Originally Posted by
Angrymarble 
He has owned up and I have him making the calls and paperwork for marriage counselor. I don’t think he will manipulate bc he feels bad. But whether he’s done drinking is a different story,
If he is still drinking he will be maniupaultive, he may be on his best behavior to make it look like he is doing what needs to be done....which is manipulative.
And quitting drinking does not equal stopping the manipulation. Unless they get therapy they will remain manipulative. Maybe less so but it will not go away. It took my H a good 7 week of being in rehab when he was finally starting to see some of his behaviors but he still had some degree of manipulation after leaving rehab and the first few weeks of rehab were not fun for me. Habits die hard and this one is a very tough one to break if they're not really committed to wanting to change.
And I think whatever issue brings you to marriage counseling, whether it has anything to do with alcohol or not, if they're not really in recovery it doesn't matter what the issues are because manipulation happens in every aspect of their life. And since they're such masters at it, it is sometimes really hard to see it for what it is. I know that's hard to accept and/or understand and that hats why it works so well for them. I'm 15 months out and it certainly took me a good while to understand and see a lot of this as well.
Long and short of it is, unless he is truly willing to change, nothing you (or anyone else for that matter) do say say will matter and that really sucks. It is so hard for non addicts to understand why addicts can't change their ways even when you would think they're hitting rock bottom. But that's addiction.
You can certainly give marriage counseling a try but I honestly would not expect it to be very helpful. I know it would've been useless for us in the early stages of his recovery. Each person really needs to work on themselves before you can work on the couple. I would not have realized that necessarily either at the beginning but looking back it has become very obvious.
I'm sorry you're in the situation you're in and it is frustrating when you have zero control over what he does or should do, that's the nature of the beast unfortunately. Work on you, that's what you have control over and i promise you it will help.