ETA: I totally messed this up when I tried to quote on my phone. Will try to fix ASAP. UPDATE: I fixed it below. But the messed up post is still above. Hope that doesn't confuse anyone too bad. Admin, any way you can delete above post. Also, this is supposed to the be in the Friends & Family of Alcoholics Forum, not the F&F of SA Forum. I'm new here, sorry.
Originally Posted by
outtolunch 
His drinking is a problem for you. It appears to impact your wellbeing.
It is and it does. But understand that, as I explained, he became a problem drinker rather recently, realized it, went into recovery, and just last week had a short relapse which has seemed to jolt him into jumping more fully into recovery. Those that I talk to from CR have said all along that he is doing very and we are very lucky for him to realize there is a problem and stepping into recovery so quickly.
There is nothing you can say or do that is going to keep him sober or cause him to relapse. You are not that powerful. None of us are.
Recovery from anything is an inside job.
I realize this. I don't see how this means we can't encourage each other in our recovery. For example, he has encouraged me to call a friend from CR that has been supporting me. Without his encouragement, I wouldn't have done it. On my part, I encouraged him to rethink drinking non-alcoholic beer. He thought it made a good obvious substitute. I told him that psychologically, it tricks his brain into thinking that he is drinking alcohol, which continues the association that alcohol equals fun and relaxation and stress relief. That it could undermine his recovery even if he is fully committed because it continues a positive association with alcohol. That made sense to him and he stopped drinking it. Obviously, if he isn't fully committed to recovery, it won't matter. But if he already is, it can help. IMO
You can accept him as is, where is, or decide you no longer want to be in a relationship with someone in active alcoholism. It's that tween part where you want/need to help/support him sober, that's a real killer.
Okay, I think I do accept him as he, but also, love him enough that I want to see him grow. Now, depending on where this road takes us, if he gets worse instead of better and isn't committed to recovery, I will have to rethink whether it is something I would choose for me and our kids.
Only you can decide if you want to put your self and children into a front row/center seat to all of this. While he might be a good provider right now, active alcoholics and addicts are not competent to parent because alcohol/drugs always come first.
I don't know what all is considered active alcoholism. But I guess I don't see him as active. He had a relapse. A very short one after 4 months of sobriety. Which may not seem that long to some of you, and honestly doesn't to me, but his period of real problem drinking was much shorter than that, say 6 weeks. So to me it seems positive.
You and your children deserve more than the leftover crumbs.
Agreed. And at this point we get way more. When he drinks I would say its true. His life isn't centered around drinking now though, by far, and when it was it was for a short time.
I am just having a real problem trying to find people to relate to in this community. Everyone has bad stories, and all it does is scare me about where this could go. And I swear almost every person online says nothing but negative things about the alcoholics in their lives and I just can't relate to that. And it seems like people cant fathom that my situation is really the way I describe because it is so far outside of their experience. But the people at CR that know both of us tell me how blessed we are to be here so early and how lucky I am that he's so willing and recognizes this for what it is after just getting into problem drinking.