Well, I clicked off of this thread on two different occasions, yet something keeps bringing me back. I am 27 years old and the daughter of an alcoholic "father". I've never discussed this in great deatil, but I'm going to tell you my story in hopes that it may be of help to you.
My parents divorced with I was about 5 years old, but not before he punched several holes in our walls, got a dui, beat the crap out of my mom, lost a few jobs and burnt the house down....twice. Yep, 2 times - smoking while drunk = passing out and lighting house on fire. The list goes on, trust me.
Was it always like this? No. It started with some missed days of work, and some late nights at the bar and escalated from there. I can tell you that living with an alcoholic is NO way for a child to live. When my parents got divorced our visitation schedule allowed for me to stay with him every other weekend. He was court ordered to NOT drive me anywhere at any time, yet I somehow managed to find myself driving around in the passenger seat of a van that either was swurving from side to side or had a tall man yelling obscenities out the window every weekend. I'd spent Saturday nights at the age of 7, 8, 9, 10 years old throwing away beer cans and staying up late only to sit on the floor in front of the couch so that I could put out this man's cigarettes. The ashtray was only as far as the coffee table, yet he somehow couldn't manage to do that himself...before he passed out, that is.
The next morning, he'd fight with me to eat all my eggs and drink my milk because they were "good for me". While I would gulp down my milk to avoid conflict, can you imagine the lack of respect I had for his "authority" - come on, I was the parent in that house. Time passed and he remarried (only to later get divorced again), another house got burnt down (though he claims it was an "electrical" fire). Blah, blah, blah.
Our relationship had been touch and go through my teenage years. He'd make promises and not follow through, say he'd call and never would, say he'd show up and never did, missed my highschool graduation, missed my birthdays and all the other things that a father should be at. To this day, my mother never said a bad word about him. She let me make my own decisions and my own opinion about the situation. I'll never forget that she did that. It was probably the best thing she ever could have done. Actually, it was the second best, the first thing was getting use the h*ll out of there. The weekend trips were brutal as it is, but I can't imagine having that in my life every single day. Sure, I envied the life of my friends with the perfect family at times, but I never had anything short of respect for my mom's decision to remove us from that situation. Sadly enough, she's now in this situation again and I'm losing respect for her as I watch her ignore what's going on around her and letting this go on around my young siblings.
FYI - 22 years later "father" is still a drunk.
Your husband is not going to change unless he's ready to. It may never happen at all. Keep the long haul in mind.
By the way, I ended up being the most responsible person in my family, do not drink or do drugs, have a wonderful child and a good job, so I ended up okay. I think the thing I feel like I lacked, was my childhood. I had to grow up WAY to soon.
Keep us posted.
I'll be thinking about you.