I’m married to an alcoholic

Truth. It’s hard to put into words sometimes.

I married my husband (H) when I was 27. Did we get married because we loved each other or because it was the right age and most of our friends were going down the same path? I want to believe it’s the former, but we’ve spent so many years unhappy that I question everything these days.

H wants to stay married. He says he loves me. But does he actually? Or does he just want not to fail?

I say I want to stay married, but do I actually? Or am I afraid to end it because I’m financially dependent on him? (God, that hurts to put into words. But when things were at their very worst, I can’t tell you how many times I only stayed because I didn’t know if I had any financial options and the thought of going back to work and not being completely available for my daughter (D❤) terrifies me.)

Do I love H? Yes.

Am I in love with him? No.

Could I get to a place where I’m in love with him? Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?

We had a rough first decade of marriage. There were good times, sure, but the bad times/anxiety/dread/waiting for the next shoe to drop —because definitely more than two fell along the way — outweigh all my memories. H drank a lot. Not every day, not like he’d get the shakes without alcohol, but when he started he was unable to stop. He was sloppy. He was never physically violent, other than punching the fridge, our keurig, and throwing his contact case at me (but hitting D…) He constantly made decisions that ended up completely breaking me.

Bad memory: I was in New Jersey at a writer friend’s house for the weekend, working on a book. I get a call from H in the middle of the night. He’s wasted, slurring, furious. He’s walked back from a bar and can’t get into our condo. He’s accusing me of changing the locks, telling me he hates me, he wants a divorce. I literally leave Jersey in the middle of the night, driving through exhaustion and tears to get home, terrified that he’ll be passed out outside our door or worse, arrested. When I get home, he is snoring in our bed, having figured out how to use his key again at some point.

Good memory: Mega snowstorm, we’re talking above waist-high snow. Everything closed down, nobody could go to work. We spent days doing nothing but watching Dexter, til like 3am. I remember loving that time.

Our marriage therapist (MT) wants me to make a list of the bad memories that come back to me whenever H falls off the wagon (which isn’t that often, but still enough that I have lost all faith that I can trust him). (Or maybe that faith just never came back even after he got sober because he worked on himself and never made amends with me or my family or anyone else he affected with his drunk actions over the years.)

(Granted, I don’t even know what amends I’d need for all those years. I think part of it is that codependency thing from my first entry, in which I’ve completely lost my sense of self along the way and don’t even know how to answer the questions about what I want, what I need.)

But back to my assignment from MT. I haven’t done it yet. It’s too hard. Which I know is the point, it’s going to be hard, it has to be hard and acknowledged to allow the feelings to start to heal. But when I think about the list, I either am furious with H all over again, or completely depleted and drained and depressed. It ruins my entire day.

For instance, one memory (actually multiple, as it’s happened more than once, which is infuriating on its own), is the way he slurringly speaks to D❤, telling her mommy and daddy will probably live in separate houses. The first time I learned of it was when I’d been out of town and D❤ told my mom about what he’d said. Then, he did it again, just a year and a half ago at the beach.

Typing that makes me feel like I hate him. That he would put that sort of weight on our daughter, who doesn’t deserve to have to remember a drunk father slurring and stumbling and telling her hurtful things just because he feels like it. It’s not that we wouldn’t have that discussion with her if the time came, it’s that we’d consider her feelings and the best way to ease her into the new way of living and to make 100% sure that she understands none of it is her fault and that we love her with our entire hearts. But he didn’t care about her with his words. They were selfish and self-pitying and cruel.

It’s one thing to treat me (an adult) uncaringly (still not okay at all) but it’s completely another to treat our daughter that way, to hammer cracks into the foundation of safety she’s supposed to have at home, with her parents.

God. I think I have to end this entry because I’m pissed off all over again. From the memories, which I have no fucking idea how they’ll ever heal, and also from the way that he’s never held himself accountable for the psychological damage he could have caused. For the confusion to an innocent little girl, for the fear he caused. For her. And for the devastation he caused me. In that example alone — but there are so, so many more. Jesus.

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let’s see how long this thing lasts…