Yes. Be kind to yourself. And again -- you are NOT a failure.
I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home, but I dated several mentally unhealthy men, some of them addicts, before I married one. I spent four years in Al-Anon and here at SR before I left AXH, and started counseling after I left him. During that time, I slowly learned to understand what it was about me that attracted me to these men.
For me, as I suspect is the case for you, it was behaviors that were modeled for me when I was a child, and beliefs I held about myself -- often things that my parents had praised me for, like putting other people's needs above my own -- that sort of prepped me for subconsciously looking for men who were needy. I felt like I was worthwhile and praiseworthy when I took care of them. None of them upfront seemed like needy disturbed people to me -- but friends and family who were healthier could see that my "picker" was off. I thought I was drawn to extremely intelligent men -- my friends could see that I was drawn to extremely needy men.
When I remarried after my divorce, it was to a man who was very grounded and very solid. For the first time in my life, I was OK with not being the person who controlled a relationship; who was the emotionally stronger and more capable one. I am very happy in my marriage today. And I'm not saying that to rub it in your face in any way; I'm saying it because despite that fact, I still have behaviors and fears that are grounded in my former marriage to an alcoholic.
And also -- there's a statistic somewhere that says that a person who divorces once is more likely to divorce again, and that's often held up as evidence that some people are just bad at marriage. I think, on the contrary, that it's evidence that once you have survived one divorce, you are actually less likely to put up with dysfunction in your next marriage. While I'm happy right now, and today believe I'll spend the rest of my life with this man -- should he become addicted to a substance, or become abusive, I would hope I would not feel like a failure because of it. And I hope I would be quicker to leave instead of trying -- again -- to fix another person.
I think for me, my first marriage taught me that while we all want the union-that-turns-two-into-one, it's in a way a very unhealthy way of thinking of a relationship. It taught me that you are always two in a relationship, and when one is unhealthy, the relationship can't be healthy either.
And you are always free to leave an unhealthy relationship. Always.