Originally Posted by mattmathews

I think I was lucky. The rehab that my wife went to allowed family members to visit, and it was close to work, so I visited for a couple hours during the week and for a couple of hours on the weekend.
It might not have had the impact it had, if I'd just watched my wife going thru rehab, but I saw a fair number of people on their first day in rehab, their first week, their second week.... The change was profound. Individuals walked in looking like shambling wrecks (my wife certainly did). Within a week they started to have the light back in their eyes. In two weeks they became normal, bright, funny people again.
So when I went to family week, and the counselor described alcoholism as a disease, that had an impact on me. She had me hold out my fist, and then she wrapped her hand around mine and said "this is alcoholism." It's like a cloak that wraps around the alcoholic, but the person is still under there. Once freed of the alcohol, the real person can emerge.
I saw it happen. Some of the people who went thru rehab with my wife relapsed, at least one died of her disease. Some fortunate few, like my wife, went on and rebuilt their damaged lives.
Right now, you're afraid. You sense that your wife is changing and you're afraid of that the "real person" who has been molded and trapped under the disease of alcoholism. You don't know if that person still loves you. You fear the unknown.
The other thing I learned during family week was that people die from the disease of alcoholism. I came to see it as a life and death struggle. Whatever concerns I had about the path my wife's recovery would take (and divorce was discussed), I sincerely wanted her to succeed and I was willing to give her the room to do what she needed to do. I started going to Al-Anon meetings. We went to marriage counseling. She went to group and individual therapy. She went to 90 AA meetings in 90 days.
When she got out of rehab, she was on a "pink cloud," and life looked pretty good. When she hit 90 days she was at the other end of the emotional spectrum. By the time she hit a year, well, she'd grown a lot.
I highly recommend trying Al-Anon. It will help you understand some of what your wife is and will be going through. More importantly, it will help you deal with the damage that alcoholism has done to you (and if you're like me you don't even know how much damage has been done). And you've got kids...they deserve to grow up in a functional household.
You're wife's sobriety is fragile. Give her a chance to succeed, a chance to live. And just as importantly, take care of yourself.