Here goes nothin'...

I've developed a bit of a game plan. I don't know how well it will work, but I gotta do something.

First I'm going to contact the EAP office at work. If you aren't familiar with the Employee Assistance Program it is a pretty awesome service that offers basic counseling services for employees on a short term basis. Most major corporations offer this service so look into it if you ever find yourself in need. My hope is that after a couple of individual sessions I will be able to bring the kids in on it so they learn how to relate to a father they have rarely seen before.

My husband is not open to any group therapy and he is unwilling to try a 12 step program. There will be no "making amends". He has said all along that his drinking was a direct reaction to the stress we gave him here at home by not being the perfect little Stepford family. I know that therapy won't make me into what he perceives as the ideal wife and mother, but maybe it will help me better react to the constant criticism without making things worse.

I know that his success or failure at sobriety will mean the end of our marriage. Honestly I can admit that it was probably over long ago and his drinking is what kept him here in the first place. I could go into a million examples of this but I'll save it for therapy.

I don't know what he has told the children about all of this. I haven't mentioned it and I'm not going to until we have had some sort of family discussion. Thankfully they weren't around when he dropped this bombshell on me and they weren't home until late in the evening so they haven't seen me breaking down into tears for no apparent reason.

I'm pinning all my hopes on counseling. Unfortunately that's where all my fears lie as well. What if therapy proves him right? What if everything that has gone wrong in his life the last 20 years is my fault? I accepted him and all his flaws. He accepted me and all my flaws. Now he wants to better himself, but what if I'm as good as I'm going to get?

The start of something new or the beginning of the end

My husband of almost 20 years just told me he is giving up alcohol, cold-turkey, and that if he fails he will leave me.

While I am proud of him for making the decision to change his life for the better, he has some how made his 30 year addiction my fault. I've tried before to convince him to quit. I hoped he would see how his drinking affected our children and he would make the decision to stop. But whatever finally pushed him to make the change doesn't matter; it is the right thing to do for him and for the children.

What concerns me is that he is going into this on his own. No support system except for me and the kids. We aren't trained professionals; we are flawed humans just like him. So how can he pin the possibility of failure on me? I put up with the all the crap that comes from living with an alcoholic. I put out all the fires with the children. I was a single parent a lot of the time because he just wasn't there to help with the kids or the bills.

Was I a perfect mother, housewife, financial planner? No, I never claimed to be. I did the best I could on my own. Now he tells me we should have never gotten married because neither one of us is good with money. He tells me how much all of his friends have. He tells me how some of them turned their lives around because of strong supportive wives. I get no credit for sticking through all the shit of the last 20 years without complaining. Anytime I did try to bring something up about money or minor household issues I had to deal with whatever state of inebriation he was in. Then there would be the inevitable argument later on when he didn't remember anything we had previously discussed.

I am not blameless, but I don't know if I can handle being solely responsible for the success or failure of his sobriety.