Dealing with a partner's binge drinking.

[FootDown2022]

My husband is a binge drinker and has been for a lot of our marriage. We're currently at a crisis point (again) because he's off work with stress (again) and I asked him not to drink but he's been on two massive benders in the last week. I lost my temper with him and said that enough is enough. He's in a massive strop with me and sleeping on the couch.

The problem is that we've been here lots of times before. I don't like the stress and forgive him and then the drinking sneaks back in. But this time I'm putting my foot down properly. He currently drinks heavily every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mostly goes to the pub and I'm scared of him driving so I drop and collect him. But he never wants to leave and I end up sipping non-alcoholic beers I don't want, getting home later than I want and having my sleep disrupted. His drinking is taking over my whole life and I feel like if I don't disengage I'll waste the rest of my life on his crap.

I'm just looking for any words of advice on the disengaging bit. I'm a total control freak and obviously the fact that I'm always looking after him is giving him no motivation to quit. I was thinking about Al Anon meetings but I'm not even sure if he's an alcoholic as he does shift work and doesn't struggle with having no alcohol when working nights.

He’s putting his relationship above alcohol above everything else. You can’t change that. You can only change your response. End it.

Sorry can't really offer any advice on how to cope. I was in a relationship with a sometimes functioning alcoholic, but refused to marry him and after 2 years realised nothing I did would fix him, so for my own sanity I ended it.

You need to separate from him for a time at least. Give him a consequence of his actions.

You can’t disengage though, if you’re living together. You won’t actually be able to disengage. Because how would that work?

He drinks himself into oblivion, which presumably involves driving himself home from the pub, and you just ignore it? That’s not going to happen, is it?

Do you have children? I assume you do, because otherwise you’d have left eons ago.

The only effecting way of actually disengaging is by leaving him. That is, asking him to move out and finding somewhere else to live, and - absolutely crucially - finding someone else to:

parent him
pick up after him
rescue him
enable him

When you ask him to move out - you need to remind him that he cannot be an alcoholic alone.

He literally needs another human to do all the above shitwork for him, so that he can drink. But that you’re done, so he needs to find another mug to do it all for him.

And then you need to mean it, and stick by it.

Good luck

I've asked him to go stay with a relative who lives nearby but he's very het up and said he'd rather stay on the couch. I'm not ready to physically kick him out.

I know that I've always protected him from the consequences of his actions in the past. I did ring his brother this time and explained what happened and his brother came to talk to him. This mightn't sound like a big thing but I don't usually tell anyone in his family what's going on.

You can’t give him motivation to quit.
you can’t reason with him.

time to get your ducks in a row and get out. Who owns the house?

I own the house and my ducks are all in a row. There wouldn't be any financial consequences for me if I kicked him out. But I 100% guarantee that if I do that he'll be drink driving and given the emotional state he's in he likely end up in a ditch. I just don't know if I can do that.

Sorry but his drunkenness is not your responsibility. If he does drive off drunk you call police.

I'm not ready to physically kick him out.

And that’s fair enough. But it does mean you can’t disengage.

And so the cycle continues.

He needs to go if it's your place. This will only get worse and you can't control his addiction however much you want to. Let him go, of course he won't want to leave for the reasons explained above

There is no one size fits all answer to this. I am sorry you are in this situation - it's horribly painful if you love him.

I was on the other side of this - I was the drinker (I am a recovering alcoholic). Not vodka for breakfast drinking (well, rarely). I have always successfully held down a job and never been drunk in work for example. Much like your partner in fact from the sounds of it.

What changed me was when my partner said he would leave me if I did not immediately stop drinking - and I absolutely knew at that stage that he meant it. It was one of the defining moments of my life and I will never forget it. It wouldn't be true to say I have never had a drink sense - there have been a few crisis moments where I have fallen off the wagon - and a few moments of over-confidence where I have felt, this is going well, one drink won't hurt. (That is never true). But that was the radical turning point at which my life started to change for the better. I also had the full support of my family and friends, who didn't make me feel judged for having the illness itself, but did make it clear I was destroying myself and my relationships with them by choosing not to fight it.

