Girlfriend going down slippery cliff
 

Hi all,

It has been a tough year and I feel it is only getting worse. I’ve noticed over the last few months my girlfriend of 8-9 years has been sneaking alcohol in our house 3ish days a week. She was a terrible drunk previously when she drank and I insisted it stopped. I personally do not understand how if doing something makes you so sad and a terrible person why they would keep doing it. I’ll admit I never had addiction qualities and super ignorant to even think that. I was a casual drinker (maybe a few drinks a month) but have completely stopped drinking to show my support and importance for her to stay sober and show my support to her. I made the mistake of bringing home a bottle I was gifted from work, days later it was almost empty. How did she think I wouldn’t notice?


Her health is also getting worse, gaining weight and over eating. I want her to get better and feel that finding alcohol and disposing it is not getting anywhere. It has been a game of wack a mole that just makes me more sad. I also noticed whenever she visits my family, she’ll get completely smashed while never publicly drinking. It is completely embarrassing.

I know I should probably move on at this point and if she doesn’t want to help herself there’s really no way out. Just so incredibly sad and makes me super depressed. I want to be with someone happy and healthy. Am I wrong to think this? I think the hiding/sneaking makes it worse as she doesn’t look to me for support but rather a figure who will yell and judge. I have never ever done that before in our long relationship and upset I’ve come to that rationale


it feels better typing this out as I have really nobody else to write these feelings to.

thank you for your time

Hi Rex, glad you found the forum.

Well you know, if nothing else, please remember she isn't drinking "at" you, she is just drinking. It's not personal (although of course it affects you personally).You probably can't really understand, but drinking for her is a huge draw. When she isn't drinking her mind is asking, where is the next drink?? When?? And actually probably even when she is drinking.

She is an alcoholic and she is doing what alcoholics do. Whatever the reason was that she started to drink, she has now crossed that line in to addiction and there is no turning back (ie: once addicted you never become "un-addicted", if she decides to be sober she can never drink again or it will be back to that slippery cliff).

You yelling at her or reprimanding her, pouring the alcohol down the sink or looking for hiding spots never will make any difference, so for your own sanity, you might want to put all that aside. She will quit drinking when she decides she wants to and not a moment before and nothing you say will change that.

The absolute best thing you can do is take care of yourself. Remove your focus from her and her drinking, focus back on your own life and what you like to do.

I really hope you stick around and post and read the other threads here as well. I think you will find many that you can relate to.

You didn't Cause it, can't Control it and can't Cure it (the 3 c's).

One of most important things you can learn about addiction is that it does everything it can do to protect itself, even (and especially) at the expense of the person struggling with it.

We can't apply logic or rationale to addictive behavior. Remember that she lies to herself before she ever gets around to lying to anyone else.

If what you really want is to be with someone happy and healthy the first thing you have to do is accept that she is not that person right now, and there is nothing you can do to make her be that person. The next thing is to accept that even if she were to decide today that what she really wants is to be sober, happy, and healthy, it would very likely be a long time before she achieved that state. If she ever does. There are no guarantees with addiction.

It is very difficult when we love someone to watch them embarrass and hurt themselves over and over again. I'm sorry you're dealing with this. Only you can determine how to move forward, but learning as much as you can about addiction and its effects on families and relationships will help you make your decision.

This is the truth. Watching someone you care about for years becoming the worst version of herself has been awful. I really appreciate the replies, it has made me feel less alone

Welcome, sorry to read of the sad situation you are in.

You sound realistic in your outlook when you say you should probably move on. I agree it is absolutely awful watching someone you care about go through alcoholism. I watched it with my late husband.

Hopefully processing your thoughts here will help you make the decision which is right for you.

Having a read around will give a good idea of how living with a drinker usually plays out.

Very grateful I stumbled upon this forum. Reading stories and interacting in this environment has been a fantastic resource. I feel less alone and helpless

Very grateful I stumbled upon this forum. Reading stories and interacting in this environment has been a fantastic resource. I feel less alone and helpless

You won't understand because you are not an addict. You can go through my posts but the tipping point for my relationship 2 years ago was him drinking in spite everything going his way after wrecking his life a year or two previously secondary to alcohol. I just could not understand why he was so self destructive. The truth of it is I never will and neither will you unless you become and addict yourself (which I hope to God you never do).

You are not wrong for wanting to be with someone stable at all. Even though my ex blew up our relationship in a spectacular fashion, I already knew he was someone who would be continuously irritable even in sobriety and will never be happy with his lot. The scary thing was I knew that looking at how he spoke to his mother, I suspected he would eventually turn against me. I was sadly right, nothing I did was ever good enough for him and I started thinking about what i wanted my relationship to look like. That isn't to mean being forver stagnant in a relationship but there should be a mutual sum of parts being greater than the whole and genuinely, I realized I was the one really pulling the weight, not him.

Hi Rext19, welcome to the forum.

From what you post, the cat really is out of the bag now and her time for pretence is over. Hiding alcohol and drinking in secret has really become nothing more than a charade. I believe its much better for both of you to have it out in the open so you can deal with the situation accordingly if she is not deep in denial. The first thing you need to realise however, is that addiction is a condition of the self and it's only the individual themselves who can deal with it. If she doesnt come to the realisation what alcohol is doing to her and her relationships, and takes steps to resolve that, her condition and behaviour will only go one way.

