"Wellnowwhat- My AH has done most of his drinking at night when the kids are in bed too and although it then leads to day drinking at times (more often surely than I ever knew), I had a hard time believing/accepting that there was a problem for a long long time bc he wasn't fitting the mold of the typical alcoholic... He'd point this out to me too and so I "normalized" what was farrrrr from normal for a long time.... Your post resonated with me on many levels-- thanks.."
Oh boy do I know this! As the kids grew and were out more, the drinking picked up. At this point I had raised issues with it, while he sat mute, and for years I never saw him drink, only the effects, it was all done on the sly. But I did see the drain on our chequing account. When the kids started to leave for college, it picked up dramatically, and so did the shaking hands.
When I came down one morning and saw him pouring vodka in his coffee cup at 8 a.m., I could no longer wonder if it was a BIG problem. I now knew. But......my warped thinking kicked in and I began to think it may not be a bad thing. I talked myself into believing it was just a single shot, hair of the dog type thing, to settle his shaking hands so he wouldn't get fired. Didn't even consider that he could be pulled over with a DUI on the way to work in the morning!
And, because it was all done on the sly, NEVER, EVER seeing him publicly take a drink, I could stick my head back in the sand until the next issue.
I do have to give him a little credit here. His efforts to keep it a secret enable our kids to grow up not as ACOA. One started to have an inkling of his problem, but the others had no clue. I knew he was now driving drunk in the evenings if for some reason I was not available to drive. I wanted to make sure the kids wouldn't get into the car with him so when they came home from college, I told them the situation. They had no clue. And for that I am grateful. He's a good man, a good father, but under the grip of an awful disease.
Again, thanks for your sharing. I sometimes feel a little awkward sharing about my situation because there was no violence, no DUIs, no job loss, none of the usual awful stories you see here. So I would wonder, am I being dramatic, is this an issue? Haha, the "things a normie wouldn't know" list solved that!