Fair enough. I've had my own grudges with some of the comments I've gotten in the past as well making me want to shout from the rooftops "but you don't know the full picture how can you judge?!?!!!" . I'm sure it is frustrating when you are reading advice or commentary when we only really know a tiny sliver of what's going on. The thing is, is that we cannot know every intricacy of a relationship between two people. It is easy to call out recovery or not recovery. Trying or not trying, just based on a small bit you give us. or that anyone gives us. However, sometimes it can be all that matters in the end. The small stuff that only WE know with our partner, is sometimes all it takes to get us sucked into the insanity of it all.
What SR has done I have found, is allowed me to tell my story, and to have an audience that is not emotionally tied like I am, that could read between all the small lines. That on some level while I knew that my partner wasn't only the glaring bad things that were on paper (that yes he did all these terrible things but that I still believe was really a good, albeit hurt, soul), sometimes the harsh facts that SR noted were enough to be all that mattered.
Yes, he was made of MANY different parts and at MANY different levels throughout our relationship and his journey, as you call them, but none of that really ever mattered except for, how is this person impacting my life right now? SR was a great tool for me to recognize that in the end, that was really all that mattered. Not so much where he was in his recovery or not in his recovery, but where those states impacted me. How did those "levels" make me feel. And that that alone was the most important thing.
Yes, all of this is much more complex than that. So many other things factor into the actions of others. And recovery is not black and white, but there are moments when our own recovery is. We are all works in progress, yes. But for me in the end what was important was, how long do I want to wait for this person to progress in his "work" when all that I have ever seen was the addiction progressing? So it became a work in addiction progress, never really a work in recovery progress. Recovery really being the only thing that would allow success in our relationship, work, family, basically everything. Without it, we had nothing.
Sorry for the long drawn out comment which may or may not have anything to do with what you've said.