timetohealguy

Hi Mr Mystery,

There are a number of guys on here who have been through being abused by their female partner who drinks, so you are not alone in this at all. It messed with my head a lot when it was happening to me. ...

I went through a similar experience. When my ex stopped drinking, she went back to her kind personality which she had when I first met her. It became a great relationship again when she got sober.

But then she relapsed with alcohol and it all went to hell very very fast. She was a completely different person when she was drinking.

The key is not just getting sober but staying sober and getting into true recovery. Sobriety and recovery are two different things.

I know that feeling all too well.

I went through exactly the same thing. Your comment about "I will never be her first love" strikes a chord with me. I see drinking as a form of infidelity to the drinker's spouse.

My ex was very similar to that. She had me convinced that me talking to anyone about her drinking was some kind of unforgivable betrayal.

The verbal tirades can really damage relationships.

Any suggestion by me that she had any kind of problem with alcohol led to absolute rage from her.

My ex ended up only being interested in sex when she was drunk too. Drunkenness is not an attractive look at all.


My ex was in hospital multiple times due to her drinking. For some people there is no bottom and they will keep drinking until it kills them.

It's a progressive disease so the longer it continues, the worse it gets. For that reason, I don't buy the "let them hit rock bottom" theory.

The 12 Steps focuses a lot on personal accountability for the damage a drinker does to their spouse and family. But they have to be willing to work the steps to address the alcoholic thinking.

If they just stop drinking but don't do the work on their thinking, that is a dry drunk - someone who has stopped drinking but still thinks like an alcoholic - not a lot of fun to be around !

I tried a single person intervention and it was a disaster. She responded by convincing her family and her therapist that the problem was me and that I was driving her to drink.

If a drinker can blame someone else, they almost always will.

There is a treatment method called CRAFT (Community reinforcement approach and family training) which you might want to look into ...

https://www.hbo.com/addiction/treatm...ervention.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commun...amily_training

Part of that Wikipedia article reads ...

--------
"From an article on the American Psychology Association (APA) website about the success of CRAFT in substance abuse treatment and intervention, these are the success outcomes for engaging drinkers into treatment:

64% - CRAFT
23% - Johnson Intervention"
--------

My ex was exactly the same as that.

When my ex got sober for a few months, our relationship became good again, and she completely stopped abusing me and made amends for how she treated me when she was drinking, so it's possible that if the drinking is causing the behaviour, then if the drinking is removed, the relationship will be better.

The key though is not just getting sober, it's staying sober long term.

She relapsed with alcohol, stopped seeing the therapist who had helped her get sober, and it all went to hell at that point.

The Marriage Builders site has 3 thought provoking articles about alcohol in relationships ...

Alcoholic Spouse #1

Alcoholic Spouse #2

Alcoholic Spouse #3

timetohealguy

There are online alanon meetings ...

http://www.al-anon.org/electronic-meetings

There are also various support services that can do counselling by phone, and YouTube has a lot of videos that are professionally produced and can really help you, especially if you're not ready to have one on one counselling yourself ...

Here are a bunch of recorded Alanon presentations on YouTube ...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alanon

I also found this video series very helpful ...

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...r-alcohol.html

timetohealguy

That is exactly right

Or they say "I'll cut back", then keeping drinking just as much, but drinking in secret.

Exactly. Many alcoholics believe they can magically become responsible social drinkers again. Can't be done. It's an addiction and any dabbling in that addiction socially puts them straight back into addiction again.

timetohealguy

That sounds exactly how my relationship went anvil - scarily accurate !

Dandylion speaks the truth. I tried to absorb my ex's abuse, believing that I was "strong enough" mentally to absorb it all. I thought I just had to hang in there, and eventually things would get better.

I initially went through more than 6 months of being subjected regularly to severe verbal and emotional abuse - the most belittling, personal, damaging things that anyone has ever said to me.

She then got sober for a few months.

Then when she relapsed, the abuse absolutely got worse - it was absolute hell on and off for the next year, which included severe verbal abuse, severe emotional abuse, then a series of threats of violence against me when she was drunk.

Was I able to be "strong enough" to stay ? Yes ... but that's not the point ... I have been left with various anxiety problems and have just been through many months of treatment for depression.

You can feel like you are absorbing the abuse at the time, but later on it comes back and bites you on the behind - you have to process it all at some point, and when that point comes, it can be completely overwhelming.

