It hit me harder today than ever. While everyone I know shares photos and videos and messages on social network of their holliday fun....gleaming smiles of couples and families
Non alcohol get togethers and the making of memories. I find myself jealous.
I think this is a common feeling amongst those with an A as a spouse/SO. You start looking around and realizing that other people's households and social events do not involve possible outbursts, inappropriate behavior, insults, etc.
When I would write our family's Christmas Letter to include in Christmas cards I began noticing that in recent years (when H became an A) that I had fewer and fewer positive things to say about what he was doing. I'd fill up the page with mentions of what the kids were doing, or what I was doing, or what vacations we'd taken (sometimes without H), and then include a couple sentences about H still working at XXX company and still occasionally golfing. There wasn't much else positive I could write about.
For years, I didn't even know that H was an A (he drank mostly after we went to sleep). I just though he was lazy about doing home chores/projects and preferred being a couch potato or internet surfing.