Scared for the future
Hi, new to these forums, they seem such a great source of guidance and help.
I've been in a relationship with an AGF for nearly four years. We have a beautiful 2-year-old son and are in the final throws of buying a house together.
However, she binge drinks to the point of complete incapacity which could last for a couple of weeks of complete destruction. She stays in bed all day, in and out of consciousness, only able to stagger outside for a cigarette or go for a pee. She doesn't eat anything the whole time. Most of the time it culminates in a hospital visit to 'detox' although they are getting stricter on admitting her nowadays and it costs us a fortune to have her stay in a clinic for a few days to detox instead.
She did go over a year without drinking but more recently she has been drinking more frequently and it's starting to affect us more and more as a family. My business needs me to sometimes stay away for a few days which means she is often left alone with our son at home. She often uses this time to drink in the evenings but sometimes it spills over into the following day and then spirals out of control, meaning I have to put my customers on hold and take my son out of the equation, staying with relatives most of the time until she sorts herself out. There is simply no way she is capable of looking after anyone when she's on it.
She did have a couple of binges when pregnant that most probably led to our son being born with a cleft lip and gum. He will have to undergo operations for the rest of his life to correct the problems he now has. Otherwise he is the most amazing little boy, full of love and joy and when she is sober she is the most amazing mum he could have.
However, with the more frequent binges I am becoming increasingly worried for the future of our family. Income-wise, when I have to drop everything during one of her binges I seriously hurt my customer-relations meaning that there is a significant chance of losing them and hitting our family income, losing our home, etc. More worrying for me is that if I'm working away and she gets on it then I have to try to get back home before she gets too bad and take our son away until we/she sorts herself out. Just today I returned home to find her drunk and found out she had been out driving with our son in the car, which she hasn't done before now.
The most important thing for me is the safety and well-being of our son. If I could get out of the relationship and take him with me I would, but it's never that easy. Work-wise I don't particularly mind about my business and could drop it to find something that fits around caring for my little one. But she is a very strong and determined woman when sober and her blind determination sometimes scares the living **** out of me. She has also taken to violence when drunk too but not when sober, yet anyway. It would be very, very difficult to start separating and once she got wind that was what I wanted all hell would break lose.
One side of me hopes and prays that she'll see the light but the other side is probably a little saner and realises that unless she hits rock bottom it will carry on for years like this, which I can't ever see myself and our son coping with. I so don't know what to do and am scared of what the future holds for us.