Thanks everyone!
Thanks so much to all of you for your responses. I work a strong AA program and that is central to me, so the Steps and AA inform a lot of what goes on in my life. We have no kids (we are both teachers and I am also an artist) so we have busy lives in many other ways, but yes, she did take care of me for a long time (I was a solo secret drinker so isolation and no small amount of dishonesty established my patterns.....) - in fact the caretaking is one of the things she is seeing about herself that she doesn't like and her instinct is now to separate so that she is not doing that. I asked her today if she'd consider counselling and she said no( we have done some counseling before), but that might just be because she's really pissed at me right now.
I taught part-time, anywhere from 40% to 75% while in school and now am substitute teaching after earning my credential and am keeping my fingers crossed for a full-time teaching position in the fall.
We have a lot of fun together when there is no strife - it's not 24/7 war, by any means, but when we fight it's always incredibly painful because it feels like the "same old" pattern with no change, and that brings up a lot of bad memories too. A lot of this is also made worse by the sudden unexpected death of her father a month ago. Her mom was an out-of-control bi-polar so she experienced a lot of chaos as a kid. And now both parents are gone and it's brought out a lot of stuff for both of us (my folks are still alive but I'm not too close to them, geographically or emotionally.)
I was told by a long-time sober friend that it might help us to try to talk to each other objectively about what we need from each other and what we'd like to bring to the relationship. I know for instance that I need to try to be much less defensive and a lot more compassionate. So that's a start. I want to be on a shared journey with her, where we're both passengers on the same boat. Right now a lot of the time it feels like we're fighting over who's going to steer the boat, and I'm guessing that the real Captain (HP) is just giggling at us......;-)
I talked to AA friends and my sponsor for hours today about this and that really helped me a lot. I am so glad to be sober and to be have support, including the people here. I want her to have the same kind of support! But as JT said I can't push her recovery. So maybe some patience is called for on my part. But it's hard because she got despairing today and said maybe we should separate for a while.....
Well, thanks everyone for listening, and for your support.....
P