This is a long one...pull up a chair! LOL

Hi all; I just discovered this site and thought I'd give it a try.  I've been to a few Al-Anon meetings, but I live in a VERY small town (moved here from a big city) and everyone knows everyone...and I haven't connected with anyone like that here...so it hasn't been to helpful.  I don't feel comfortable discussing personal stuff in those meetings and I can't relate because most of them have very different issues.

So...first of all, I'm having trouble "accepting those things I cannot change."  I am a strong, perceptive, assertive person and I have trouble with the "that's just how it is" thing.  Here's my story; I'll try to make it brief, but I can't promise anything!

First off, I'm 42, from the East Coast, used to cities...moved to rural CO 2 years ago and I now live in a small mountain town.  I love it here, but I also miss my friends back East...I'm used to having assertive, politically aware, strong women as friends...and I really haven't met anyone out here that I can connect with, so I really have no one to talk to about any of this.  I'm very "young for my age" as they say...I have no children (my hubby has 3 from a previous marriage...2 adult daughers and one teenaged son), we have 5 dogs, I work from home for a national company (kept the job I had back East) and my mother, brother and sister all live back East.  My in-laws live near us out here and they are about as opposite from me as you can get.  Very conservative, mom in law is very judgemental and meddling.  That's a different story though!

My husband and I have been together for 4 years; married for 2.  We had a very rough and rocky start...we got together back East and lived in a party town...most of our time together was spent partying and hanging out in local bars.  I am not an alcoholic, but I did drink too much living in that place...sometimes I drank because he did and I couldn't get him to stop; I had the "if you can't beat em, join em" attitude.  When he asked me to move out here, I told him the only way I would is if he got into AA and tried to stop drinking, smoking pot and porn surfing.  He promised...got into AA and stopped it all.  We moved out here and within a few months, he was drinking, smoking pot and really into porn again.  I had stopped drinking to support him back East and continued to not drink even when he started again.  After a few months, I said what the heck and started drinking socially again.  It escalated into going out every weekend and getting smashed...and getting into a lot of arguments and fights almost every time we went out.  I knew I couldn't go on like this for much longer.  I still only drank on the weekends occasionally, but he was popping cans every day, smoking pot almost every day and getting drunk every time we went anywhere.   I was miserable.  I can't explain how it felt...I'm hoping someone can understand where I'm coming from on this...I was scared on a daily basis.  Not physically scared...just scared and full of anxiety, trying to predict his every move, being suspicious and and constantly on edge.  It's was his personality combined with the drinking; he gets very manic sober OR drunk...he was all over the place all the time...wanted to stay up late all the time...blast music, be outrageous and what he thought was funny and creative...his porn addiction came back full force, he would ignore me every time we went out; he was flirty but denied it, gregarious...always had to be the life of the party at my expense or not...never considered my feelings or how I felt...didn't really care about anyone but himself and his own pleasure and fun.  I didn't find his antics funny at all.  He would go out of his way to hang out with anyone that wanted to be with him...he could care less what I thought.  I didn't trust him at all.  He lied a lot...about anything and everything.  I would walk into the room and he would have porn up, minimize the window and then deny it and yell at me, like I had a problem.  He would call ME nuts and make me feel like I was suspicous of him because I had a problem.  He would spend hours in the garage...would never want to come to bed...and I found out later he had bottles stashed in there.  He would never answer his phone when he was out.  He would say "I'm going to the store" and wind up out somewhere drinking.  He would go to play pool, promise to be home at a certain time and then come home hours later.  I would call him and he would get mad and because I was "stalking him" he would use that as an excuse and say "I'm not coming home now because of YOU" and stay out and get messed up.  I don't know if anything adulterous occurred during that time, but I do know that I find it hard to trust him even now.  At that time, I felt like he hated me; like I was just the pain in the a** that lived in his house and tried to "bring him down."  I had no one here to talk to and definitely didn't have the support of his family and mine were far away.  It all came to a head one day; we went to a festival in the park and for some reason I got really smashed....I knew I shouldn't, but I was fed up, afraid and couldn't stand being around him when he was like that; I was at my wit's end.  When we got home, I made something to eat for us and he sat on the couch and got on his laptop.  He would not come over to eat...by this time I was sobering up and he was continuing to drink.  I pleaded with him to eat something and drink something other than alcohol...and he kept getting madder and madder.  I finally exploded...I knew he had been on porn a lot and had been browsing Adult singles sites...and I said "I know you've been on this site and that site, please get off the computer and come eat!" to which he replied "Why do you think I go on these sites?  Have you seen yourself lately??  Have you seen how fat you've gotten?"  I was shattered.  First of all, I'm not fat, I could lose 10 pounds, but I'm not fat and I'm considered attractive.  He is tall and skinny as is his whole family...and has an issue with overweight people.  Anyway, I was just devastated.  It still hurts over a year later when I think about it and I'm still self-conscious.  I started screaming at him and he yelled back, came over and knocked the baker's rack onto the floor and flipped the dining room table over and things just went flying.  He never touched me, but he went on a rage throwing furniture, wound up falling down bumping his head.  I called 911, then didn't go through with it...dropped the phone on the floor and as much as I didn't want to, ran around the corner to my in-law's house.  I was still buzzing myself.  The police wound up coming anyway and they made it out to be a fight between two drunk people.  The next morning my father-in-law and I walked over and tried to do an intervention of sorts...but my hubby was hung over and pissed and yelled at both of us and said he wouldn't go to AA.  I was so emotionally exhausted and hung over myself...I was numb.  I told him I was leaving; that I couldn't take living like that anymore.  To make a long story short, I made plans to go home (back East).  That afternoon he got into AA and started his recovery, but I told him I had to go anyway.  I rented a truck, packed up some of my stuff, one of my dogs and cat and made the drive all by myself over the mountain passes, all the way across the country...a long, scary, lonely drive.  I have never done anything like that before.  I had a house to rent when I got there.  Halfway home I decided I wanted to come back to CO, but I had to continue my journey back East and stay for a while.  I won't go into details of my stay out there because this is already too long, but I stayed 6 weeks and came back to CO.

