PinkCloudsCharley

Yes I've heard the three c's but I'm having a very hard time accepting them. I haven't been a perfect wife, but I didn't think I was so bad as to cause someone to drink. Yet those are the thoughts and words that echo thru my head. I've heard all the sayings in relation to other people - " no wonder he drinks", "she drove me to drinking", "I'd drink too if i were married to her" and so on. So what if it's actually true? what if I really did, "drive him to drinking?"

Dee74

I've heard all those sayings and even used a couple.
I don't believe anyone causes someone else to drink soverylost.

I drank because of an inability to cope with things that progressed into an addiction.
The buck stops with me

D

Santa

Is your husband perfect? He's an alcoholic so I'm going to guess no. By your argument, you should definitely be an addict yourself, after all his lack of skill in the spouse department will have driven you to it.

See what nonsense that is?

PunchDrunk

I wonder the same thing about my almost-ex. He always said it was because of me. Logically I know that's not true. Everything else in me doesn't know what to believe....

PurpleWilder

If you were so all powerful as to cause someone to begin drinking, wouldn't it make more sense to use that type of influence to STOP someone from drinking? And while you are at it, move things with only the power of your mind, shoot lasers from your eyes and fly?

The idea that it's you is just quacking, quacking, quacking.

Pia

Like Dee said "inability to cope". I have learned that we react to a situation due to an action. Give yourself a break he wants to keep you thinking it is your fault.

legna

I give you permission to try and make me drink or pick up. Heck, we'll even move you in if you think that'll make a difference.

Good luck with that.

DoubleBarrel

I'm a recovering alcoholic. You don't cause it. Absolutely positively not. Anyone who tells you that is quack quack quacking right back to crazyville.

LadyinBC

Got to agree with DB on this. The only person who can cause me to drink is me.

LeeJane

I am a recovering A too, no way did anyone but me cause me to drink.

I was very vocal in blaming everyone else! This was lies. To myself, as well as others.

I am four years sober and working my program, the person I am now is absolutely stunned by my behaviour as a drunk. It was insane. I could not see it at the time. It felt reasonable back then!

So no, no one causes anyone else to drink and no one can make any one else stop.

Feels so good to be able to be honest now.

WendyOR

It is so odd sitting on the outside looking in as I can look at this and say... absolutely not.... that is not why, it is a quacking and it is a way for anyone to not take responsibility for their addiction or behavior.

Then, I had to chuckle. I had those feelings when I woke up this morning. Yesterday was his mom's bday and tomorrow is his dad's. They both died within three months of each other, and xabf actually is the one that had to sign the papers to remove his mom off of life support. It is hard for him and he triggers on specific dates (along with others... but understandably on such dates.) I have been sending positive vibes his way and praying for peace to his heart and soul on these days. I want to reach out to him and text him... thinking of you on these hard days... but am afraid to be sucked in. One of the last things he said to me was I was his reason for not being able to move on... after talking about his relapse. So I don't want to go there...

Have you not been through a lot with him? Have you not tried to support him? Didn't you receive that push pull? Did he force you to drink.... did you cope with all of this by drinking? It is not you. We all have free will.... his choice to drink is not only him.... it is the addiction. Be kind to yourself. We are the ones that mess with our brains the most, sometimes on our own or by letting others.

We all start questioning ourselves during our recovery... it is not you.

MIRecovery

I stayed in a very bad marriage because I was drunk but the ex was not at fault. I drank because I liked to be drunk

SparkleKitty

I too used to want to believe I was the reason my mother drank, but I now recognize it as a symptom of my need to control my environment. After all, if *I* was the Cause, then surely *I* could also fix it! So tempting to believe that if we just did something different they wouldn't want to drink anymore, but it's just an illusion, a scenario we create in our minds to that keeps us stuck. Only when I let go of the illusion could I move forward with my life.

Croissant

I know I used to "think" my partner made me feel like drinking more because I knew he didn't like me drinking too much, or during the week.

That's the really screwy trick alcohol plays on us drinkers too. Makes us ready to blame anything, or anyone, for us wanting to drink. Anything other than us actually having a problem that WE need to deal with, is the cause of our drinking apparently.