What I am trying to say is that abuse is unacceptable. Period. Whether it's a man abusing a woman or a woman abusing a man.

It makes no difference in terms of responsibility for the abuse if they are drinking. When someone chooses to drink, they are responsible for their actions as a result of that drinking.

It is no different to driving while drunk. A drunk driver doesn't get to say "oh but I crashed because I was drunk" as if that excuses their behaviour.

Just as drunk drivers damage other people in crashes, some drunk people damage others by their abuse, and neither of those things are OK.

For anyone being abused by a spouse, their spouse needs to understand that the abuse needs to stop immediately.

Abuse is not OK, and "being drunk" is no excuse for anyone abusing another human being.

MrMystery

There have been several incidents of throwing things like (thankfully empty) wine bottles at walls and one knife throwing incident which was not in my direction but still kind of scary all the same. We had a very long heart to heart after that and she hasn't gone off the rails quite so violently since then but still has angry episodes every now and then.

I will also add, about being "strong enough", that I also have previously made reasons in my mind for why I know things will get better. I've seen some little progress in non-drinking ways but the drinking is always still hovering there and I know it probably always will.

I completely agree with the statement about the dry drinker, because she always has a reason why it's ok to go back to drinking and they are varied and reasonable while she uses them, and typically act as her re-entry. Which in turn results in more drinking and even more. She asks me to help her quit but I keep telling her she has to quit because she wants to, not because I help/maker her.

timetohealguy

Hi MrMystery,

When my ex started threatening violence, I was always very conscious of wine bottles and kitchen knives.

If she was drunk and standing in the kitchen and getting angry, I would always try to convince her to move with me to another room to talk. I felt very very uneasy about her being anywhere near kitchen knives when she was angry.

A glass wine bottle (empty or full) can do a lot of damage if someone uses it as a weapon. Any time she was getting angry, if there was an empty wine bottle nearby I would take it to the trash just to remove it from the immediate area.

It's a horrible position for any spouse to be in when you feel the need to remove objects that could be used as weapons against you. That feeling of having to be aware of that danger around you in your home is a very insidious thing. I remember when it consciously occurred to me that I was "on alert" in that way, of feeling absolutely heartbroken, despondent, and in disbelief that things had reached that point.

I think it's important though to assign responsibility for that where it belongs. It is not the non-drinker who has created that situation - it is the drinker's decision to continue to drink despite the massively negative effects on their relationship ... which is a recognized diagnostic criteria for the progression of a drinking problem.

Also, specifically where you wrote:

When my ex started really going off the rails, I minimized how serious the situation was getting.

I became very aware that when my ex was out of control and angry while drunk, her decision making was severely impaired, and her anger towards me was so intense that I felt like all it would take would be a few neurons firing in her brain differently and her impulse to pick up a wine bottle and either throw it at me or swing it at my head would end up with me in hospital with a head injury, losing an eye or ending up with massive facial injuries. It felt dangerous because it was dangerous.

Couple that with the fact that her anger was directed at me, and I think the risk of injury to me was actually much much higher than I realised at the time.

There are a couple of people on the forum who work professionally with advice about domestic violence situations, so maybe one of them could comment on that.

I know that because I was minimising the level of danger of the situation with my ex, there were a number of situations in which I downplayed how serious the situation was, and stayed and tried to "talk her down", when in hindsight those situations were actually very dangerous to my safety and I should have immediately left our home until she calmed down.

All I am saying is that if someone is in a drunken rage, they are not themselves in that moment, and you can't necessarily rely on what their sober character and sober morality is in those moments.

As an example, if you were in a bar, and an angry drunk woman was holding a knife which she was about to throw, would you stand anywhere near her ? Or would you get out of the bar as fast as possible ?

It is very easy for a person with co-ordination impaired by alcohol to mean to throw an object in one direction, and it ends up going in another direction.

In hindsight, if I was ever faced with a situation again that seemed like an object was going to be thrown or used as a weapon, I would get out of the house immediately.

Things will get better if she stops drinking.

While I think that if someone has only had a couple of completely out of character drinking incidents in their life, that they may be able to stop drinking permanently by simply physically stopping drinking, there comes a point where their thinking has changed and the only way for them to lead a happy life where they are not making their spouse and family miserable is not only for them to stop drinking, but also to earnestly get into a true recovery program.

Not only does a recovery program treat alcoholic thinking, but it also gives the drinker defenses against relapse.

