Hi
This is my first ever post on mumsnet so please be gentle and forgive and mistakes.
This could be a long story, I will try and make it as brief as possible. It’s about my partner, his use of drink and drugs, and whether I'm overreacting or what I should do about it.
We have been together for 15 years and have 2 kids aged 9 and 11. When we first got together, we were in our late 20s and both moved in friendship groups where boozy weekends and all-night partying were the norm. We quite quicky moved in together and within a year we'd bought a house. We were still living a pretty carefree life and having fun at the weekends (although also managing to hold down jobs etc.) Then I got pregnant with our first child, which was planned. Obviously at this point I gave up all the drinking, smoking, partying etc. Nowadays I rarely drink and if I do it won't be an excessive amount. I hate feeling hungover and I also know that I can become an argumentative drunk so I stopped allowing myself to ever get in that state as I don't like the person I sometimes become. I never expected my partner to give up with me, but I suppose I assumed that once we were parents it would be natural for him to want to cut down too and drink at a normal/sensible level.
As the years have gone by, he has carried on with the 'lost weekends' we used to have, albeit less often. When the kids were babies/toddlers he would go out, drink and not come home once or twice a month. He used to have a music studio in the town where we lived and he would go down there and stay up all night drinking with his brother or a couple of mates. So I knew where he was, but he would sometimes not come home for 48 hours and leave me with the kids to look after on my own. When he did eventually come back, he would just pass out on the sofa and be useless for another day or so. Obviously this drove me crazy and we would often row about it. He would usually try and turn it round onto me and say that he did it because I wasn't giving him enough attention now I had the kids. I came close to ending it several times but he would always promise to stop and then be fine for a few weeks. Eventually he did it once too many and I said either we go to counselling and try to sort it or I was done with the relationship.
We found a really good couples counsellor and had a good initial session with her, but then lockdown happened and somehow in all the madness we just never continued. At first it wasn't as issue as due to the lockdown he couldn't go out and drink anyway. In the September before Covid I had given up work as the stress of my job was making me unwell and I was back at university, retraining for another career. He had started working with his brother in another town and was going away for half the week each week to do that. In the October of 2020 we all caught Covid and I unfortunately developed Long Covid. It affected me physically, neurologically and psychologically and I was in a really bad way. I had to give up my course as my cognitive issues were so severe that I couldn’t read or write. This meant he wasn't able to carry on with working away as I struggled to look after our children on my own. At this point his drinking, which had been slowly creeping up over the lockdown, became much more constant. He was at home with us, but he would stay up til late every night drinking and then sleep in very late, despite me being very unwell. I didn't feel supported at all and was terrified about what the future held for us all and I think we both became very depressed. I suppose that I just thought that if things were the other way around and he had become suddenly very unwell that I would have made every effort to pick up the slack and be there to care for him and the kids, but he just didn't do that. Many of the things that I used to do just didn't get done anymore. The house became an absolute mess, and he really resented having to do anything like meal planning and cooking, which I had always done. It all came to a head after about 6 months and I again felt like I couldn't go on in the relationship. The stress of it all was making me more ill when I needed to focus on my recovery. I was distraught as I knew I wasn't in a place where I could care for my kids alone, but I also knew staying with him was grinding me down even further. I hated the impact it was all having on our children but I felt powerless to change things. He was also distraught as he hated seeing me so unwell and he wasn't able to work or fix things. I went to stay with my family for a while and he took the kids to stay with his parents. After a few weeks apart he came to visit and was really sorry and opened up about how hard it had all been. We decided to try again and moved across the country to stay with his parents and look for a new home there, where he could work and they could support me with the kids. He promised that he would cut down on the drink and be there for us all too.
In the 2 years since then I have thankfully made quite a lot of progress with my recovery. I'm not quite in a place where I can reliably work and still have some days where all I can do is the basics and then crash out but I am able to run the house and take care of the kids in the way that I want too, which is such a relief, and he has been able to go back to work with his brother in their business. On the surface things are much easier and life is a hell of a lot better than it was 3 years ago. But the issue is that his drinking has continued and it is really worrying me. He doesn’t drink every day, but 4 or 5 nights a week he will sit at home and drink at least 4 large cans of Stella. He also has admitted that he uses cocaine at the same time after I caught him doing this in the bathroom. I can see when he hasn’t had a drink for a couple of days he starts getting restless and tetchy. It’s like he can’t wait to get the kids into bed so he can go to the shop and his dealer. Usually he goes into the other room and plays around on his computer on nights he does this because he knows it annoys me, but some nights he sits with me and listening to him just babbling on like a merry coke head when I’m completely sober really winds me up. The only nights where he’s happy not to have a drink are ones where I fancy having sex with him. I do still love him and find him attractive, but this makes me feel like there is pressure on me to do this to keep him off the booze and also a bit like a piece of meat that he uses to get his rocks off if he can’t have any substances, which obviously doesn’t really put me in the mood. Sometimes he will say ‘Are you in the mood tonight?’ and if I say no then straight away he’s out the door on his way to the off license. Every couple of weeks he will also go AWOL again and stay out at his brother’s house for a couple of days, and he spends so much time just sleeping on the couch and recovering when he is here. The business they own is fairly physical and that also knackers him out, so he just uses that as an excuse as to why he’s tired.
