Hi Spes,
I am in a similar position as you with my AH. And I am struggling with many of the same questions.
I met my husband in high school - we were both brainiac nerds, and had no experience with drinking - so alcoholism hadn't found us yet. We married 8 yrs later in our mid20s and had a great first 10 years.
Our problems began in the second decade of our marriage. It was very slow - and easy to ignore in the early years. What began as social drinking became nightly cocktails. In the past few years, we were easily having half a dozen martinis a night and getting blotto.
That was when things changed for him - his esteem plummetted as he realized he *needed* to drink in order to cope. He drank to mask his feelings of shame. He drank because he felt like a failure. He drank because he hated what his life had become.
His friends knew him as a big drinker, and found his antics entertaining. So they encouraged his drinking, and he obliged them eagerly. He desperately needed people to like him since he had such a low opinion of himself. He began doing foolish-stupid things and then dangerous-stupid things. Losing things, driving drunk, damaging cars, getting mugged. His health declined - weight gain, hypertension, depression - only giving him more reason to drink.
And me.... Well, I was a participant in excessive drinking for a good bit of that time. It helped me ignore that I was watching my spouse completely unravel. Later I tried leading by example, and limited my cocktails to weekends or social gatherings, and stopping after one. When that didn't work I tried persuading him to stick to just beer, and give up the harder stuff. When that didn't work I tried marital counseling, begging, crying, yelling, threatening, policing - anything and everything I could up with. Naturally nothing worked.
What finally helped me was a book my therapist suggested called "Codependant No More". Until then I had only a fuzzy notion of what that term meant, and resisted the idea that all my attempts to help were actually counter-productive. Reading it was like reading my life story. I had done every single thing the book described with exactly the effects predicted. It was eye opening and liberating. I made giant strides in detaching very quickly once I understood the dance we'd been trapped in for years.
In our situation, when I detached - the sh!t hit the fan. He upped his game, maybe because I'd rocked the boat? It felt like he was trying to draw me back into my role as guardian of his behavior, fixer of his messes, and coconspirator in hiding his problem. And I realized just how much I resented him for it. I didn't want our marriage to fail - he had been my best friend for 27 years! - but I decided all I would be losing at this point was a charade. Our happy marriage had been lost a long time ago.
Two weeks later he enrolled in intensive outpatient rehab - without me lifting a finger. He's one month in now - so we're still very new at the process. I waver between relief, optimism, and fear on a daily basis.
My biggest issues are:
1. Concerning detachment - if I take the total hands-off approach, and he does something criminal, like get arrested for DUI, or worse - what liability do I face as his spouse knowing he had this problem, but failed to take action? Is it right to let go of the worry that he might injure or kill someone? I have no reason to think thats about to happen, other than his program has indicated relapse is a common part of recovery - and he has been behind the wheel of a car drunk in the past. I'm struggling with how to balance codependency with being socially responsible.
2. From time to time I am plagued with the feeling that I've traded a drunk absentee husband for a sober absentee one. The rational part of me knows he needs this time away from the old routine to heal, educate himself, learn new ways to cope. My assumption - maybe incorrect - was that that recovery was a process, not a lifestyle. Will recovery become his new alcohol? The tool he uses to absolve him of responsibility? And as a poster-child of codependency, how do I recognize the difference between being supportive and being manipulated?