Anyone can go through detox by being physically isolated from alcohol, but unless that physical detox is accompanied by a recovery program to treat the alcoholic thinking, they are more than likely going to go straight back to drinking again soon after detox.

I think that people can provide emotional support to their spouse while they are going through recovery. One way in which I tried to help my ex was by quitting drinking myself. Before her drinking became a problem, I would have 1 beer or 1 glass of wine with dinner at the end of the week, but as soon as I realized she had a problem, I stopped drinking completely to try to encourage no drinking at all in our house.

So you can "help her quit" by asking what she means by that, asking "what can I do to support your recovery ?" and you can give her moral support and talk to her about her drinking and recovery, but the change itself must come from within her.

If you watch this video, it is the best explanation of why relapse occurs that I have ever seen ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSOdvA6abog

The key point is that you can't make that decision for her not to drink any time she is at risk of relapse - it needs to come from within her, not from outside.

Any time she is at risk of relapse, she needs to have her own strong reasons at the ready of why she should not drink, so that she does not get into "one drink is ok".

"Just one drink" is not OK for a person with a problem with alcohol, and once they reach for that first drink, mayhem follows.

timetohealguy

I'll add there, that many drinkers either do not understand how serious their problem is, or they downplay it.

Some drinkers think to themselves "the problem is not that bad, I don't need professional treatment, I just need some help from my spouse".

The fact that she is asking you to help seems to me like an acknowledgement that she sees on some level that she can't do it on her own - that she needs help to do that. That is a positive thing because she is not saying "I don't need any help".

As an example, my ex completely downplayed the seriousness of her drinking. She told me that because she had quit drinking before, she could quit again, and she acted as if that meant in the meantime she could go on drinking. She thought she was in control of it and could quit at any time. Meanwhile her drinking kept progressing.

She even claimed that because she was not experiencing the shakes of delirium tremens, she did not have a problem with alcohol.

That downplaying by my ex was denial - denial of the seriousness of the problem, and denial that she needed professional help. She thought she could handle the problem herself without help ... she couldn't ... and that belief that the problem is "not that bad" is part of the disease itself.

My ex's doctor said to me "she needs to stop drinking, but she is going to need help to do that - she won't be able to do it on her own".

In any serious drinking problem, while a spouse can help with moral support, I believe that a professional (like a doctor with alcohol experience or an addiction / alcohol abuse expert) and a proper recovery program is very important.

There are also medications like antabuse that can be helpful if a drinker is serious about quitting drinking.

I thought that my ex and I could solve the problem on our own. We couldn't, and during the time in which we tried to do it on our own, the disease progressed to the point at which her drinking became completely unmanageable. So if I had that time again, I would try to get her to accept professional support and help as early as possible.

There is an AA saying I heard once that says "drinking for an alcoholic is like dancing with an 800 pound bear - when the drinker gets up for the first dance, the dancing isn't over until the bear decides it's over".

I don't know how serious the problem is in your spouse's case, but since sometimes what the spouse of a drinker sees is the tip of the iceberg, it seems prudent in many cases of alcohol abuse to assume that you are dealing with an 800 pound bear of a problem. If you aren't, then you aren't, but assuming that you are reduces the risk of underestimating the seriousness of the problem.

It's erring on the side of caution so that you don't wander into the forest with only a whistle to protect you, thinking you are dealing with a 50 pound bear cub ... only to be ambushed by an 800 pound adult bear.

Cyranoak

trusting an alcoholic who does not have long term recovery is like trusting a rattlesnake not to bite, an eagle not to fly, and an alligator not to hunt. please consider alanon or codependent's anonymous.

this comes from somebody who has lived with, apparently the same woman as you, for 17 years. for the love of god please don't be as stupid as me-- i'll never get those years back and i could have been spending them alone or with a healthy woman. the words don't exist for me to explain how much i regret asking this woman out, and my absolute lack of understanding of myself and my severe issues with codependency.

Please save yourself-- please.

Cyranoak

MrMystery

So yesterday she got notice her job may be reduced or eliminated soon, and by the time I got home the bottle was out in full force. She's in a huge state of self-pity this time but so far she hasn't turned it against me yet. I keep suggesting she get counseling for the depression she says she feels but she keeps having reasons not to.

Last week was one of her "quit drinking for a few days to show how the drinking is under control" weeks and now she says she isn't allowed to be herself. I know this to mean she wishes she could drink uncontrollably but I don't know how to make her see this is not the correct answer to life's problems.....

pndm07

Unfortunately you can't make her see that, or make her do anything else. It has to come from her. This is where the concept of letting go and giving up all control of the situation becomes so important and crucial for your own well-being.

