Lost with husband's drinking

[Namechangenora52]

I'm worried about my husband's drinking and also about whether it is time to give up on our marriage. He drinks at least once a week and over the decades has managed to cut down to between 8-12 pints on a Thursday/Friday/Saturday. If we have anything social on, I dread it as he is always the drunkest there ( slurring, staggering, talking nonsense) and then either asleep all the next day or binging junk food and watching TV in a weird half drunk, mildly belligerent way. The day after that is always hungover and too exhausted to want to do anything as a family. His response to this is always to ask why I need him to do things. We don't need him for some things but he's the kids dad, it's nice if he's around!
If he drinks on the Thursday then he often misses work the next day or drives in late and hungover. I feel lots of anxiety around him loosing his job and resent worrying about it during my job.
Reading the threads here and the great advice, I think 'm in the same boat as a lot of people on this group and just trying to balance out where love stops and enabling begins.
A long time ago I looked for support from a group that Al Anon put me onto. I remember being made to feel /feeling really shamed, that I had exaggerated my husband's drinking and I shouldn't seek to control him or his actions. Our 3 kids were still so young at the time but I remember the mix of guilt and resentment when the counsellor asked why I didn't just let him sleep off his hangovers and get on with my day without him. It was so hard watching him snoring on the sofa while I changed nappies, walked the dog and got everyone ready for an outing. Staying in the house wouldn't have been great as it was small and him sleeping it off was so visible to the children. I also dread Christmas and no longer want to go on holiday as he then drinks every night. My friends minimise it all as it is quite a boozy group and they say he's just good fun, which leads DH to say that I'm the only one with a problem. We've been invited to a BBQ in a few hours and I'm just not looking forward to it. I will have one glass of wine over the afternoon and then drive home but it's all just so boring. Dh says that he is a nice drunk and he is but there have been enough incidents over the years where his drinking has caused major upsets that I now just get a visceral reaction when I hear him opening a can. I need to disengage and not care but no idea how. Sorry for such an unstructured mess of a brain dump. I really had to steel myself to write it and feel crushing guilt already so please, please be gentle

You need to make plans to leave him.

You can't change him only he can do that. You have said yourself you cannot let go of your resentment. So the only option is to leave.

It's shit I've been there. Down to the dreading going out with him cos of how drunk he gets. But it gets better when they leave.

Thanks Hill. I'm trying to make plans but keep finding that I mentally leave the door open for him to change. He only drinks once or twice a week so by mid week life feels functional again. I think the original counsellor I saw was doing some CBT and trying to get me to re frame my thoughts but now I just feel like not being ok with his drinking is my fault.

It's not how often he drinks, OP, so much as how much of an impact it has on your family life.

By the sounds of it, one 'episode' of drinking affects the following day, and the day after that.

Plus you are living on the edge, knowing that his drinking affects your social and home life, with any traditionally enjoyable events like Christmas and holidays filling you with dread rather than joy.

Do you still respect him?

No no you need to leave. I've been there too - its shit. My dh is a functioning alcoholic in denial.
Left 5 years ago life is AMAZING now.

This will ruin your kids lives
Leave please stop making excuses

Do you consider reporting him for drunk driving?

Orcadian. I bought him a breathalyser years ago. Hungover but not drunk. BBQ was a nightmare. He's hammered and making no sense. One of our foster dogs is sick, I've had to coordinate an emergency vet trip and he isn't understanding it at all.

Sorry to hear that OP that sounds awful. I know what you mean, you just want him to be present, and care, and engage, and why should you have to perform mind tricks to pretend it's fine he doesn't do that. It's not fine. It's shit and it isn't your fault xx

He does sound like he does have a severe alcohol problem from what you say. I'm not looking at amounts of drink, I'm looking at the fact he's suffering confusion, lack of understanding, and mental distance from others, and lack of presence with his family. These are all not good signs. I do think you should get out if you can x

Thanks for being so kind Jovial xxx

Having a drink is fine. Drinking to the point of being incapable of being a parent or even a functional human being isn’t ok. You say he has got it down to 8-12 pints. So 16 to 24 units in one go? That’s a huge binge and not ok. You’re right not to be ok with this.

That's OK, you deserve lots of kindness 💐 your situation sounds horrible xx

What do you think you might do? Or are you still mulling over everything in your mind.

