Lynn320

I am new here and have not found a thread that gives advice to one who would like to stay in the marriage. My husband is an alcoholic who periodically tries to quit with self discipline but never seeks professinal help. He is my best friend and we still love each other. He is not abusive in any way and has been very successful in his career. We do not have the usual life problems that I have read about here. He does not drink every day but most times that he drinks he gets drunk. My biggest problem with his drinking is that he gets silly and embarrassing, i cant believe the things he says, his health is affected, and frankly, i find it disgusting. That is a feeling that makes me feel guilty because i do still love him. We are great together when hes not drinking but i know that if he has a choice between me and alcohol, i lose. I am planning to go to al anon but havent done so yet. Any other thoughts?

Needabreak

It looks like you have three choices:

1: Stay and try to change him, try to make him see reason, try to get him into rehab, try to get him to quit;

2: Stay and accept that this is who he is and that he is doing what he wants to do. Focus on your own life, your own happiness, with few expectations on him; and,

3: Leave him.

Just remember that alcoholism is progressive -- they get worse. That's a common theme here.

yensid

Hi Lynn,

I am getting a divorce. I cannot live with my alcoholic, even though he is working on his recovery. We have been married for 2 short years. He is a secret, professional alcoholic. He works every day, doesn't physically abuse me or my kids, but he stole thousands of dollars from me, drove with me in the car drunk...he's so professional I never know when he's drunk.

I have been going to al-anon. More to draw off their experience, strength, and hope vs working the steps. There are many women who appear to be happy in their alcoholic marriage. You might find support there, depending on the meeting you go to. They teach life tools to help you focus on you. Change starts with you in hopes that the alcoholic will start to change.
I won't go to one meeting anymore because I felt so judged for wanting to leave my marriage.

Keep reading here. Read up on being codependent. Melody Beattie has lots of books on this. This is a great resource for support and love.
{hugs}

Rosalba

You can spend the rest of your life doing this, without the alcoholic making any change in their behaviour. If knowledge and understanding would make any difference to addiction, there would be no such thing as addiction.

If the alcoholic is going to change, it will be a decision that comes from within, not because someone else is trying to get them to change - though many of us have driven ourselves crazy trying.

That said, I do know Alanon members who continue to live with drinking alcoholics. Like the alcoholic, the choice is yours.

Lynn320

Thanks so much for your thoughts. I am working on accepting that i cannot change him as you said. I try to catch myself each time i want to count his drinks or give him anither article or book to read. I have actually freed myself somewhat by following this path. Im hoping i can continue to love him with compassion but worry about the progression issue. We have been married for 17 years and are in our 60s just starting retirement. Thanks again for your support.

Needabreak

If you were in your 40s or 50s I'd lean toward "Leave Him." In your 60s, I can see that starting over would be tough, so if you can stay away from #1 (the path to misery) and do #2, that's viable.

Just don't let your need for companionship and love lead you to compromise your own values, your own life. Addiction is a cunning and dishonest thing. And so is codependency and denial.

queenapple

I empathize, Lynn. We're also in our 60s and have been married almost 45 years. I asked him to move out a few months ago after he relapsed and started drinking(and hid it for a year) after a liver transplant. He was also very high functioning and non of our friends had any idea. My closet friend said you could have knocked her over with a feather. He was a military pilot for over 30 years.

I told him if he ever started drinking again after the transplant he would have to leave. He accepted it. I could have let him stay and lived with it, but we have other circumstances that make that impossible. Once the trust was gone, he had to leave. I'm still in contact with him, we go out to dinner and do other things together. He desperately wants to move back after a year and I'm very on the fence about it.

If you can live with it, you can live with it. Just give up on the control issues, counting drinks, looking for bottles, etc. Be prepared to drive any time he drinks. And don't argue with him about it. Many people do manage to go on like this. My RAH (he's not drinking now and is working a program diligently) ruined my daughter in law's nursing school graduation weekend with our whole family there. I just can't deal with that sort of thing anymore.

hopeful4

No one can tell you what is best for your own situation. There are lots of people out there who choose to live with binge drinkers or active alcoholics. I think the focus needs to be taking good care of yourself. Don't submerge yourself into being miserable because of his drinking. You can only decide what to tolerate or not. Can you make him leave the home if actively drinking? I know my tactic for quite a while was that I refused to be home if my X was drinking. However, I felt chased out of my house. I could not tell him to leave (drink and drive issue). So....that combined with many other issues were enough. I had to separate or lose my mind.

My X begged everything to stay together. He said he would stop. He said he would take antabuse. He said all kinds of things. However, his actions did not back any of those things up.

