Welcome to this forum.  This is a wonderful place to get support, as along with this active board, we have a chat room (24/7 chat) & 2 daily meetings in there.  It is great to go to the chat room to connect with others who know what you've been through, can understand & relate.

I can tell you how I have worked on my fear.  We have an acronym for FEAR - future events arent real.  As long as I am gazing into the future, imaging the worst, I can not be truly living in/for today.  Expecting, what iffing, it all is made up stuff & not reality.  So I soothed myself with logic, reminding myself of what I just wrote. 
   I also could not just stop doing something - it is by far easier to replace one behavior with another.  When I would wander off into worrying about the future, I would pull my attention back to me, focusing on me & my own issues & being grateful for whatever it is I can be, now. 

Manifest destiny - means we create our experiences.  If I dont want fearful experiences, I can simply shoose to focus on what I want... so instead of being fearful, one day I chose to stop looking at fear & living in it, I got into "now" instead of wasting my energy feeding negativity (fear, anxiety) into the future.  Be grateful & work on experiencing that for a few days, and see if you dont start feeling it more easily & your fears naturally go away.  Find something positive to focus on that can & will empower you.

Get to f2f mtgs & get the pamphlets & try to share.  Sharing is how we begin to heal.  I encourage you to try our program, it is really works, when you apply it to your life.  Focus on YOU,  you cannot help your AH heal but you can change you.

You are not alone. Many of us have been exactly where you are right now. I remember thinking after my AH got out of rehab--if he doesn't need me to DO for him anymore, will he still love me?? Looking back, I now see that there are so many things wrong with that question, but I didn't see it then--I have come to realize that I was just as sick, if not sicker, than my AH after living with the disease for so many years.

If you haven't already, I would recommend that in addition to Al-Anon literature that you read the chapters in the AA Big Book "To Wives" and "To the Family Afterward." They provide alot of insight into what is going on with you and what is going on with him in these early days of sobriety. There is also a great Al-Anon book that I highly recommend, "Living with Sobriety." That book really saved me after my AH came home after rehab and was stark raving sober.

I can tell you, from my experience, that it took my AH 6 months or so before he started really feeling emotions. Then, he had to work on identifying and dealing with them instead of just numbing them with alcohol. I thought that if he got sober everything would be wonderful--he'd be the husband I had always wanted. That isn't how recovery works. Recovery takes alot of work, it is alot of baby steps, and sometimes it is one step forward and two steps back.
He will have alot to do to recovery from the disease--physically, emotionally, spritually.

I realized early on that if I decided to stay with my sober AH that I would have to be in it for the long haul. He is now 4 years sober and each year I see new behaviors and more empathy, but he will never be the mythical Prince Charming that I read about in romance novels and watched in chick flicks.

Recovery has done a great thing for me--I have been forced to grow up and to learn how to live in reality instead of fantasy and denial. To reexamine my beliefs of what love is, what it looks like...to let go of childlish romantic ideals. That's not to say that sometimes I don't wish he would burst through the door and profess his undying love on one knee, I do. But, I have come to appeciate that the other, more mundane aspects of life and love are really not easy for my AH--they do not come naturally for him, for alot of reasons. So, now I appreciate that he calls me at least once a day to "check in." That he is where he says he will be when he says he will be there. That he follows through with a committment no matter how tired he is. That he usually remembers to ask me how my day was. The little stuff. But as he recovers, there is more and more little stuff and it is a miracle.

And, Al-Anon has enabled me to do all that. The program forces me to take the focus of of my AH and to put the focus squarely on the one person I can control--myself. I urge you to try it. This is the time for you to work on you--you have been affected by the disease just as he has and you need to recover too.

The truth is that he may love you, he may not. YOU may love him, YOU may not. And it may take awhile for you both to figure that out--that's why both AA and Al-Anon encourage newcomers to NOT make any major decisions in the first year of recovery. We are still reacting during those early days, instead of acting and our emotions swing from one end of the spectrum to the other in a nanosecond it seems!!

So, give yourself time and try not to take anything the A says or does personally. A's (even sober sometimes) are rooted in fear, guilt and shame. Try to have compassion. Try to give him the room he needs to deal with the aftermath of his disease, in his own time. You keep the focus on YOU. Do what you need to do for YOU. Get to some face to face Al-Anon meetings, find a sponsor, work the Steps yourself, do some service work. I promise that you won't regret it!!

Hang in there and be gentle with yourself. This is a scary time for you. And, that's okay!!

Yours in Recovery,

SLS

Thank you all for some great responses. I have been going to Al Anon. My first meeting was actually an open AA meeting because I hadn't been able to get the coveted list of Al Anon meetings yet. All have been very helpful so far and I'm doing my daily reading in One Day At a Time.

I am also in counseling - have been for 9 months. Working on me. It's harder to look at yourself and your issues, especially when the other person is making such progress. I almost feel like he'll pass me by. But, you are all right. That is okay. I can't control or worry about the what if's.

My AH was already so kind and loving even while drinking, that now it's a bit overwhelming he's sober and even more empathetic. He always asks first about me now. He wants me to come to his 30 day chip AA meeting and occassionally go. I think it's healthy he wants me involved but doesn't want me to take responsibility for him and his recovery.

Being co-dependent, I am still just beginning to start healing and growing. I know it's a long road and patience is not one of my strengths. But I appreciate knowing from you here that I am not alone and that thinking can be changed.

Thank you all for your advice and input.

CajunsCheri

((((CC))))

In this program they tell us to focus on ourselves and our recovery. It is hard not to ask that question. But it is revealing in that it shows how tied we are to the addiction. Or should I say the disease wants us to feel that insecurity. Can you say the serentiy prayer over and over until it becomes clear?

In support,
Nancy

I have had huge abandonment issues most of my life. I can relate. Leaving the ex A was for me very very difficult.  The ex A who I was with knew exactly what to say to hook me back in.

For early sobriety there are often huge expectations. The less expectations you have the better.  Of course it is very very difficult to be around somene in early sobriety.  Many people are on a pink cloud and they do fall off in time.  You are in the right place being here.

Maresie.

Cheri -