Originally Posted by
PippiLngstockng 
In more direct response to the thread topic: i propose that staying with an A feels more stable in a high functioning A household and looks normal and money issues are easier. But underneath the A household still has a rotting foundation and above a leaking roof. It isn't ever going to be healthy without the A majorly in recovery.
But a traumatic divorce can feel even scarier than the A household. The children lose the comforts of a two-parent family, including the happy family image that everyone wants to believe in.
I can just hope and pray that after divorce will come safety, stability and peace! I live for that day.
It may feel more stable for the adult to stay in a marriage with a "high functioning" alcoholic but I don't think that is the case at all for the kids (and I only recently changed my thinking about this-- previously I would have argued that staying put and having financial stability was maybe better)....
I had to attend a child impact seminar that my state requires for all parents with minor kids who are divorcing and at it we were inundated with research and studies and facts about how long term studies of kids from divorced homes where there is at least one parent who can provide calm and stability fair MUCH better long term (academically, emotionally, substance abuse likelihood, truancy, legal trouble etc...) than kids who are raised in high conflict homes where kids are subjected regularly to conflict. And I don't think there is a one of us who can argue that life with an A, no matter how high functioning or not, is conflict free.
The anxiety my kids had daily because of never knowing what to expect, bc no one could talk about daddy's absence, mood, behavior etc... was unbearable. The rules of the alcoholic household apply no matter how high functioning an A is and I decided for my own kids that fell into "high conflict" enviornmnet and they weren't going to stay a part of it.
I think that the changes that come for us (financial, loss of friends, community support, worry about money and the future) keep us with A's sometimes. I know those things kept me with my AH. Financially I am in ruins bc of my divorce. But I prefer that over having my kids emotional health be in ruins. I had to choose one. Finances can be repaired. I'm not sure the damage done to kids who grow up in toxic homes can be. I wish my father would have taken my siblings and I and gotten us away from my mother years ago. At 41 I am just getting my act together and finding a sense of self worth.
I would have been happy to have noting material as a kid and to have had a peaceful life with a sane parent. The "stuff" I had bc my parents stayed together and maintained one household instead of two didn't help me grow to be an adult with emotional health.
I didn't want my kids looking back and feeling like I do toward my parents one day.
They have a lot less and we will have to make do with even less still as time goes by but they have been much more okay with that than I expected they would and I think the person who initially had a hard time with the financial changes was me-- not them... And my worry that they'd be impacted by the financial upheaval kept me with the A much longer than I should have stayed...