Have a plan. Take care of YOU. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Glad you are here!!!

totallytrying

Hi Lynn,

One thing I would like to address from what you said. Contrary to what you wrote, I think if you go back to the early posts of most spouses of alcoholics, they WERE trying to find a way to stay in the marriage. As a matter of fact, many of us have bent over backwards to find a way to excuse our spouse's behavior, explain why they are different, how great they are when sober, and how we want to make the marriage work. The advice of the people commenting on these threads, however, is usually from the perspective of those who did stay married for a (sometimes long) period of time to an active alcoholic or addict, and they know how poorly that worked out for them when the alcoholic did not quit drinking. So, please take note of that advice and try to understand why it often is to leave and not stay.

atalose

Welcome Lynn320,

I think if you give yourself and al-anon a chance remaining in the marriage may be do-able for you.

We have to accept that Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde are one in the same - we can't have one without the other so if we chose to stay in a relaitonship with (them) we must accept them both. But learning to set healhty boundaries for ourselves works...........like not attending events with him where his drinking behavior will embarass you. Or attending those kind of events alone. Soemtimes the trade offs are lonely and can create isolation for you which is not good...........al-anon can help you sort it all out if you give it a chance.

dandylion

Lynn320....yours if a frequently asked question....esp. by newcomers.

My response is to ask you to define "happiness"...what does happiness look like for you?

I know that my happiness does not look like other people's happiness.
You have to live in your own skin....and you are the only one who knows yourself deep inside.
Some people strive for self actualization to be happy....and, others seem to be satisfied to just have a warm body near by.

I can tell you that alcoholism is progressive and only a committment to abstainence will put it into remission.
With that in mind.....and given the reality that you are at retirement age.....I advise to to take care of yourself. I'm talking the practical realities---like, getting your finances in order to support yourself, if necessary, get your legal papers in order, cultivate your own circle of peeps...a support system of your own friends and own interests, etc., get to know your self---deep down. Get in touch with your own spirituality (an ongoing process for all of us).

I don't doubt that you love him. Alcoholism is a savage disease that doesn't care one twit about your love. It will take over the person and invade all that are close to that person---hurting the ones that love the most. Some who can't stop loving....learn to love from a distance.

For me....honestly....I would rather live in a refrigerator box under a bridge with my animals.
You will have to answer these difficult questions for yourself....

I am being very honest. I hope these thoughts are of some help to you...

dandylion

Tansy

Just remember it's progressive. My now exah was better in the beginning but 18 years on we are now nearly divorced as he got worse and worse. I'm 53 now and wish I'd bailed out sooner. It's hard starting again at my age. I feel cheated out of at least 10 years I could have been happy by myself or with someone else. His worsening crept up on me...gradually and I didn't notice at first. He got good at hiding it. Then in February it all went wrong when he became seriously ill with drink related medical issues. We went from married to nearly divorced from then as I couldn't cope any longer.

lillamy

(((hugs)))

Feelings are not right or wrong. Feelings are nothing to feel guilty over. Feelings just are what they are. When you're telling yourself you shouldn't feel disgusted by his drunk behavior, it's sort of like when I tell my friend that she shouldn't be afraid of spiders. It's just a feeling. Feelings aren't facts. Feelings don't mean you have to act in a certain way. It took me so many years to learn that. To accept that I could feel a certain way and not act. That I could feel a certain way and it didn't make me a bad person.

Can you be happy with an alcoholic? I tried for 20 years. For the first 15 of those years, I would probably have said, just like you:
There's a word missing in that quote; it's the word "YET"...

Not all alcoholics become abusive. Not all alcoholics wreck their careers (some manage to retire). But all alcoholics, if they don't seek treatment, get worse..

My Al-Anon family group largely consisted of women in their 60s and 70s, women who had never worked, or couldn't at this point support themselves financially. Women who stayed because they felt they had no other choice. They talked about detaching from their AHs, about creating their own life parallel to his. Some of them went walking with their friends every day, others belonged to sewing or craft clubs, or played Bunco. They managed to live lives that had value despite being married to an A. It can be done. People do it all the time.

But what always stabbed me to the heart was that... their AHs were no longer a person they had a life with. They loved their As. They cared about and for them. But they "had" a husband, almost like you have an elderly dog that you're too attached to to be willing to put down.[Note: I am not saying alcoholics are dogs, or that they should be put down, just so nobody gets their panties in a wad -- all I'm saying is that that is what these women talking about their AHs made me think of. OK?] Their husbands weren't in any way active partners in their marriages.

I asked one of the ladies if she was happy. She patted my hand and said, "honey, as you get older, 'happy' kind of changes meaning. I'm mostly comfortable, and that's all I'm asking out of life these days."

It's a valid choice. It was the one she had made. But hearing those words made me want to run like hell. I never want to settle for "mostly comfortable" in life. Maybe I ask a lot, but I feel like I have this ONE life, and for me, staying wasn't an option.

