Originally Posted by
gerryP 
Lizatola, what has your husband shared with you recently regarding his desire to quit drinking and work a program of recovery ?
From what I have read here he has not given as much as a backward glance to what situation he is in as a result of his drinking. Staying in a marriage and wanting it to succeed because no one wants to see a marriage fail doesn't sound like a success story to me.
Nothing. He's shared nothing but that could also be because I don't ask. I figure that if he wanted help, he'd ask me to assist him or something. If he really wanted to deal with his problem, then he's going to have to go it alone because I can't fix it for him. And, since he hasn't asked for help, I guess he doesn't think he has a problem. I only invited him to come along to a meeting(to go to AA while I went to Al Anon) once and he turned me down. He also got the advice from his psychiatrist to go to AA, but didn't make a move towards recovery at that point either.
And, you're right. It's not a success story, it's a work in progress of a story that is being written and I'm in control of my character. I can change things for ME and for my SON.
My therapist shared something today with me that made me think about things. She said that I can ask him to do all kinds of things to fix our marriage, to set some limits, etc and basically give him an ultimatum. But, she said that I need to approach it as 'I need this to happen, I need for this to happen if our marriage is to succeed, I deserve this/that/whatever from a husband and from a marriage and our son deserves things too.' She said that I need to take this approach instead of the; 'you need to do this, you need to go to AA, you need to get into a treatment program, etc'
Anyway, it put some things into perspective and made me realize that I can be in control of ME and I can only express my wants and needs as they pertain to me, not as they pertain to HIM. Does that make sense?