Originally Posted by
oddsunflower 
What I wanted to ask in the other group (more aimed towards mental health type diagnosis and co-morbidity) is why they hang on when they are always saying that they want to give up? Do they really want to give up or just looking for attention? I don't want him to give up per se but something has to give eventually. He is going to kill himself with the drinking and he is taking our family down with him.
oddsunflower, If I am reading this right, ( please correct me if I'm wrong), you were wanting to ask this other online support group these questions to try and get answers about how your HUSBAND might be feeling? Or why he is behaving the way he does?
I imagine you would have gotten the same kind of answers from them that you have gotten from us.
I would love to see you put as much effort into understanding yourself as you put into trying to understand your alcoholic husband.
You are spending so much of your precious energy trying to reason with the unreasonable, understand the inexplicable and rationalize the irrational. None of those things are possible. You are spinning your wheels trying to get inside the head of an active addict. It will NEVER make sense to you. It doesn't even make sense to him so how could you ever figure it out? I'm not judging you, I say this as a woman who spent years caught up in someone else's chaos. The answers did not exist and I got extremely exhausted chasing those shadows. I got very sick with an anxiety disorder. It was awful, I wasn't even myself anymore. I was lost, just as caught up in his alcoholism as he was, I was codependent. It sucked.
I got better when I took the focus off him and started doing what I could do to make my own life feel better. I used my own energy on myself for a change and the results were much better than when I wasted that energy on him.
I am glad you are still here sharing with us oddsunflower. I hope you are finding some comfort knowing we understand what you are going through.
*hugs*