Santa

This is what it can come down to. Not that the alcoholic is abusive necessarily (although many are), but the exhausting, constant worry that he will ruin an occasion, embarrass himself (and by extension you - that's a hard one to let go of but 100% necessary if you stay), you get tired as hell of apologizing to people. You get tired of the waste on so many levels. Who needs to live like that.

My ex and I had some good years. The best were a couple of long periods of sobriety. But he couldn't sustain it. Alcoholism is progressive. He's not even 50 and he's on his last legs.

Jenibean87

In my experience, things will get worse. This is how things began with my A.... I knew his drinking was a "thing" when I met him, but I was young and naive. His antics used to make me laugh, or only slightly annoy me. Then it went to really annoying me and turning any party/family event/vacation into a disaster. And then it completely and rapidly escalated and pretty soon the consequences started rolling in. Big time. And today, it is a total battle for him to beat his demons and for me to find the balance to support him and yet remain detached and caring to ME.

It is hard. Nearly impossible. And, frankly, it takes an enormous amount of therapy and work for us to function as a couple and hope for a better relationship in the future. (Recently, he entered treatment, again, and things have been markedly better, though.) is that something you're willing to do?

My point is this: I can't imagine you having a happy marriage with someone who will continue to sabotage your relationship and himself. He will need to seek help, practice abstinence, and work a program or you will need to settle for less than you deserve and learn to live an independent life working around his illness. Obviously, the latter is very lonely. But so is leaving.

Sorry to be so grim.. But I wish someone had told me this 5 years ago. In fact, I feel sure my mom did and I turned a blind eye. Silly me. I recognize you are at a far different place in your life than I am, but losing your love hurts no matter what, I think. I'm sorry you're going through this.

Mango blast

Welcome to SR, Lynn. I'm glad you're here, but sorry for what brought you here. Very good input above. Alcoholism is a chronic and progressive disease of the brain and body. Just as much as there are stories here every day to remind us and sympathize with the possible tragic realities of this disease, there are also many success stories and great information. So much of what I've learned from others here prepared me for what came, but also for what I couldn't see and had over the years normalized.

As I've worked on my own recovery, everything else has changed. I've found much peace and happiness in letting go, letting God and letting my husband -- I no longer have a false sense of needing "control" and have found happiness in my life in unexpected ways. And my husband no longer has to deal with the extra pressure from me. We're learning how to talk and relate to each other in much healthier ways. Two rehabs, plenty of relapses, and still, now, life is good and continues to improve for both of us. I really don't know what will happen tomorrow, but I'm completely fine with that.

Three books that really help me:

Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change
The Heart of Abundance: A Simple Guide to Appreciating and Enjoying Life
Being of Power

The second two are purely for my own recovery. I read parts of all three of these often.

AA and Alanon are wonderful programs, and so is Celebrate Recovery. In letting my husband discover his own recovery, and yet with healthy communication between us, he's seeing why AA is a hard program for him because of the large groups and he's found a Licensed Addictions Counselor who specializes in anxiety that he's able to talk to.

NWGRITS

You can live happily if you take your AH out of any situations where he might embarrass you. You pretty much end up single with a smelly, disgusting roommate. My once-successful mother has deteriorated to the point where she's homeless because she drank her mortgage payment every month. I haven't spoken to her in over two years. She was always verbally and emotionally abusive, which would be brushed off as "being silly", but she wasn't always falling-down drunk. That was just the natural progression of things. We all left her because none of us needed or wanted that in our lives. Too much energy and joy was sucked out by having to deal with her. I could never be with an A. Never. Good bless the ones who choose to ride out their days like that.

hopeful4

As harsh as it is, NWGRITS has hit the nail on the head. I think even if you can manage to detatch on focus on yourself, you are still miserable with the person you live with. Only you can decide if you can live that way or not.

You don't have to make these decisions right this second. It's no marathon, it's your life. Get support for YOU. Focus on your own wants and needs. As other said, prepare just in case. Then when you are ready make the decisions you want or need to make for a happy and healthy you.

I am going to tread lightly here, but one of the things that really scared me was the thought that once my X and I started to get older (we are late 30's now), was that he is going to become ill with this or something else. I don't want to be the one taking care of someone I really cannot stand to be in the same room as. That sounds absolutely awful, but I am telling the truth as it rolls through my head here. I am feeling like a terrible person for saying this, but it did factor into the big picture for me as I got older. Now, there were definitely things that pushed me to make him leave, and it was not this. Yet I did think about it.

We are here with you no matter what choices you make. That is what SR is all about, unconditional support.

Tight Hugs.

Hammer

Musing upon the opening premise:

Q: Is anyone able to live happily with an alcoholic?

A: Maybe another drunk?

Or at least they would just make each other miserable, and spare the rest.

POAndrea

No.