LIS, I'm sooo glad you came to visit! You were a big inspiration for starting this thread, though I'm afraid it has taken on a life of it's own, rather off the original topic I think. I wish you had your own thread, currently. I would love to follow through your thought processes and interactions with your H. I think I could relate better.
I'm sorry you have your H's drinking problem to deal with. I wouldn't know what to do with that. I hope you're taking advantage of some of the support services like alanon. I don't have anything like that to deal with, thankfully, just overall selfishness on H's part. Our M has always been all about him. And when I make something about me, H just doesn't participate. So at least in this I can relate to your sitch: When the M problem is not getting something you want, or getting something you don't want, what do YOU do?
I would say the biggest issue I have with "working on my M" is that I don't know what that would look like in the context of a WAS. I don't want to dress in sexy nighties, because that would make H want to have sex and I don't want to right now. I don't want to spend more time with him doing his activities, because I've BTDT, and it just takes away from my time for my interests, which he doesn't participate in. Basically, I don't want to do anything to facilitate his selfishness.
The consistent message I've been getting is that I can't change HIM. So I'm not trying. I'm just changing me. And I have changed a bunch of things that make for a happier me. But it does not make for a healthier M. Most LBS's have a list of 180's they can work on. I don't have that. In fact, H was quite happy when it was all about him. The one with the list of M complaints was me.
So I'm willing to do some things. But like you experienced, I'm very aware of the risk of falling back into what I once had and so I'm very protective of that. I don't want to lose what I've gained personally. I don't know what working on my M would look like at this point. Oh, and talking about it with H is not an option -- that is one thing he insisted on.
