LanaBoBana

Hello,
Ugh, where do I even start?
My husband and I have been married for 6 years. We were young, wild and madly in love. Blah blah, weren't we all? I was 25 and he was 30. We both had well paying jobs and the term, "work hard, play hard" was our motto. We traveled, ate and drank our hearts out. Eventually that all changed when I became pregnant with our first child. I chose to stay at home with our baby while he continued to work. While I stopped drinking, he continued. I did not want to upset him or cause problems in our marriage so I became the "sober alcoholic", if you will. I drank to cope being around him and to avoid conflict. We shared many great memories raising our daughter, but alcohol was always involved. Mostly, me taking care of my husband and being his Mom. He was your text book alcoholic, functioning at work; everyone loved him but as soon as he got home, we got the brunt of it. It wasn't until I became pregnant with our second child that he started to become VERY angry and emotionally abusive when he drank. He is extremely insecure and has alway been obsessed with his physical appearance, as well as mine. He would constantly tell me how women wanted to "f*** him" or "all those chicks want me." What nice things to say to your pregnant wife, or to anyone! Dick.
When I was about 5 months pregnant, he would start random fights with me and would leave to go to the bars. I would be left with my 3 year old, wondering why I felt crazy and why it was my fault. EVERYTHING was always turned around on me, everything was always MY fault. He would drink in the middle of the night to soothe his withdrawals on early Sunday mornings and continue drinking in his car when he was at work. I can still remember driving MYSELF to the hospital when I was going into labor at 29 weeks because he was passed out and inebriated from drinking. What a winner! I spent that evening in the ER, all by myself. He arrived that next morning and chugged a mini bottle of chardonnay while I had tubes coming out of my body.
8 months after my son was born, I had enough and left my husband. I packed up our crap and left with our two children. I drove 15 hours home to be with my family and to re-evaluate my life. My husband soon followed 2 months later with promises of changing... blah blah blah... 6 months later, after a failed 2 month rehab stint and THREE detoxes; we are currently separated. You always hear that alcoholism only gets worse, and it did. My husband started being physically abusive to me in front of our 4, now 5 year old daughter. Two weeks ago, he was arrested for domestic violence in front of a child; we currently have a no contact order in place from the judge.

6 years ago, I would have never seen this coming. My husband is a wonderful man, sober. However, he has demons and they go deep. He has been drinking since he was 17 and it has consumed his life. I've tried to understand why he has such a dependency on alcohol. Could it be the strict Christian upbringing? Did something happen to him in his childhood? Did his overbearing and smothering Mom actually do more harm than good?

After typing this, I already feel like I know what I NEED to do. I'm so exhausted. I feel like I've lost a part of my soul being married to this person. I've given it 150%. My children are my life and I couldn't bare for them to go through any more of this crap, especially my daughter. I guess I'm just looking for affirmation. This road is going to be one tough SOB...... *sigh*