Instead of saying, "My expectations are not unreasonable for me, just my AH."... I lowered my expectations to meet AH's ability. I continually bent myself to adjust to whatever it was he could give me. Instead of fighting over the garbage getting taken out, I just took it out. I thought that my being "accomodating" (being the "good wife") was going to help make our marriage better - or at the very least, take the pressure of my AH so that he would somehow magically become the prince charming that I just *knew* he could be!! So I spent the previous 6 years, accepting less than what I deserved... taking on more than my share... and all that did was enable my husband.
I hear you. This is what I'm struggling with. I'm not accommodating about the house or the kids or any of the outside stuff, it's the ME stuff that I let slide. I don't have any designs that I can reform him or anything. ... Of course I'm getting the opposite message from family. They think I can LOVE him into sobriety -- but if that worked, so many of us would just magically *BE* sober. I keep setting deadlines -- one month, another month, another month -- to make a decision about what to do next.
It's just that this time he actually got some real quality help. I want to give me/this/him a fair shake -- with the understanding laid out that there are no more One Last Chances, this is it, pal -- but I don't like the balance where it is now, where I get the ****-end of the stick because I'm too nice. So I'm being a little less nice. I called yesterday and said, "I need these two nights to myself every week for whatever, so rearrange your stuff around that. M'kay?" And to his credit, it wasn't a problem. I did what I wanted yesterday and came home a smidge more relaxed.
He did start volunteering this week to be out of the house, so that's something. I could keep going like this indefinitely if he was working, but since he's not because of IOP I've got another deadline imagined in my head sometime after the first of the year.