Old 12-26-2015, 12:39 PM
  # 24 (permalink)  
ShootingStar1
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 1,452
Maybe it is time to acknowledge that you both need to recover. He from his alcoholism and all the damage that accompanied it, and you for your efforts to stay with him and all the hurt that you swallowed because of your decisions that led to underlying rage in you.

Maybe the way forward is to both acknowledge, now, that a long segment of your mutual marriage damaged you both, and you both need to heal.

I can understand that he wouldn't want to be with you in the future if you carry lingering anger so deep that it made you hope he fell and hurt himself. You felt terribly helpless and unable to get any changes made in your relationship, and, as a result, so desperate for intervention that you would have taken it any way at all. If he thinks you still feel this way, he may not think there is as much potential in your marriage as he needs to move forward with you.

If it were me, I would feel that the ball is in my court to reassure him that while, yes, the devastation of that time period was far beyond what he knew, that your commitment to him and your love for him is greater than the past, and greater than he knows, and you want to recover your marriage with him, even as you pursue your own path of recovery.

I think that your hurt and pain is very deep, and it is not enough to say that working in the evening prevents you from going to Alanon, or that money prevents you from going to therapy. This is the time for you to choose your recovery, whatever that costs. For me, the longer I was away from my marriage, the more I realized my own part in the dysfunction, and the more I own my own need to change, make amends, and grow.

ShootingStar1
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