think we were doomed to failure.
There are some things about him that I don't like now. He seems very selfish, self-centered, egotistical, non-compassionate, ungrateful, unsympathetic. These were all traits he held while in active addiction, and he hasn't learned to lose them yet. Hopefully someday he will. Only time will tell.
For the life of me, though, I can't imagine why your wife needs to stay out til all hours of the night. I understand the whole thought-process of relating to others in recovery, and finding growth in the fellowship, but I've never known a meeting to last that long. You have to come to terms with what you want out of life and what is best for you and your children. That's part of the codependent's recovery process. It's a selfish venture too sometimes.