The past few months he has also regularly just started having random days off every week or two because he’s hungover and wants to stay in bed. They have people that work for them and I just feel its such a bad culture to set in the company when the boss just doesn’t show up for work regularly. I worry about what will happen with their business and our income if he gets worse. When we speak about it, he will admit that he has a problem but says he’s not drinking that much and he’s not ready to give up. Every time he promises to cut down. He had agreed that he would go and see the GP and seek some help, but he never does anything about this. I think he always just waits for it to blow over. I know I am too soft and every time it comes to a head I threaten to end things but I never do. Firstly, I do love him and I want him to get well. Despite all this, otherwise we get on well and the kids adore him. I come from a broken home and have had no contact with my dad (who was also a big drinker) for over 20 years. I don’t want that for my kids. Secondly, I am terrified of how I would manage on my own. I am financially in such as insecure position as I can’t work so how could I be a single parent. We are lucky enough not to have a mortgage but I don’t have my name on the house or anything. I trust him not to screw me over with that as it’s not his style, he does adore me and never means to hurt me. He’s a big, kind hearted, good man underneath all this. But I have no idea how it would work or how I would pay the bills.
Last week we were lucky enough to be taken away for a few days’ holiday by one of the suppliers of his firm. We haven’t been away together just us two for so long, we were really looking forward to having some time together. The first 2 days were really great and we had a wonderful time. Then on the second night I went to bed early as I was drained and he stayed up. I was woken at 4am to find him rolling round on the floor of the hotel room in an absolute state. I managed to get him to the bathroom and he was sick, then he went to sleep in the bed. In the morning he was still pretty incoherent so I left him to it and went down for breakfast. When I came back up he had wet the bed. I was so angry and ashamed I just told him it was his problem to deal with and stormed out. I have spent hours over the years cleaning up his vomit and piss from our own house when he’s been on a bender because I’ve been so ashamed. I really hoped that this would be the wake up call he needed. When I came back a few hours later he had rinsed the sheets and propped the mattress up to dry it out, then just remade the bed. He said he was too hungover and embarrassed to tell the housekeeping staff. So that night, to my shame, I ended up sleeping in a bed that he’d pissed in the night before because there was nowhere else for me to sleep. I was angry and mortified but I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of lots of people he does business with so I said ‘lets park it til we get home’. Once home he went straight round to his brothers and didn’t come back til the next morning. Then he got annoyed because I wanted him to get up as we had a man over fixing our guttering and I needed to walk the dog. Its little things like not being able to rely on him for stuff like this that slowly wears me down, but I do know he works really hard when he's at work and feel guilty for getting cross with him for wanting a lie in.
Now I think he just hopes I’m going to let the bed incident go. He was angry about some mistakes that were made at work in his absence and I didn’t want to rock the boat further and wind him up more so I haven’t mentioned it again yet, but he keeps asking if I want to have sex and I just feel so disgusted by his behaviour that I’m really not into the idea of that at the moment. I can’t understand how he can just think that things should go back to normal after such a thing happening while we were away. Yesterday I made contact with Al-Anon and am going to go to a meeting this week. It feels like such a big step and that it makes it all real. I hate the idea of it but I just don’t know what else to do now. It feels like if I don’t do something then things will never change.
When I started this post I think I was wanting an answer to whether I was being unreasonable or whether he really does have a problem, because he’s always trying to convince me that its not that bad, or that he needs to drink because of work stress or because he feels unloved by me. I always feel really guilty and bad then as I know he earns all the money and he doesn’t always get as much attention from me as he would like, but I am managing the house, a chronic illness, 2 kids and a dog. But perhaps having read it back I have answered my own question.
I just feel like we have been going round in circles for years with this and I know its not how I planned or hoped my life would turn out. I’m scared and I don’t like change so I don’t know if I am brave enough to take any concrete steps to get us out of this situation. I love him so much, I just want him to get better and to be able to support me and the kids like a proper partner should. I know I probably won't get the answers to my problems on the internet. I just needed to have a rant perhaps.