Dear Rob,

you’re welcome.

I think maybe someplace deep down, I KNOW me fixing myself and changing for the better WILL change everything around me.

Yes, and it’s scary to change the status quo and have our loved ones get angry at us, perhaps even reject us and abandon us… This I guess is what’s holding you back? You’re aware that certain things in your relationship with your spouse are toxic, but you also love him and want to please him. And as you say, drinking is a way of bonding with him, so it’s hard to let that go.

It seems to me that if you want to stop drinking, you’d also need to work on your co-dependency with him, and decide that you don’t want to sacrifice yourself in order to keep his love. You’d need to put yourself first, not in a selfish way, but in the sense that you don’t want to jeopardize your health and well-being for him, or for anybody else in your family, even if you love them very much. I wonder how you feel about that?

Fingers crossed for your first AA meeting!