My hubby has been in AA ever since and has been sober since July of 2007, which is great.  Things are much better than they were for sure, but we still have underlying problems.  I feel like there is so much about him that I don't know.  He was married for 13 years to a lesbian...I still can't figure that out.  He has three kids, one of them is also gay, one is a reformed heroin addict and one is a compulsive liar that gets into trouble a lot.  His relationship with his ex still puzzles me; sometimes I think he hates her and sometimes I think she really did a number on him.  He told me yesterday that he was feeling "squirrelly" because it was his ex-wedding anniversary...I was upset because he's been divorced for 12 years...nearly as long as he was married...and it bothers me that he still thinks about it like that.  He got mad at me "for not understanding".  I have an ex husband too, but I am over that and don't dwell on anything about our marriage.  I just can't imagine the details of their relationship; it remains a mystery to me.  Normally I wouldn't need to know anything because the past is past, but I don't think the past is past for him.  He also has PTSD from childhood trauma and that affects things as well.  I think all of these things are the real issue and the alcohol was a symptom of that.  The alcohol is gone, but the issues aren't.  He is in therapy and on meds, but I don't think he is getting the greatest care.  He gets extremely manic and I can't stand him sometimes when he's like that; I love him, but when he's in that mode it makes me very edgy and I can't mentally get on board with him.  He deines that he is manic; says he is feeling energetic and happy, but from my perspective, he seems borderline out of control.  He says inappropriate things that disturb others and when I point it out, he gets mad at me for holding him back.  He hates what he sees as my "disapproval."  He is hyperactive, can't focus, is really eurphoric one minute and snappy and nasty the next.  He doesn't understand why that behavior is hard to tolerate.  I am recovering from a very rough surgery and after 5 weeks am still having pain and discomfort and I can't resume normal activities.  Sometimes he is very cool and takes care of me, other times it seems like he doesn't give a rats you know what and seems annoyed that I'm holding him back from fun.  He told me I was "repressed and depressed" yesterday; and I said "No, I've just been in pain for 5 weeks."  He likes to make it seem like I'm the one with the issues...calls me crazy, makes fun of my minor OCD, etc. when he is the one with the real issues.  Whatever I am, I am not mean, nasty, unstable and my moods don't go to extremes.  I am caring, nurturing and loving and if I am in a bad mood, I always say "I'm in a bad mood today because of so and so" and I don't take it out on him.  If I get frustrated with him for something or express anger at him, it's always "my issue", my "disorder," etc.  It gets very frustrating.

So...I'm not even sure what my point is; I just wanted to get this all out because I hold it inside all the time.  Things are not bad, he is much more caring, isn't drinking, etc., but I have still caught him lying a few times about being on porn and stuff like that.  I pointed out to him that I can't trust him if he continues to lie...he apologizes and says he understands...not like before where he would yell at me and find a way to blame me...but I just can't believe in him fully sometimes because of the lies and the questionable past.  I know there are things I don't need to know...but I also don't want to be married to a complete stranger.  I know there are some things in his past that would curl my hair and I wouldn't even care about those things if he was more open with me.  I wish I could explain that better...but I just can't put into words how I feel.  It's like I start to completely trust him and believe in him and think I know him and then BAM, something happens that makes me question him all over again and trust my own judgement.  I just want to relax, accept the serenity thing and not worry about it all the time.  I also don't want to be gullible and blindsided.  It's a Catch 22.  I have a very active mind and I think too much sometimes, but I don't want to live my life ignorantly either.

With all that being said, I just want to say that I love my life out here, I love my husband and most of the time we have a good life since I've been back, I love my house, my dogs and all the nature and beauty out here...but how do I learn to live in complete peace and trust someone and not worry and get anxious at the things I can't change?  How do I balance trust and not being a gullible fool?

Thanks so much for listening to my long, long rant....