Thanks so much for your post, I recognize so much of what you're saying as being true. I am starting official meetings this week, but to date have just been reading massive amounts of material and seeing a counselor (alone and together). He's dropped hints of an issue with me being controlling over the last week.
I guess the high-functioning part allowed denial for so long, that it's still hard for me to allow that many of our marriage issues to be attributed to this (and of course, HE doesn't think so!) However, the more I read, the more I see us on the pages and our dysfunctional alcoholic dance.
I am struggling because if we didn't have kids I'm at the point where I could cut off communication and take care of only me while he figures himself out. The thing is that he's not drinking, which is different than most posts...so I find it confusing. With the kids, he thinks he's healthy enough to co-parent, and he wants us to be "friends". As I'm working on my boundaries I struggle with both of those. The kids are afraid they'll never see dad and I don't want to hurt them with this-- he's never been abusive to them, though he has patches of hyper-critical verbal attacks.
I'm thinking about standing firm that if he knows he needs to work on him, he needs to truly focus on only that right now...and maybe he can see the kids occasionally, but no long-term visits until he's in a better space...but then we get back to the "control" issues. I need some sort of boundaries so he's not taking advantage of me and causing me to stay too connected to his issues.
No idea how he'll react to that. I don't want to fight. I don't want to hurt my kids. I don't want to be vindictive. I don't want to under react.