Originally Posted by
wanttobehealthy 
Alcoholics take hostages and your wife and you are hostage to her father.
YES! That's it in a nutshell.
We actually have had a wonderful relationship outside of the AFIL. We're best friends and have known each other for over 12 years but the majority of our married relationship has been spent tending to this guy who will never accept responsibility for himself and will not get sober.
We've been to counseling, we try to keep communication open between us but when she becomes so stressed about her father, it ends up taking a toll on our relationship.
It does feel like enabling when I personally have to sit there with tight lips to both my wife and her AF. On one hand she's a saint for putting up with him. On the other hand, she has been taken in, as you say, as his hostage! She's worried she will not have done enough for him and doesn't want to feel guilty about it for the rest of her life but believe me when I say she has done WAY more than her fair share for him.
One sibling helps here and there but the other could care less. My wife has been better about relinquishing some of the burden onto the one sibling but maintains most of the control... which is a whole other issue.
She refuses to go to AA or even back to a therapist. And while I applaud the person above who is an atheist and thinks of his higher power as something other than god, where we live AA makes no bones about making sure it is a christian god you are praying to and should pray to. Absolutely nothing wrong with that as everyone has their own beliefs, they just don't happen to be mine but I do see that there are alternative groups to AA that I may try.
Still, I do not feel like it is wrong for me to say, "no more!" when it comes to placating my wife's AF. it doesn't mean I don't support her, it means that i no longer support him. Am I wrong in this thinking? Am I missing something?