((HUGS)) Maggie. I totally understand the defensiveness about the family, too. I can see in your responses that you are working through some of this in your own mind, at your own pace, and that is what recovery is all about. As co-dependents and loved ones of addicts, we very naturally assume a highly defensive posture that starts to infect every aspect of our lives. I believe you mentioned that your own family of origin has distanced themselves from you because of your AH's addiction. No wonder you are defensive, and just want support without judgment! That is, I think, a totally normal reaction given what you live with. I will say, though, that my experience here has shown me that the repetitiveness of the statements does not come from a place of judgment. I promise you that NOBODY here has a right to judge you about your choices. It comes, I think, as a response to what appeared at first to be your absolute certainty that your AH isn't abusive (though you very wisely later stated that his constant drinking IS in itself abusive, which I totally agree with), and that his behaviors don't affect your kids. Those of us who have been working recovery programs for awhile know the tremendous shame and guilt that comes with the eventual realizations that our qualifiers ARE abusive in many ways, and that their behaviors DO affect our kids. I don't believe we are judging you...I think we are trying to share our own experience in the hopes that it will bring you to those realizations a little sooner, sparing you and your kids as much emotional harm as possible. But I also know that we are all very different people, with our own emotional backstories and contexts, so of course we all react differently when someone says something that we don't agree with, or we doubt, or we don't want to believe, or we think is judgmental. The most important thing is that you keep reading, keep learning, keep coming back, and keep working on yourself.
I also thought I was shielding my daughters (who are from my first marriage) from my AH's disease (he is their stepfather). Right up until my 14-year old daughter told me that sometimes she wishes he would die. And then I was hit with a tidal wave of guilt, for all of the times I convinced myself that my AH's actions didn't affect my children.
It can be very difficult, especially in our early recoveries, to balance the need to love yourself and be gentle with yourself, with the need to be honest with yourself about the realities of addiction and your total lack of control over it. Just keep doing the best you can, and keep trying to get help for YOU. I am glad you are looking in therapy. I am a firm believer in how much it can benefit people.
Your AH and my AH sound a lot alike: demanding, dangerous jobs in an industry where addiction/drinking is rampant. I don't envy an addict's road to recovery. I can't imagine how terribly difficult and heartbreaking the journey to sobriety is. I do know that it is my AH's responsibility to get sober, and nobody else is to blame for his drinking or his disease. But I also know that the environment he works in certainly does not HELP his disease at all, and that adds an extra level of frustration. I would imagine the same is true for your husband. My AH follows a lot of the same behavior patterns as yours. Like you, I can quite literally write the script for pretty much everything he says and done, based on where he is in his personal cycle of addiction. I used to obsess about it constantly. Now it is just a low-level awareness in the back of my mind of where we happen to be in the cycle.
((HUGS)) again to you.