Originally Posted by
terry2768 
I just wanted to let everyone know that I did not intentionally look through his journal. When I attended his support group meetings those journals where with him and I did see much of what was written in them. When he came home from rehab he left all his information out in the family room for over 6 weeks, until I finally moved it all to a bookcase I cleared off for all his recovery material. He never said, " do not look at any of this." I was organizing it for him, and like I said, I had seen much of it in support meetings already, so never even thought anything about it. Unknowingly I came across the papers I mentioned earlier.
I really feel for you... That sounds to me like a set up. My AH did the same thing. I didn't look at his journal but the fact that I MOVED it from being shoved between the seat cushions of the couch after 2 weeks (and moved his big book from the middle of the living room floor) resulted in a week of being verbally abused and accused of invading his privacy.
Unreal. I am so sorry. Clearly your H is no where near behaving in ways that are consistent with recovery-- maybe he's sober (or maybe not) but it's not the drinking that makes him an alcoholic and it sounds to me like you are in for a long road with him...
And like others said, if what you found, regardless of how you found it, is a deal breaker, make a decision that is best for you. Infidelity is NEVER okay (if that's what happened-- I think that's what we are all assuming). And it's not something that is attributable to the disease. It's a crummy behavior that's unacceptable no matter what your disease may be.
I realized recently that for YEARS I have attributed every abusive, crappy behavior of my AH's on his disease-- Kind of giving him a moral break a bit... And recently I came to my senses and realized that not every bad behavior on the part of an A can be pinned on alcoholism... I lied to myself and tried to say this was the case for a long time bc it gave me hope that if it was bc of the disease, then maybe if he recovered, so too would the terrible behavior. But there's no guarantee of that and I finally have decided I don't feel like sticking around to see whether or not he a) recovers and b) if he does recover, whether the behaviors change.
I think that there are some people (even the big book says this) who are just corrupted deep down and dealing with far more issues than just alcoholism and in those cases, sobriety and recovery aren't going to change things.