'...give him something worth battling 'the demon drink' and his anger for...'
You have given him three children. You yourself have said 'I do' to him. That has not been enough.
I think you are still hoping that you can save him from himself. Please do not keep going down this blind alley. Maybe it is a blow to your confidence to think that nothing you do will make a difference to the drinking or the anger, but the truth is that only he can overcome those problems of his and to do that he has to want to himself for his own sake first, and then for yours and for the sake of the children after that if at all. But primarily he has to want this and he has to do it for his own sake.
Nobody can overcome such enormous problems for the sake of someone else. He has to want to -- he has to see that it is in his own interest to do so. Right now he thinks he has nothing to lose. He has no motivation. You working on it will not give him motivation. That has never been reality.
I think there is also guilt here -- do you feel that you are abandoning him to his misery by separating. If so, this may be related to your feeling (that I suspect you have) that you could save him if you tried hard enough, if you loved him enough. The other side of guilt is a feeling that you have been inadequate as a loving wife and that has made his problems emerge - he has helped this along with his opinions about the fertility treatment.
If that is the case, it is a bit 'conceited', for want of a better word. It puts undue faith in your ability to make this man feel or think or do. He is an independent human being, not an outgrowth of your hopes and dreams, and what's more, he is a human being in the thrall of something more powerful than you (or him) -- alcohol.
Neither of you respects alcohol enough. Neither of you is afraid of it to the degree you should be. He thinks he is master of it and you think you can beat it. You are both wrong.
'Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offence or store up grievances.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth.
It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.'
Is this the one you were thinking of? (letter to the Corinthians)
'Love never comes to an end. But if there are prophecies, they will be done away with; if tongues, they will fall silent; and if knowledge, it will be done away with.
For we know only imperfectly, and we prophesy imperfectly; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will be done away with.
When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and see things as a child does, and think like a child; but now that I have become an adult, I have finished with all childish ways.
Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles, but then we shall be seeing face to face. Now I can know only imperfectly; but then I shall know just as fully as I am myself known.
As it is, these remain: faith, hope and love, the three of them; and the greatest of them is love.'
From that passage, in this context, I would take the message that you can still love, and you can have faith, and you can hope, and you can endure whatever comes -- but you can do all that while separated, especially the 'enduring whatever comes' part. I would in fact take the message that as the mother of those three children you are duty bound to hope and to endure whatever comes in order to keep them safe, to ensure that they grow up in an environment where they do not see and hear abuse.
Right now, loving the children requires enormous physical self sacrifice but not really that much by way of heartbreak, or the disappointment and tearing out of hair that can accompany the teenage years and the hurt that teenage callousness can inflict on a loving parent. You will have the chance to experience all of this down the road like everyone else though...
Does it fit more with your view of love as requiring self sacrifice, or your image of yourself as a saving grace, to make your H the focus of your love right now? (I am sorry if this is a blunt question.)
Are you able to tell him that you hope and have faith that he will find his own path through his anger and his drinking, and stop thinking that you can be his conductor?
Can you leave it in the hands of a higher power, just as AA asks members to do? Faith and hope require letting him go and acknowledging that control is out of your hands. Faith and hope exist hand in hand with love. Together they will outlast all else.
There can be no perfection. No perfect wife, no perfect husband, no perfect mother or father. Expecting perfection of ourselves or others is misguided. However, when there are small children depending on us we need to look at what we can do to improve our game. Even if they are not the squeakiest wheel or demanding in the same was as a H may be, they have enormous needs. Their needs and their demands on their parents are absolutely valid and must be met to the best of a parent's ability, whereas pandering to what may be wrongly identified as a dysfunctional adult's 'needs' often has more to do with fulfilling some sort of need in you than real respect for that other adult as a separate human being (without which there cannot be love). It is so tempting to look for the gratification that comes from oiling that squeaky wheel though.
I would examine 'love' as you see it. 'In love' is gone out the window; it doesn't last for anyone - it can come and go; the day to day love that makes a marriage is a verb, not a noun. It consists of mutual effort to put the other first, to choose being kind rather than right, not a feeling in your toes (or anywhere else).
I am getting the feeling that you equate love with self sacrifice, self erasure, a desire to bury yourself, maybe from a fear of being alone, fear of ending 'childish ways' and dependence on Another? I think you need to ask yourself what you are getting from the self sacrifice aspect of it.
I think it might be useful for you to imagine the advice given to passengers travelling with small children on a plane -- if the oxygen masks descend those responsible for young children are told to put their own mask on first and then proceed to help their children. You are no good to anyone if you sacrifice yourself to the extent where you leave yourself without oxygen.