Originally Posted by
zrx1200R 
I have yet to read a single post that says: "I'm so happy I chose to stay married to my alcoholic spouse. We had a really long talk one day 20 years ago and I told him I wasn't going to take it anymore and that he needed to quit. Or I was leaving. And you know, he stepped right up, and quit. Our life has been so fantastic in every regard since this. I'm so glad i didn't listen to my fill-in-the-blank who suggest I leave him after his X number of years of abuse."
Never once. Did I miss that thread somewhere?
Um, possibly.
My experience with my first husband (who got sober the year before we got married) was ALMOST that ideal. We wound up getting divorced later, for unrelated reasons, but are still VERY close friends.
The only drawback to that scenario for me was that when I was living with another alcoholic, who almost died from the disease, I was overly optimistic when he was sober a few months in AA. I married him, and he quickly relapsed, never to recover again, so far as I know (haven't talked to him in about three or four years, but last time I did he was still drinking).
Some people really DO "get it" almost out of the box. It was only a few months between the time I first gave my first husband the Big Book one of my co-workers gave me and his last drink. He's sober for 31 years now.
I don't think it happens real often, that smoothly. It wasn't without bumps along the way, but they weren't major ones. He's a good guy, and I was very fortunate.