evenkeel

Hello all. I am a 30-year-old woman married to the love of my life for 3 years. I went into our relationship (and then our marriage) knowing certain things about my wife that I think are now coming back to bite me in the butt and need help figuring it all out. I've talked to several people IRL and they've encouraged me to try to get help, but I'm not so sure how big of a problem the alcohol really is. There's a lot of history to this but I'll boil it down mostly to the present and if you need history I'll give it to you.

My wife was very much an alcoholic before we got together. She'll even tell you that. I believe she's back to toeing the line between "problem drinker" and alcoholic and I just don't know what to do. This is what she tells me about her history with alcohol: Since she was in her early teens she has been getting drunk with friends on a regular basis. Once she was able to pass as old enough to get into a bar she was going out 3+ times a week, and during her previous marriage she got to where she was drinking heavily 6, if not 7, days a week, every week. She told me that she was also cheating on him quite frequently for the last year of their marriage, at the rate of 2 or 3 different men and women every week, and rationalized it because she was lonely, didn't love him and knew she wouldn't be with him forever. She says she only did it when she was drunk, which was (conveniently) nearly every night.

In the present: she works 10-hour graveyard shifts starting at 6 pm and her days off are Friday, Sunday and Monday. Between when we became a "couple" four years ago and last spring she would go out any time we could get a sitter or I agreed to stay home with the kids while she went out. Six months ago my kids' dad started taking the kids every other weekend after not doing so for almost two years. Six months have now passed where she's gone out to the bar with friends at least three Fridays out of four and any other day besides Sunday and Monday that she's happened to have off of work. She'll also hop on any excuse to drink outside the house on Sundays and Mondays. I had a serious discussion with her about three months ago, addressing her going out and drinking, and telling her that I resented the fact that she was constantly choosing to go out and drink over staying home for a 'date night' with just the two of us. I wasn't asking her to stop completely-I was simply asking for time by ourselves once in a while without alcohol. She said she understood and that she would slow down. Three months have passed and nothing's changed. Granted, there's been some extenuating circumstances such as her grandma passing away a few weeks ago, but during her bereavement leave she got drunk every night at a bar or at a family member's house.

This last weekend I very nearly left her. On Friday we spent the evening with my mother. On the way home she told me she was going to go out. It was the birthday of my brother who was killed 2 years ago and Mom and I still have HUGE problems on that day. On the way home she told me she was going out. I was extremely disappointed as this was the first Friday in a few weeks that she hadn't pled "extenuating circumstances" she claimed as a reason to go out and I really just wanted her home with me for emotional support. I told her this. She went anyway. Saturday, I confronted her about continuing to break our agreement from 3 months ago. She told me it was my fault, that I had been in a bad mood and taking it out on her, and threw out a bunch of other excuses including "you're always tired on Fridays and I don't want to stare at the TV until 3 am while you sleep". No amount of trying to tell her that I didn't expect her to stay home the whole night, just a few hours, could convince her that maybe she'd been being disrespectful for the last 6 months. After several hours of arguing I told her she had one more chance to prove that she can be an equal partner in our marriage (we have other issues where she isn't following through on agreements either) and if it didn't change I was gone.

As I tell you all of this it occurs to me that, on the surface, this seems like a relationship issue and that alcohol plays a bit part in the whole scenario. It doesn't feel like a small role, though, and is a symptom of a much larger problem-her supposedly dormant alcoholism. Her solution to all of life's problems is alcohol. All get-togethers MUST include alcohol to some degree for her, even if she has to bring it. She insists that I drink when I go out with her, and if I do she then insists I get drunk. I hate drinking, I hate being drunk, and I hate that she teases and pressures me to drink and get drunk when I go out with her. If I don't drink or get drunk she gets mad. I used to do it to make her happy (how dysfunctional is that??) but I finally put my foot down and started either having just a few drinks or not going out at all (more on that later). At times she tells me she wants a beer at home but says she doesn't want to drink alone. I refuse to drink at home, so she doesn't and then whines as if it's my fault that she "can't" because I refuse to do so.

She literally whines if people are together drinking on a day that she works because she can't drink before work or has to work rather than go out. She always drinks until she's staggering, stupid drunk, physically ill, and on most occasions passes out more so than falls asleep afterward. She makes out with and gropes other people while drunk, though not as much as she used to since I started getting really mad about it (though it has occurred to me that she has just started hiding it, and the fact is that since I don't go with her most of the time anymore I don't know what she's doing when I'm not there. She's always laughed off my anger and says "It's what I do when I'm drunk! It doesn't mean anything!"

So...thoughts and/or comments? What am I dealing with here, and what can I do to make things better? I'm in a waiting game now to see if things change. We have a wedding to go to tomorrow, the mother of one of our friends. The reception is at a bar. The kids will be home this weekend and won't be able to stay at the bar for very long (small town, they serve food, private party, they can stay there until 8 p.m.). I'm betting good money that my wife will choose to stay at the bar until close instead of coming home to spend time with the boys on their one weekend home this month. She's all ready hinted at this being the case. Yes, we can spend time together Sunday, but we still have the issue of her choosing drinking over family and if she does stay out that will make 7 weekends in a row she's chosen to do so.

As an aside, her father is a severe alcoholic. He kept kegs of beer in its own refrigerator from the time when my wife was little, and due to her mother's disability, she was the one responsible for changing out the keg at delivery time and tapping the new one from the time she was strong enough to wrangle the kegs. He is very abusive, verbally more than physically-he's lost the strength and coordination to actually be able to seriously hurt anyone-but was very physically abusive to his family in the past. Her uncle (dad's brother) also died about a month ago because of alcohol. He drank until a week before he died, and only then allowed hospice in because he couldn't care for himself anymore and spent the last three days of his life in a coma. His death crushed my wife as she was close to him and made her even more scared for her father. Alcohol has had a LARGE presence in her life since she was very very young and that's why it's all the more concerning about the path she seems to be on and has been on before.

I acknowledge the part I have in all of this. I have a long history of going out with her so that I could keep an eye on her while she was drunk and drinking/getting drunk so I didn't have to deal with her teasing and pressuring. I've put my foot down in the last year or so, refusing to drink until drunk and eventually refusing to go out altogether most of the time. I totally own that it was MY decision to do these things and that it didn't help the situation, that my actions both enabled her and in some way validated her (in her mind).

But....I don't know what to think or do anymore. Can anyone help me?