sweetgrace

I am seeking some insight to help me understand whether my husband's thinking (I'll explain what I mean by that) is symptomatic of his alcoholism or whether it's just his personality. I am trying to determine this because I am not certain our marriage would ever survive, even if he were to stop drinking. On the other hand, maybe it's the drinking that causes his mind to operate this way.

Some background...Our marriage has been troubled from the beginning. (At this point, I want to note that he was not an alcoholic for the first three years of our six year marriage.) I had some very strong perfectionist tendencies that caused me to focus or obsess about things that were not importance instead of focuses on the things that really matter. Although my husband expressed to me that this was upsetting to him, I felt helpless to control it. And to be honest, at the time, I really didn’t grasp the degree to which he was suffering because my perfectionism - that epiphany came too late. Over the past year, I have worked very hard to overcome my perfectionism by researching (in books and online) how one beats this. The strategies I have learned, coupled with my own personal desired to win my battle with this, have been successful. AH cannot see this. We have the same tired conversation/argument over and over where I explain how I have overcome this flaw in my personality and why things are different now and I get the same tired response over and over – “I don’t believe you” (I can hear that statement just echoing in my head right now). And “if I ever see a repeat of XYZ occasion, it’s over”. He is constantly expressing his fear of me still being like this and has begun (in my opinion) GROSSLY exaggerating the way things were. I cannot emphasis that enough – he GROSSLY exaggerates things, has timelines all screwed up, insists that some behavior I exhibited for one week (obsessing about a particular thing) went on for months. Therein lies my question. Do people who regularly abuse alcohol have skewed/exaggerated memories? Remember, he was not drinking when most of this was going on. Also, he still makes these some contentions about the past, even when is having a sober moment. I’m not sure I am making sense here, but I guess what I am asking is…does he just belabor all of this, refuse to see how I’ve changed, and exaggerate the past because his brain is soaked in alcohol almost every day. Or…is he just an as*? And what am I supposed to do with this? If I truly have changed (I have) and he refuses to take a leap of faith and believe that it’s true, he really hasn’t left me anything to work with…has he? Everything is always doom and gloom. He is so negative. He doesn't remember anything I ever did that was sweet and loving, nor does he seem to notice it now.