Hello
I haven't been on here for a long time... just want to say that this is a great forum with lots of support and good advice.
When I was briefly posting in here I was asking what to do about my husband whom I felt was drinking too much. It was very, very upsetting to me. At that point I hadn't taken any serious actions other than threats to leave (in the past, due to his gambling binges). That was in 2009/2010 I believe.
In September 2011 I finally got the guts and made the decision, and followed through. I told him: IT'S OVER.
HOWEVER. I didn't have the guts just yet to move out.
We (him and our two children, who don't know about our separation yet) have been living under the same roof all this time. Last night I again got the guts to tell him that I was going to start looking for a place of my own after I return from an overseas trip later this year.
I know this has all been said before, probably over and over, and I'm probably stating the bleeding obvious, and these may even sound naive and simplistic to some. But I'd like to share a few things that I feel are important.
- I wouldn't recommend living with someone that you've separated from. Maybe for a short time, if it's amicable and you need to straighten a few things out, but not for the two years that it will be when I finally move out. You left them for a reason. The problems will still be there... and they are. They are still there and you will still be living and dealing with them, just like a spouse. Not to mention that you're backing yourself back into a corner by your ex who will try to guilt you into staying by suggesting that you're breaking up the family.
- Doesn't matter how much they drink. If it has affected you negatively, if it has broken your heart, caused resentment to build, and destroyed your trust, and you find yourself in total confusion and questioning yourself or whether this relationship is okay, over a period of time, that's enough for you to get out of the relationship.
- Ask yourself if you are prepared to live with the other person's behaviour for the rest of your life. If you are not, then GET OUT NOW.
- Marriage counselling does not work if it's not done for the right reasons. I found that I was really going just to put off the inevitable. If you know in your heart that you want to get out, but you don't have the guts, then maybe it's time to see a counsellor about developing your self-esteem, instead of trying to fix the unfixable.
- If you make any action, stress to yourself and the other person that it is for YOURSELF. I'm not telling my ex it's because of his drinking. It's not really. It's because it's time I grew up and learned to be an independently functioning adult with my own responsibilities and problems. I've been kind of relying on him as a financial crutch, while he has been relying on me as an emotional/financial/etc crutch. We started seeing each other when we were 22. I feel that was way early for both of us to be in a long-term relationship. In many ways we have kind of frozen ourselves into that 22-year-old way of relating to each other. I have two young childen to take care of here and it horrifies me that they are being so regularly subjected to my ex's drinking lifestyle, God knows if this is going to rub off on them. If I can move out and they're not always under his roof they may be able to see another perspective, not only about drinking but marriage. They have only known that to be married means to sleep in separate beds, have separate lives, separate meals, no time together as a family and no kissing or other affection.