Nobody can tell you what to do here or how your partner will respond to what you do, because addicts aren't all identical people with identical responses - we just have the same illness. Asking him to leave may be enough to make him try and change, or it may not. You probably do just have to do whatever is best for you now.

Thanks for the replies, I'm reading them all and I know that realistically this probably ends with us splitting.

@Ilovelurchers I'm trying to do what your partner did, give an ultimatum and properly stick with it. I know I never actually did that before.

We did get an artificial break from the drinking, fighting, forgiving cycle during Covid because of the pubs being closed on and off and he wasn't in a routine of going out. Being in the pub is his trigger. When our kids were little and I couldn't drop and collect him drink wasn't a problem at all. What's killing me now is that I should have less responsibility and more freedom as the kids are grown but his drinking has expanded into that space.

All you're doing is enabling him right now, and your marriage is over. It's done. You need to kick him out and file for divorce. You're just avoiding the inevitable.

If you’re married then he owns half thee house.

It reads as if you are addicted to enabling him him as he is addicted to alcohol.

He is no more going to stop drinking soon than you are going to kick him out soon.

Before anything changes, both of you need to hit rock bottom: you with him, him with drink.

Realistically OP, you are miles from that. A chat with his brother is not going to change things. And his stress is probably brought on by the chemical downer from alcohol - it’s a cycle already.

Definitely 100% I've been enabling him, somehow I just wasn't seeing that before. That's why I started the thread, that's the thing I need to change about me. I think I need help with that.

I know it sounds crazy but if I kicked him out tomorrow and he went on a bender and someone from the pub rang me to say he was really drunk I'd probably still go get him. Putting him physically out of the house won't really help if I'm still as emotionally involved as I am now.

You can stop this madness if you want to. Love yourself more than you love being his enabler.

I spent ten years with an alcoholic who increasingly put alcohol before me and our child.

Life without them is a million, zillion times happier than I could have ever dreamt of. Run.

Stop agonising and get rid.

Agonising enables you to enable.

He’ll stop if he wants to. You can’t do anything. Life will be miles better when he’s left.

Oh, and don’t think you’re keeping things stable for DC by enabling him. They’re sick of the tension & desperate to see it all stop.

You need to stop shielding him from the consequences of his drinking. You are making it far too easy for him to keep drinking that way. It's difficult but you are only going to drive yourself mad and he'll just end up getting himself into more and more situations. Its what you will be told at Al anon.

You are verbally beating yourself up a lot and none of this is your fault. There is no one right course of action here that you are missing.

Unfortunately he has a horrible illness and unfortunately at the moment he is choosing not to fight it. Neither of these things are your fault and nothing you can do will change either of them. You sound like a lovely person in an awful situation.

For what it's worth I think you telling his brother was hugely brave and a big step. When my partner told my mom about my drinking, tho it didn't go well at the time (she got angry with him and defensive) actually that really helped her understand the extent of my problems (obviously she knew I was a drinker, but not how bad it was), and also helped me realise the wheels were coming off and I couldn't keep fooling everybody and myself any more....

But as I said in my previous post, people like to talk about addicts as if we all respond to everything in identical ways, but we are in fact all individuals. Whether this will make a difference to your partner who knows? But you do have an absolute right to speak the truth about his behaviour to other people. And it is brave. So well done.

He's gone to stay with a relative. I told him tonight that I need a proper break and we don't need to make any major decisions right now but need to start planning for a future apart. He text me to say that he got there, that was more polite than he'd been in days. I think he was fairly shell shocked and to be honest I sort of am shocked myself.

Well done, OP. Get lots of support. This will be tough.

Thanks, I will get as much support as I can. I just feel different this time. I think I just got old enough during Covid to be at the point where I'm considering the rest of my life and I don't want booze in any more of it.