COD - My heart is truly hurting for you today. A couple of things - Absolutely nothing you do during this process is necessarily permanent - not even a divorce. Secondly, sure your son is sad when one of you isn't home. That will be something he has to deal with and hopefully BOTH of you will be healthy enough to support him in processing his sadness. Your child will experience much worse and more complex emotions if he is exposed to active alcoholism on a daily basis, and sorting out how to process those things often destroys families multi-generationally and often never reaches a place of peaceful resolution.