That's not to say there arent things you can do. As others have said, you can start by looking after yourself. You need to clarify in your mind the behaviour youre not prepared to put up with any more as it's not helpful to you or her or your relationship. You need to stick by those boundaries, even if it means separation and make her aware of that. In order for you to help yourself, you need to begin to separate the lies and excuses that her addiction tries to blind you with from the truth. In the meantime, she needs to want to free herself from her addiction. There are no half measures, if you accept any less her addiction will take over and you dont want to go where that leads.

I'm sorry you are going through this with your long time girlfriend. A few things I learned in this journey being with my late alcoholic husband was this...

1. I could not help him no matter how much I tried and even if he told me, all I need is for you to help me.
2. There was no amount of deal making I could put in place to make him stop.
3. He was always going to lie when he was actively drinking.
4. He was going to defend that drink against anybody who interfered with it.
5. I had to stop focusing on him and his drinking and focus on myself ((this is very important!)
6. I had to accept him just the way he was, good and bad, if I wanted to stay with him. I call this the "Consequences of loving an alcoholic."

I could probably come up with a lot more but you get my point. Someone mentioned the 3 Cs. You did not cause it. You can not control it. You will not cure it. You need to try and shift all that energy away from her and her drinking and put it back onto yourself. We call that detaching with love. When she is hungover, that's on her. When she drank her car note away, that's on her. When she gets a DUI, that's on her. When her drinking causes her problems, THATS ON HER! When it becomes a huge problem for her and she feels it then and only then will she adjust her life and have a lightbulb moment and say to herself, dayum... I messed up n I need to stop. Sometimes that lightbulb never goes off. If it doesn't and she is still affecting you then you need to re-evaluate your relationship with her. I would caution you not to marry her because you'll be marrying the alcohol and all the problems that go with it. I had a 10 year marriage with my alcoholic. He died from covid. I can promise you it was not an easy marriage and I accepted the consequences and I paid a dear price in the name of love. I'll never allow another alcoholic into my life.

I'm coming to the end of a 20 year marriage to an alcoholic wife, so I'll apologize now for my abrupt suggestion. I'll strongly advise/inform/plead/scream at you with this:

Run away. Do it fast, without any grandiose speech or even a clue for her to figure it out. Just run away as fast as you can and don't look back.

There is no prize that comes with being in a relationship with an addict. Zero. You don't have to take my word for it. Just read all the posts of the rest of the walking wounded you find here.

And for your own sake, don't ever believe the romantic garbage of a happy ending to this scene in the movie of your life as you are not the cause of her addiction, so you won't be the cure.

Her life is not yours (repeat this to yourself as often as necessary), and what she is doing is sucking the very life from you. And by staying, you are letting her.

You don't have the legal entanglements of a marriage (be SO thankful for that), or kids(even MORE thankful for that), so just do yourself the biggest act of love to yourself and cut and run.

Look for that life, relationship, love that YOU want, because it's really out there. That person is really out there. Just give yourself the space, the distance, the time and whatever else you need to start that next chapter of your life's story, but the first thing you'll need to do is to give yourself that freedom from being with an addict.

And don't worry about her. There is little doubt that she will find someone else to feast on. All vampires do.

I pray you get to that point of doing what's right for you...

Thank you for all of your advice. She was okay from what I could detect over the last few weeks, but on Friday she began turning into her cold drunk self. It shook my soul and I had nothing but anger run through my system. She threw up multiple times and tried her best to hide the fact that she was blacked out. I remembered the three Cs and reminded myself how I don’t deserve this…this helped me get through the night as it literally ruined me.

The next day I couldn’t even stand to have her in my site. She broke down crying because “I was pissed” and she didn’t want for her to do to me what her mom (passed) and brother (recovering) has done to her growing up. she stated that she is trying her best and she has plenty of “tools” to fight this battle. I asked her what the tools were and I wanted to take her rehabilitation or AA. She shut down and wouldn’t digress. I told her I would support her sobriety, I already have by living a complete sober life myself (except the occasional cannabis hit).

I suspect she drank again today, I smelled it on her and it took her 5 extra minutes to get into the car the morning…. I suspect she drank then. I just need to cut out the cancer of my life at this point or prepare myself to do so. I work hard and deserve happiness, I don’t like this feeling of being the cop of the relationship and am now always on edge of when she’ll be drink next. Gosh, this sucks.

Friend, she is not interested in quitting drinking right now. I don't know if there are more ways for her to make this clear.

You absolutely deserve happiness. Can you accept that you may not be able to find it with her?

Slowly getting to that place… I have focused more on myself… Putting energy into my career, exercise and reaching out to past friends I lost touch.

by the way, you dog looks like an incredible boy or girl.

Rext.......;;;removing yourself from her alcoholism---and, I am sure--of ways that you may be unintentionally enabling her-----may be the best "gift" that you can give her.
In that way, she is allowed to fully face the natural consequences of her actions---;and assume full responsibility.

Thank you for this. I told her I was leaving her today if she didn’t seek rehabilitation today. The “therapist” she talks to once a week isn’t going to cut it anymore. Whatever happens I am no longer an enabler and will not stand to live this type of life. I am moving forward, today is beautiful

Hey Rext, I know it's very hard, but you are doing the right thing (for her and for you). This is not really a "lifestyle" anyone can be comfortable with, but it can be hard to let go.

I hope she chooses rehab, but it's probably unlikely. Please keep us updated with how you are getting on.