I'm sorry you are in this position.

ladyscribbler

To hear my ex ranting, you would think I had "driven him to drink." By that logic he should have gotten sober when I left. Didn't happen. He is still drinking and progressing in his disease.
Others here have made a really good point. Blaming external factors allows the alcoholic to avoid responsibility for their behavior. My ex drank because I was a b, because he liked the taste, because it was Friday the 13th, or a full moon, or the cat's birthday, because he was stressed out by school, because he was celebrating being done with school, because he couldn't find a job, to celebrate getting a job. He always had a "reason" ready to offer up so that he could avoid the real reason- alcoholism.

cookiesncream

Ditto to all the responses from other "A's." Sure we excuse our bad behavior for a thousand reasons and unfortunately you guys are convenient scapegoats. Honestly becoming a "midlife crisis alcoholic" (which I can now see it for what it was) like so many others alcohol was a maladaptive behavior to cope with things that a thousand other people face and DON'T drink. So you're not perfect, nobody is. His drinking is NOT your fault. It wasn't my hubbies fault either-it was MINE. In sobriety I am finding a thousand ways to cope with the exact same things I used to use booze for, and ultimately got me nowhere but drunk.

If you're so inclined read a few of my favorite books (they have audio versions as well that I listen to) by alcoholics who eloquently explain their bad behavior. "Drinking: A love story" (Caroline Knapp). "Lit" (Mary Karr) is another one. Both authors pulled the "you would drink too if you were me facing xyz" which included relationship issues. Both authors ultimately accepted their bad behavior and changed. Now will your better half change? No clue. But as an alcoholic facing our crap and not BLAMING everyone else is our job, not yours.

Sorry for the morning rant. Needs to get myself another cup of coffee (or two or three). Good luck to you. I'll be forward here and give you a cyber ((hug)). Please don't beat yourself up.


Peace,

Cookies

healthyagain

Nope, absolutely improbable. Tried screaming, he drank, tried niceness, he drank more, tried talking, he said it was because of me. So, I said s***w it, and made some big detachment steps. Now he is acting like a timid antelope, with a couple of question marks above his head, and it is not that he cannot drink as much as he wants. It is that I get to do whatever I want and it has nothing to do with his drinking, or him, or whatever.

Hammer

Maybe let's run this out to the extreme.

Let's say you were The. Worse. Wife. Ever. Maybe a raging A, or whatever.

If dealing with a Raging A made one become an A . . . .

THEN . . . there would be a LOT of drunks on THIS SIDE of things.

lillamy

My daughter -- when she was 8 -- started crying in the car on the way to school one day. She said "if I was just a better daughter, maybe Dad wouldn't have to drink."

I pulled the car over at the side of the road and asked her, "So -- let me get this straight: Do you think you are making your dad drink?"

She nodded and cried.

I asked her, "Do you have a gun?"

She said, "Nooooo, of course not!"

I said, "So you didn't hold a gun to your dad's head and tell him if he didn't drink, you'd shoot him?"

She chuckled and said, "Mooom!"

I said, "If you didn't do that, then you didn't make him drink."

It might not have been my finest moment as a parent, but I still believe it. We all make choices. Blaming the choices we make on other people is only a way to try to avoid taking responsibility for our choices. We all have free will. An alcoholic may be addicted, but he or she still has the choice of whether to get help or not.

I bet there's not a single person here who hasn't at one time or another been told by their SO that "I wouldn't have to drink if you were just a better wife/husband." I know I heard that, and believed it, for decades. I thought if I only were prettier or skinnier or cooked better or wanted to have sex more, he wouldn't have to drink. I don't think it's deliberate on the part of an addict, but what he very effectively did was move the responsibility from him to me. All of a sudden I was tying myself up in a pretzel trying to find the magic action that would make it so he no longer had to drink. Of course it didn't work. Because it was never true that I was the cause of his drinking. He drank before he met me, and he continued afterwards, and there was always someone else to blame -- his parents, his boss, his new girlfriend, the kids -- you name it, he's blamed them.

On the same token, we as codies have to take responsibility for our actions. And that was difficult for me.

Butterfly

Soverylost, I too have those thoughts at times and as sparklekitty said it is the codie in us that thinks that way. If I caused it I can fix it, so if I do this or don't do this he won't drink. I don't know about you but it didn't matter what I did or didn't do he still drank, I turned myself inside out and he still drank. Mine never blamed me directly but indirectly he did with comments like I never know when I am going to have another drink so I binge. He left other times and I sought cou selling which I need to for me but at the time it was to fix me so he wouldn't leave again. I learnt there that my anxiety about his drinking and friends group was normal and understandable but he would say it wasn't normal as I had nothing to be anxious about. He was trying to make me doubt my therapist and blame me.

He's left and on his own and he still binges maybe not waking up the next day and continuing his drinking that I know off but drinks more regularly, maybe that his progression of the disease. I think for us codies that's why it feels so personal, for me he chose drink over me and his kids, when I am feeling rational I know it's not a choice but my rational days are few and far between.

My Separated ah used every excuse in the book to drink it was his coping mechanism now he tried for years to use other strategies but he always reverted to his default.

You didn't cause his drinking, his behaviour is not a reflection on you, what you did or didn't do, it's a reflection on him. Big hugs