The minimising about a sick dog today has really given me some clarity. He can't understand why I'm upset and the whole drive home from this bloody BBQ he just kept repeating but why do we have to leave, the dog is fine on a loop. And now I just feel so awful about the puppy. This is so obviously outing if anyone does know me but. I'm just so worried. I feel so guilty and out of my depth about everything. It's shit doing this. Like you say, the mental gymnastics of how many units has he had last night? What time did he go to sleep at? Where's the bloody breathalyser. Puppy is called Hera. They've put her on oxygen.

Your husband is an alcoholic. Alcohol will always be more important to him that you and your kids are. Fuck. That. It's high time you got fucking angry. How dare he put getting drunk before you and your children. Get rid of him and start actually living.

If he doesn't want to take the breathalyser - he won't

Because he won't face reality

I'm asking if you're going to report him or wait until he kills someone with his drink driving?

Orcadian. I make him breathe into it before getting in the car and calculate an hour per unit. I check this by looking through the recycling. If he's over he works from home. My dad was an alcoholic and drove drunk with us. I'm hyper vigilant about it and it's exhausting. Please don't keep interrogating me.

Thanks for telling me that it's not ok that he does this. The counselling I went for ( about fifteen years ago now) just made me feel that I had to put up with it. Maybe I just didn't take it in at the time properly

I don’t think the issue with drinking is the biggest problem here it’s the lack of consideration about ruining your weekends. He’s acting like a single bloke with no caring responsibilities.

I’d leave as he clearly doesn’t actually want to be part of a family. I’ve a feeling he does very little in the home or the takes in any of the mental load.

Birdseye I, this really resonated. He likes me as his support human. I asked him once why he wanted us and he said we were good background noise. He said it as joke at the time but it rang true. I'm working on an exit but it will take time. We aren't in the UK at the minute and I'm tied to a contract. The vet just told us that the puppy injested something. I'm failing to protect everyone. Sorry to be wet. I just feel so guilty.and helpless. I can't stop crying. It was a vulnerable creature in my care. I don't know what could have happened. The others are fine

Ok. The vet came back. Not poison. Hypocalcemia. From living on scraps for so long. Supplements to treat the others and hopeful that this little one will survive.

If it's Al Anon based counselling then their message is to disengage - not that you have to put up with jit, but you do have to admit you can't do anything to change it or expect him to change. So maybe you misinterpreted it as leaving was just so far off your radar then it became 'put up with it'

The only thing you can change is if you want to live like that or if it's time to leave.

Why is puppy living off scraps? This all sounds so dysfunctional.

This hypervigilance on drink you took on as a survival strategy in childhood has now extended into adulthood. Don't be hard on yourself about this, the best way to improve things is to gently love yourself into seeing a new way forward.

I would also echo the idea that either the counsellor mangled the concept, or you weren't ready at the time, that you are powerless over other people's drinking.

Sometimes some of the pain can be reduced by just not taking on tasks which previously felt like obligations (like forcing or cajoling someone incapacitated by drink to participate in activities). Often trying to do these things can just be literally harmful to ones sanity.

But fundamentally it also leads you to other boundaries which you can control: living with this person or not, continuing to be married to them.

Sometimes social binge drinkers can find it so much harder to look at themselves clearly & have lots of comforting excuses to fall back on (they don't have to drink everyday etc) but for you you describe his drinking directly affecting 2-3 days a week and indirectly your entire life with anticipatory fear. This isn't a sporadic problem where he does this at one party every six months.

Have you looked into the organisation Adult Children of Alcoholics as well as another look at Al Anon?

Surely long term malnutrition from before it was fostered by them...

I don’t think that he is an alcoholic, if he is teetotal for six days a week. However, the fact that he is drinking and abstaining from his responsibilities at all, with young children is far from satisfactory. My husband and I drink far more than your husband, however, our children have left home and we don’t have any caring responsibilities. I am not sure what your options are here other than to continue as you are, or to leave? Have you looked at how your situation would look if you did leave, for example the finances? Do you want to be with him?

They are a litter of strays. We aren't in the UK. A lot of the strays have very poor nutrition. I volunteer as a foster carer for an animal rescue. They have been brought in and put on a high calorie diet but the smallest started having seizures. The vet initially thought injestion. Bloods came back hypocalcemia. It is dysfunctional but not of my making.