plus, i really don't want to just give up on him. he's a good person, he treats me better than anyone ever has, and he has one of the greatest hearts of anyone i've ever met....so what am i supposed to do?
Even if he's totally sincere in those traits, alcoholism warps the personality and brain. It may be whenever he's drunk or it may be progressively slow. I've been married for 18 years and only this autumn did I finally figure out what's been wrong 'lately'. Only once I finally started acknowleding the actually problem and looking back, I realized it's been many MANY years of slow changing. Sure, the man I fell in love with is still there, but he's done many things to hurt me emotionally that he's totally unaware of and wouldn't believe if I were to try to tell him --- it would be twisted to become my fault --- THAT from someone who's always loved me more than anything? Yes. Alcohol has a huge grip. Thankfully, from the help of the people here, I'm learning to step back and take care of myself. I cannot stop him from drinking and he does NOT want my encouragement or to hear from me that I am worried about his health. He used to be very critical of those who drank too much, but now he doesn't realize that he does all the same things he used to critisize. Hiding booze, drinking more and more, buying bottle after bottle (along with beer and drinking moonshine that his friend makes). Does he love booze more than me or the kids? No. Is booze more important to him than me or the kids? Yes. He would say no, but I really believe the booze is more important to him right now than anything else.
So here I am, still loving him but unable to "save" him. All I can do is take care of me. I won't kid you. It hurts. It really, really hurts.
So as much as I'm still in the 'good' years (yikes
) and would do this all over again, I'm with the others. Read. Learn. Run. It's not too late to get out. Things will only get worse as the stresses of life pile on -- and really, those are just more excuses to drink.
btw -- the funny thing is, those stresses of life? Most of the time they're caused by the alcohol. Our life the past 6 years should have been better and easier than all the rest of the life stresses we've been through together, but they've progressively been getting worse and more stressful --- due to the alchohol. Yeah. Run.
faith