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Old 10-26-2012, 10:24 AM
  # 36 (permalink)  
Graceland
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 48
Your post takes me back to where my AH and I were a year ago, sitting in a therapist's office trying to work on our marriage. However, my individual therapist told me that this would be impossible until he admitted that he was an alcoholic and sought treatment. Without this admission and desire for recovery, marriage counseling is like building a house on sand.

The discussion has no solid foundation as his thinking and motives are completely driven by the need to keep drinking. He needs you in the relationship because without you, the status quo that enables him gets upset. So, he probably tries to keep you by passively aggressively insisting that you are perfect, then complaining about all of the little things that you do that bother him. Although my AH never called me perfect (I wish), he blamed the troubles in the marriage on my failure to cook my share of dinners, clean the countertop of coffee grains, sweep the floors, spend "reasonably", etc. etc. etc. It meant NOTHING, NOTHING while he was still drinking. Back then, I was completely unable to see that this list of faults had nothing to do with me as I truly am and nothing to do with our marriage. Your AH is the last person to be helping you with Step Four because he can't hear you or see you. All he sees, most probably, is himself. Or, at least, that's the way that it was with my AH.

In my experience, marriage counseling is pointless until he realizes that he is an A and seeks help. The best you can do is save the time and trouble and put it towards the good work that you are doing on yourself. I wish that I did.
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