Hello everyone. I went to my first therapy/counseling session a week ago and that was a good thing. I have not made it to a F2F meeting yet but it's on my calendar now. I have been reading al-anon stuff voraciously. I went to the gym for the first time in .... oh well, we won't even say. I made myself a tiny goal (exercise for 20 minutes). I met it. 

AH and I had a big blow up (screaming screaming and more screaming, all on my part) recently (prior to my counseling session). Ever since then we've been doing the "lets pretend everything is great" dance. Yesterday we finally got around to having a civil conversation. I told him that I realize that I was going in a bad direction regarding the way I react to him and his drinking and I'm committed to getting healthier. As we got to talking about this I let it out that I've seen a counselor (and plan on going again and again), and that I'm going to go to an Al-anon meeting. 

Well that went over as well as you can imagine. Why would I need to go to a meeting about alcoholics when nobody in our house has an alcohol problem? He was genuinely shocked. I might as well have said I'm going to fly to the moon. According to him, the fact that he showed up drunk to the kids' school during the daytime is simply my mis-interpretation of his bad reaction to his pain meds reacting with his booze. (Uh, what was that about people not being supposed to mix opiates with booze?  ....) And that his life has been very stressful lately and he gets no credit for that. (Hey, why don't you try being the one who ISN't stone drunk 7 days a week but has to live with one!)

He says that I'm trapping him by not letting him drink every day.  He went as far as to say that he realizes that is what his mom did to his dad and that's probably why his dad left. HA HA HA HA HA. Yes, that's right. Never the alcoholic's fault.  God if only I could be so fortunate. 

He did say that he feels like I have been looking for a reason to see him fail. And I told him that was true. I didn't even notice it before, but all I have been doing is waiting for the "other shoe to drop". And that my inability to trust him leads to my over-compensating for him, to my over-resentfulness of him (and everyone who I deem to be even a little bit like him), and eventually comes back to hating myself for not having the guts to beat him over the head with a bat or (preferably) walking out on him before we had kids. I told him that I recognize that this is a bad cycle to be in, which is why I'm seeking help. I also said that in the days since I've had this epiphany, I have felt better than I have in ages. Like, I know there's work to be done, but I have a potential path to a healthy state of mind that I didn't have before. I can't say that I'm happy, but I feel like I found a foothold in the midst of an earthquake. 

Anyway, we ended that conversation not much further than the place where we started although I guess you could say that now he's openly resentful of me accusing him of being an alcoholic.  (Try not to laugh too hard.) 

On the positive side, it's clearer to me that alcohol has poisoned his brain. It's also clearer to me that if I can get myself to stop thinking that I should hate myself because I a) married a boozer despite plenty of warning and b) I couldn't stop him from being a boozer,  my life will get better. The actual consequences (present and potential future) of his drinking still terrify me, but every day (almost every hour) I say to myself, "I didn't take that drink. I didn't endanger my livelihood. I am still ok. Hating myself is not fair." I am resolved to believe these statements are true. No matter what he does, they are true now, they will be true later.