wanttobehealthy

My husband is an alcoholic. Looking back I see all the "signs" (blaming me for all his woes, verbal abuse, accusations, oversensitive to "criticism", mood swings etc....) but for years I believed that if I just changed enough or talked enough to him about how relationships can work, we could work out our problems.

About 2 yrs ago I started to realize how much and how often he'd been drinking. This past summer was the first time I started to educate myself about alcoholism and went to al-anon.

Since the early Fall my husband has been on 2 serious, weekend long binges, been arrested for domestic assault, been to outpatient rehab, agreed to and was "signed on" to go to in patient rehab and then backed out (and assaulted me that same day).

The restraining order was dropped after a month of no contact and he moved back home 3 weeks ago today. He did this only after showing me with actions that he was taking recovery seriously (or so I thought). Within a week he was still sober, but acting exactly as he had for all the years he was drinking. For the past week he has been talking obsessively about drinking, longing to do so, saying he has no joy, no life, no outlets etc.. He has a sponsor but plans out his talks with him and talks to him once a week at his home group meeting. He goes to 3-4 step meetings a week but has made a point in the past week of telling me he really has this figured out and has nothing to say at the meetings.

Fast fwd to last night. He was nasty and I broke and reacted and it was the excuse he was looking for to justify drinking.

He made a big show of coming home with a 6 pack (even though I'd bet my children's lives on the fact that he was drunk when I got home from work: he is on vacation this week) and drinking 3 beers and despite slurring his words and stumbling around, claims that was all he drank.

I don't know what to do anymore... I know that I can not live with him drinking and apparently I can not live with him not drinking bc he is not in any way taking recovery seriously. But at the same time I still love him and don't want to leave.

Last night he told me repeatedly that he should be commended for going to meetings and having been sober for a month and that if I had been more congratulatory/supportive/loving (which I really have been!) he would be able to be in recovery. Then he told me that his recovery was coming apart at the seams bc of the stress I was causing him and that his sponsor had told him that he needed to be free of toxic relationships such as ours in order for recovery to be possible.

I am SOOOOOO tired of the blame, the rationalizing, the justifying... I am tired of trying to explain to him that honesty is not subjective-- either you are honest or you are not. He lies about things big and small and when he gets caught it is ME he is angry at and says things like I should appreciate that he was "partially" honest.

I just found this site and since it is hard for me to get to lots of al anon meetings in person each week, I thought I'd come on here bc I am really, really struggling today....

Thanks for listening.