He has been going to AA every evening. He has been super proud and maybe thinking easier than he thought.. he was so inspired by others stories, and even started talking to others. Tomorrow would have been his 30 days..his green chip. And today I come home and he had been drinking. AND he went to a meeting. I havent said anything. I know tomorrow he is going to feel really bad, but I dont want to say "oh, its okay..Try again".. yet I am not going to yell or argue. Not sure how to handle

Sending you positive thoughts and prayers....it's such a tough situation to be in. My best suggestion is to just listen if he wants to talk about it. Otherwise, you truly have to let go and let God. Each time my qualifier(s) relapsed, my sponsor would remind me that 29 days was better than before the effort. She truly had me working to change my mindset of this is so bad and so wrong to finding goodness in each and every life event. It helps me today still to use PAUSE and to look for what is working/well vs. what is bad/not working well.

(((Hugs)))

He did use one of his AA steps and apologize directly. I had to hold down my severe anger. I did blurt out a couple of things, but I didnt lose it. He is obviously going straight back to AA today to pick up a white chip again. He knows what he did and hes getting back on track. Good for him but I swear I suck at Al Anon steps. It is very hard for me to act "normal" around him. I cannot joke around or talk about things or anything for a few days now until my anger subsides. I can barely make eye contact. I wish they had a screaming my head off emoji

Keep working your steps, and after awhile, you won't have to fake staying on your side of the street, you just will.

In the meantime, be gentle with yourself, progress not perfection! And you are definitely making progress!

Kenny

Keep going to your own meetings and working with the steps, and talking to your sponsor. What your SO has done is normal for alcoholics before they get what the disease really is. It doesn't mean he failed, he went to a meeting and he's continuing to go and be part of recovery. He might have several slips. It's all ok, because he is learning by all of this. He might be learning what it truly means to be alcoholic, which is that one drink gets us drunk and as an alcoholic, without a psychic change, we cannot choose NOT to pick up the next drink. 29 days isn't long enough to get that psychic change. He hopefully will be working on steps 1-9 to get that psychic change.

Aerin,
Just know that being angry is perfectly normal. I couldn't look my hubby in the face for many years. I wanted to smash that face so many times. It was much better that I just didn't look at it.

And remember that your anger is non-productive for you. You can huff and puff and blow away but in the end you have to go back and clean up the mess. Avoid the mess.

Just take care of yourself. No expectations.