Thank you Wide-O I have downloaded the book and begun to read it already. I'm saddened I didn't know it existed before today. As I said, there is so little out there.

By default an alcoholic is selfish, from my perspective DB was selfish long before sobriety, selfish in his deception, selfish in his poor little old me (ploms) attitude, selfish in every way that could lead him to twisting any situation into reasoning a drink was required. I became immune to the many criticisms, the depth of nastiness, perhaps because I expected them, perhaps because I knew he wouldn't recall.

I only had 2 times of real fear /terror for my safety, this was in the 1st year of our marriage & I gave as good as he could give. I was strong fit & as healthy as my back would allow. As he was bent over slamming a 3kg weight & giving me a broken foot I responded in kind & smacked him over the head with a ketchup bottle, blood went everywhere & I thought omg I've killed him. We went to St Mary's A&E sat n waited - he got his stitches & sobered up, we went home & I didn't get my foot seen to as I was supposed to be going in for my 2nd spine fusion the following week, in my mind at the time I was thinking oh well they can look at it then. Surgery was xld & I walked round with a broken foot for 3 weeks... lessons learned by us both. DB in particular, my wife has a fiery temper, she won't hesitate to defend herself. Of course he said he was slamming the weight to the floor to emphasise a point & my foot happened to get in the way. I empathised & agreed, I was slamming the ketchup bottle to make a point and his head just happened to be there, the difference being he was drunk & dared me to do it again, I obliged. The 2nd time he was threatening me & then swung to say he would jump out of the 3rd floor window or over the spiral staircase, I filled a bucket of cold water & threw it over him as he stood in the doorway of the bedroom. It had the desired result, huge shock, I still can see his face, he snapped to & the next day I very firmly explained "I'm not living like this" & moved out. We got back together & nothing as serious as that occurred again, certainly no real carried through violence (remember his family culture is all about domestic violence) but the suicide ideation revisited in 2011 in the middle of the day, while sober. It was tough going & resulted in his first rehab visit.

Much water under the bridge & I know he regrets those violent actions because for them he has a glimmer of a memory. He is a good person with demons, his go to all his young life was violence. I don't think he banked on marrying an Aussie who didn't cower. Anyway, it's history, we all have moments in our married lives we regret I'm sure. If I could change them I would, but for better or worse they shaped our relationship and we became a solid unit together feeling as though we had faced the worst and survived. Little did we know the battle to come, but here we are 401 days sober, DB here beside me in bed talking - talking & reading! We never had that before. I will cherish these moments, I pray we are strong enough to continue these moments and lift each other when we are down. Our patience with each other has grown considerably. For the better I 100% believe.

Wide-0 I want to say something about your wife, but this passage has turned into a lengthy honest blurb. With your permission I will tomorrow or the next. My words will be from my perspective of drinking while the alcoholic is abstaining and how difficult it is not to feel guilty & how unintended meanness flows from the lips even as you are wishing you could pull them back. It's one of the reasons this time round in sobriety I opted to do so as well.