Welcome Cuddy, I am glad that you have found Al-Anon meetings and understand the basics about the disease of alcoholism. It is a dreadful , chronic, progressive disease over which we are powerless.  Alanon  is the recovery program established to support those who  live with or have lived with the disease of alcoholism.

Living with this disease we develop many negative coping tools in order to survive the insanity.  Al-Anon offers an alternative to these tools, provides positive support as we attempt to let go of old attitudes and develop new one. Even if you're not with an alcoholic at the moment you're still been affected by the disease and attending  Al-Anon meetings would be very helpful.  It is here I learned to keep the focus on myself, be gentle with myself, live one day at a time, trust a power greater than myself and to act and not react. These are powerful tools and although I'ml not with an alcoholic, they serve me well today. Keep coming back there is hope 

Aloha Cutty and welcome to the family and thanks also for the memories I get thinking about how I came to recovery and how precarious the journey has been during the period of time I have been here.  I need to keep in mind and spirit that I arrived without wisdom and experience about this fatal disease...I just didn't know and didn't even know that I didn't know.  I was born into the disease and over time it became a normal way of living; the thoughts, feelings and actions I didn't even know how to spell and say alcoholism or alcoholic.  In my family the word was "drunk" and if we said it we were being disrespectful.  No one knew cunning, powerful and baffling or fatal which I learned in the rooms of Al-Anon being direct toward the information from the AMA and other sources.  I still didn't believe because I thought I could and would "will" it to be different which lead to more insanity than I could wish on myself or anyone else because alcoholism is driven by will...a compulsion of the mind and allergy of the body.

You found a courage to change though you have second thoughts about it which we call second guessing.  I was driven mad by my second guessing as all of the plans and re-planning and expectations and such continued to become ashes.  I arrived at the understanding that I wasn't loving her I was practicing my own addiction...the difference between love and need and I was in the position to seek help from my Higher Power (than I) and the people tools HP put in front of me.  I started having miracles of understanding and growth and the lessons are indelible.  I had to climb over the mountain of pride that kept me sick with the tool of acceptance and more.

The decision for me to leave was supported by so much different understanding all the way around that while I resisted making the decision I was faced with new and newer understanding of the justifications to follow thru.

I ought never have sought relationship with a alcoholic/addict though I had done it several times before.  I ought never had drank alcoholically myself yet I wouldn't find out what that meant or was until my HP paralyzed my compulsion to and brought me into the foreign world and people of recovery.  I came to understand what my HP was teaching me thru the ESP of many others.  Today I am sober and know what that means and I have peace of mind and serenity and understand the conditions of grace in my life. 

Leaving for me was hard also and not as hard as living within the disease.  When I left and found recovery and when she did also we discovered how much we loved each other and....had no reason to be married.  Marriage was one example of us practicing our addiction.  Thank God for program....Please keep coming back cause this works when you work it.   (((((hugs)))))

In Spirit....I am sure she is as grateful as I am at the mystical and miraculous way it turned out even knowing perfection wasn't.  My HP used my alcoholic/addict's recovery as a metaphor and lesson in humility...(being teachable) for me.  I needed a bag over my head too.

I was in a Thursday Night Al-Anon Family Group meeting when a man came in after attending the family group at the Alcohol Recovery Center and he was flustered telling the room "You are not going to believe what I just heard in group"  He went on to say that a lady came into group with a bag over her head led by her counselor who told the group that he had met the lady that morning with the bag over head and when he asked her why she replied "I have come to understand that if I am not led blindly thru recovery, I will not make it".  She kept that bag over her head full time for two weeks and was still sober when we parted.  That was my alcoholic/addict former wife.  God needed to get to me...and God did.

I had to leave before this could happen and while others could and would doubt that idea for me it is experience and worked.  The experience continued when I was asked to be a counselor in that program.   (((())))

That is very intuitive and then for me do not know the exact will of God...I have come closer to knowing by working the program and attaining consequences of working it as I was shown by example.  I have learned that acceptance has a place in the will of my Higher Power and that Love is HP's name and the opposite of fear.  I learned from HP that Love cannot exist at the same time as fear and that fear cannot exist at the same time and place as love.  That was a direct lesson which remains with me to the moment.  So I was given a choice by HP...what do I chose HP asked and I laughed because the answer was obvious...to be loved and to love without condition just as HP loves.  Is this not the greatest commandment?  I like it even the definition given to me by another Al-Anon sister who loved her alcoholic without mentioning him personally or specially.  After the meeting I chased her down on the way to her car to learn what her definition of love was...it doesn't even contain the word love.  I adopted it for my own definition..."It is the complete and total acceptance of every human being for exactly who they are".    Unconditional.  You are included in that Cutty, without condition.  There is nothing you can or have to do to make it better or stronger.  Love is the higher purpose.   (((((hugs)))))