JansSushiBar

Not a clue, since he didn't drink much around me - a cocktail or glass of wine if we went to dinner and the occasional beer. Now, having said that, he tended to get hammered if we were at a party or family gathering where there was a lot of drinking, but I guess since half the people attending were also getting hammered I just didn't think much of it (lots of drug and alcohol abuse in both our families).

About 2 years into our relationship he began drinking on nearly a daily basis (or he simply stopped trying to hide how much he drank from me); by the time we married in to 2008 - after 9 years together - he was a high-functioning alcoholic, although I was in some pretty serious denial about it. It rapidly got worse over the next two years, and the last 3 have been pretty awful.

Loopydays

I did know, and being young and foolish thought I could take care of him !

wantabe

I was clueless. We met in college, she was getting her PHD and I was doing the extended undergraduate degree. She was a binge drinker. Didn't drink regularly, but when she did she always got wasted. So the warning signs were there, but I either ignored them or was ignorant.

For 20 years, she kept to that pattern and only 6 years ago it got more frequent until she was drinking every day. She went from beer to wine and now her drink of choice is Vodka, quite a bit of it.
___________________________
No matter where you go, there you are.

Crazed

For about a year, my alcoholic and I drank heavily together. I was single, she was recently divorced and out to have a good time. She had custody of her kids every other week- which was when I spent time with her. It was all great fun- sporting events, traveling, partying in other cities, etc. Then I realized that she never wanted to stop. Then I realized she was getting drunk when we weren't together (like when home alone, sunday mornings, etc). Then the lawsuits from her EX started. She got sober for a few months, then relapsed, then I left her. We got back together about 6 months later, when she was sober again. She stayed sober for a few years, but there was other drama. Then she started relapsing every few months until present day.

firebolt

I knew he drank more than I'd like when we got together - not much else occurred to me. Hindsight. I won't marry him like this....and I want to get married one day, so...yeah.

I've never been around alcoholism (that I know of) until my boss 12 years ago - but that was at enough of a distance that I just didn't realize. My boss and I work more closely together now. So between them, I have a semi sober drunk over me all day, and one underfoot all evening.

If I had been educated enough before I dove headfirst into both, I like to think I would have a different career, and still be single.

pixilation

No, stbx didn't start drinking to excess and on a regular basis until about 7 years into the marriage, at that point it was just weekend binges, and progressed from there.

NewbieJ

We were teenagers when we met, and the first couple years were all love e-mails and love letters. But then at the beginning of college I had the feeling he wasn't completely honest with me. Then I found out he wasn't (cheating, arrest for public drunkenness and resisting). Then that all got behind us, but he seemed awfully self-centered and passive-aggressive. We mostly had good times, but the bad times started to number. There was always an excuse for his behavior and it was never his fault. "He'll grow up one day" I told myself. Nope. Just got worse. And he started drinking more.

scacra1

I can honestly say i didn't have a single clue. We met 2.5 years ago, and i instantly had a feeling there was something about him i didn't trust - but it was instinct, and as i could not find anything.. i ignored it
i didn't find out till 12 months down the line. When he broke down one night (after a drink of course!) and told me he thought he'd had a problem for 10 years, and that his sister and father were also A's.
All i could feel at the time was the need to help him.... little did i realise, i cant.
Were still together now and have found a way to 'manage it' so to speak - he has a little relapse once every 5-6 months and then we carry on as normal with only a small amont of drink taken on a weekend.
i dont know if this will work, or why i am settling for this, and where i will be in another 2.5 years time, but at the minute i do love him so im going with it - although i know its some kind of insane.

redatlanta

I knew he had been sober for a long time from alcohol I didn't know that he abused his prescription pain meds (he has a chronic illness). That I found out pretty quickly once we moved in together as he couldn't stay awake and got the "nods" all the time. 3 months in I left. He got it - went to the Dr. and went through the process of reducing his dependency. Shortly thereafter he was diagnosed bi-polar. This was a blessing - correct meds have changed our life and he seldom uses his pain medications.

Though sober he had many personality traits of the 'dry drunk' . I became a total co-dependent and enabler (i.e. I did everything in managing the house as well as work fulltime). If hindsight were foresight I would have joined Al Anon much earlier in our relationship - before we ever moved in together. We are a very happy, healthy couple now and I wouldn't trade him for anything - but it was a 2 year very bumpy road.

Florence

Hindsight is 20/20. How can I explain it? It's like putting a newbie at a poker table and giving her a royal flush and asking her what she has in her hand. Nothing? I don't know. You tell me! Blink blink.

So in hindsight I can say that I knew nothing, and missed scads of red flags, and dismissed the ones I recognized. I didn't see it -- right in front of me, under my nose, stinking to high heavens -- until it was so obvious I couldn't miss it.

One day I woke up and saw a giant pink neon sign in my living room that said, "YOUR HUSBAND IS AN ALCOHOLIC, DUMMY," and thought, "Wow, how long has that been there?"

redatlanta

Florence.......LOL

Tuffgirl

I'm with Florence. Hindsight is always 20/20. But when I was in the midst of it all, I just didn't see it for what it really was. It took the neon sign in my living room to finally shake my denial.

DreamsofSerenity

I had no idea. All the signs were there: totally irrational behavior, fighting, and weird physical stuff. But he never smelled like alcohol, and whenever I saw him, he seemed to just drink the normal amount, usually gin and tonics. Little did I know he would arrive at our dates already drunk, and then continue to drink after he got home.*

After we had been seeing each other for about six months, he crashed a dinner I was having with a girlfriend. When he arrived I was totally shocked, firstly that he showed up uninvited as that was way out of his character, and secondly, because I had never seen anyone that drunk in my life. In fact, I didn't even think it was possible to be that drunk and still be conscious. I was both frightened and embarrassed. (I'm sure everyone on this website knows the level of intoxication I am speaking about so I won't go into details). When my girlfriend and I went to go home, I told her that we should try to take his keys from him. (He had to drive about 15 miles on a freeway to get home). For some reason, which to this day I will never understand, she said we should not. And I listened because I was so overwhelmed and upset. Somehow, thank G-d, he made it home without killing someone.*

That's when it finally sunk in he was an alcoholic. After that, all the other pieces started falling into place. I confronted him but can't remember exactly how it all played out because we have subsequently replayed the same scene together fifty times. I do remember that I went with him to his first AA meeting, and that he made a big show of pretending he was going to get sober. As a fixer, this felt extremely good to me. I felt like my love for him had led him to see the light. Hahaha. What a crock of sh*t in hindsight.