MrMystery

I do understand this, but it's difficult separating the relationship from the addiction sometimes. I have developed a distance from her that she definitely feels, but I don't know how to otherwise keep myself intact.

schnappi99

Recovery & sobriety look like recovery & sobriety- her actions and attitudes mean a lot more than what she says. The same is true for me... my wife was the drinker but I drove myself crazy with the blame and frustration and anger. I even made my apologies for being a jerk into martyrdom- the comment above about taking a couple years to recover for the non-drinker is correct wrt my experience.

Emotional and physical intimacy between my wife and I has not recovered, though the wall is thinner now. I had to learn to let her be the way she needs to be and concentrate my my own recovery. I've had to unlearn a number of bad emotional habits, and thats been tremendously freeing. Leaving her be, not in the sense of ignoring her, but instead not pushing into her space might be helping her relax and have the space to recover her own way. In any case it lets me live more peacefully.

I'd strongly suggest Alanon for you MrMystery- it sure helped and helps me a lot.

pndm07

I know it's extremely difficult, having been with an A for years, and going through the cycles of hope, followed by relapse, attempts at sobriety, etc. You do reach a point where you get tired of it. And I'm still not totally there yet, even though I'm divorcing, and my xAH is presently sober. Unfortunately the addiction becomes so overpowering that it completely envelopes the relationship and pretty much destroys everything. There's really no other healthy option than to let go, because not letting go doesn't do anything to get to the desired result.

PuzzledHeart

I must admit that the first thought I had after reading this was "Was her job eliminated or was she given a formal warning about her performance?"

One of the very sad things you learn when you have a relationship with an addict is that you can never trust what's coming out of his or her mouth. My sister has lied so much I no longer bother trying to investigate if what she's saying is true. It's much more efficient to immediately assume the opposite.

Refiner

Wow so true. My A sister "lost" so many jobs throughout her life due to "downsizing", "re-orgs" and the like only to find out when she finally got fired from a crappy low paying government job that the reason was bc she's an A who was a crappy employee who was entitled and working a real job with rules was beneath her. She never even tries becoming employed again after that. Not quite sure how she and her enabling blowhard husband are able to pay the bills now. Just the minimum on the monthly CC statement to get by for now is my guess.

MrMystery

She's not so bad she can't function at work. Some of what she says goes on I have my doubts about, but by and large I've never known her to lie about what she does there. Although they ARE giving her a line of bull IMHO, but I don't think it's directly related to her addiction problems.

letitend

I have to chime in here. My experience with alcoholism and telling the truth is that the alcoholic lies about almost everything. My xA even lied about how I was feeling and what I was experiencing. He gaslighted me so much that I didn't even believe in my own existence/feelings. He shifted blame, made excuses, and withheld information.

Withholding information was one of his biggest offenses. I actually bought a car for my xA and he let me do it. Only to find out that he had lost his license in September 2014 when I went to add him on my insurance policy in November 2015. So for over a year, I gave him access to my own personal car, let him drive our son to events/school, etc. I made a 11k decision based on his withholding important information. I now have 2 cars. Big mistake on my part to have ever thought *he was going to change*. Truth is in my mind, this type of *withholding* of information *is* lying.

I also learned that just days before he moved out of our home that he had actually been fired from his job. He withheld this from his future roommate, myself, his mom, etc.

Another thing I learned is that my xA sees himself as this wonderful person, hard worker, etc. But the people he works with say that he is obstinate, has problems listening and following direction, and thinks he is the *greatest* at what he does although he doesn't possess the experience of the senior people he works with.

In my experience, my xA lied to *himself* about who he was. He actually believed he was wonderful and this is why the clash of our worlds. I was so busy trying to *help* and explain to him how he *could be* better, but he could not see that side. It drove us *both* crazy.

Living with active alcoholism is mind-blowing. It eroded my sense of self. It eroded my hopes and dreams. It eroded my peace and patience. Rebuilding is possible, but as a co-dependent person, I have to learn to trust my intuition. I have to love myself. I have to accept that I do deserve more out of life.

Just my .02. Take it or leave it.

StormiNormi

IMHO- your husband would be all the above with or without Alcohol.
Our Character defects are simply magnified by alcohol. He sounds like a real prize. NOT.

BPD perhaps?