Originally Posted by
scacra1 
He would be a perfect father 80% of the time, i know that. His drinking is going in the opposite direction, which probably gives me false hope, for 5 years he drank every night and all day on a weekend (pre me) but now its just fri/sat night and he trys not to get drunk. So this is the part that fools me - the effort that he makes for me... which fools me to thinking that maybe we'll be okay, he's trying so hard, but the problem is as ive learned on here, he seems to be doing it for me. when im not about he slips, so now we spend most of out time together... which i know is wrong. thing in the end.
My loved one would have been a fun and loving father....but the rest of it would have been in my hands. How much of that is alcohol and how much of that is personality I don't know. That is how he was with our dogs, and it worked out great with our fun loving Golden, but was much harder to deal with when we had a dog with some issues.
I truly believe that happiness does not have to come in the traditional family package, (maybe kids come into my life via adoption for instance), but I don't know that I am healthy right now for that.
Al-Anon helped me a lot too just for the record, as did therapy.