Anyone ever stayed with an alcoholic? Did he ever change?

[Christmasbiscuittin]

and was it worth staying together for the children?

Trying to make sense of a family members situation 😞.

I was with my alcoholic partner for 5 years, he wasn't an alcoholic when I met him, liked a drink but nowhere near how he was at the end. I cared for him after he was diagnosed with end stage liver disease & until he died age 34. I don't regret meeting him, just the fact he loved the booze more than he loved me, ds, his kids & his parents. Alcoholics are so selfish, they lie, cheat & steal to get what they want, he broke my heart & it's still broken 11 years later.

Anyone you keeps a child in a house with an alcoholic is culpable for the damage done to that child. You don’t “stay together for the children” with an alcoholic. You get them the hell away from the addict who is destroying their childhood.

there Is no amount of buffering that a parent can do to protect a child from an alcoholic. It’s not possible. The least that can be done is to give them one home where they can see what it is like to live normally. They can give them one home where they don’t have to be in a constant state of fight or flight. They can give them one home where people pleasing is not being written into their dna.

Have seen this with a close friend and no, it does not work out and instead often leads to prolonged heartbreak.
An alcoholic will not change unless they WANT to change but unfortunately they (more often than not) choose the bottle over family/relationship.

In my friends case it was the mum who drank and who made the house a horrible place for the husband & children, ultimately resulting in her death from liver failure (with the children in the house).☹️

I have a dear friend who stayed with her alcoholic husband

Shes damaged by it. The children are damaged by it.

He died from many things related to alcohol but the most upsetting was his wet brain

My advice is run away fast

I grew up with an alcoholic parent and wish more than anything they had separated, it’s affected me in so many ways and I’ve spent £££ on therapy. You may tell yourself they don’t realise, but they will and they do, even unconsciously through your own stress and trauma from the situation. Have a look at the NACOA website for info about how it might affect your children and then please leave.

Nope nope and nope - very rare for alcoholics to beat it, usually constant cycle of relapse and the only one I know who did had to move to a different city and give up their daughter, a total life reset.

the pain and long term trauma of being in a family with an alcoholic cannot be underestimated. A child at my school was desperate for stable love and I spoke to her every day for years - through her explosive anger, smoking, promiscuity, pregnancy scare and various attention-seeking behaviours. What she got at home was inconsistent parenting with extended family members, minimal contact with mother and subsequent pain of separation and ultimately the trauma of finding her dying mother one afternoon after school. The whole family was impacted enormously. Utterly devastating to find myself working with her younger sister a year later, with a different set of behaviours all with the same origins

My mum was with an alcoholic for years, they’d split but get back together. They ended up having my little brother, who he took to the pub one day in a baby carrier. When he left the pub he fell over, landed on him and fractured his skull. He took my brother home and put him to bed, my mum came home from work and I don’t think there are words for how she felt seeing him lying there like that. One of his eyes changed colour from the impact. He still drinks and my 24 year old brother is not ok in various ways

I’m angry at both of them to be honest, I’ll never understand why my mum chose to bring a baby into that situation

@cheerfulaf my heart is actually bursting for your brother, how awful 😢 and for you to grow up with all that around you. I can’t imagine the resentment you must feel.

What's your relationship with the children @Christmasbiscuittin? And with the alcoholic?

I'm grateful to the posters sharing their experience. For me its a sad truth that my child is better off with just me and all the imperfections of our solo parent home. If I can prevent it, I don't want my child to witness a traumatic, alcohol caused, medical crisis happening to their father or live in an unpredictable 'treading on eggshells' home which is so damaging. Reading others' experience helps me believe I'm not being over dramatic.

My heart was broken in the wake of a catastrophic drinking relapse when a lot of secrets and lies emerged.

Best of luck OP, whatever your situation.

(Typo edited)

I divorced an alcoholic. He would say - when challenged- I’ll sort out my drinking if you do more cooking / more laundry etc etc as if I wasn’t already doing all of it anyway!!he’s never changed and has major relapses. Keeps on having broken relationships

When they stop drinking, if they do, there is no guarantee they will be a nice person, or that they will feel any obligation to those who looked after them. So wives can 'stand by their man' - for them to clear off with someone else once they stop drinking.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. An alcoholic needs to hit rock bottom/have a lightbulb moment to change. It’s possible that the partner and child
leaving will wake the drinker up and they’ll get help - or they might be pleased to be left alone with the alcohol.

Either way they should leave - the child absolutely shouldn’t have to be in the situation. It’s dangerous and traumatising.

to everyone suffering because of alcoholism.

My husband is an alcoholic. It was social drinking when we met but work stresses meant it ramped up and he would drink to excess at any opportunity. We had no children at that time and after a couple of arguments due to his drinking I gave him an ultimatum and said I’d leave unless he was sober as I couldn’t have children with a drinking alcoholic. That was over 5 years ago now and he has been sober since, has regular therapy, as have I and our communication has totally changed and our relationship is in a much healthier place. I do regret giving him the ultimatum in a way because I feel it needs to be the persons choice to stop, but as time has gone on our relationship has strengthened and the trust rebuilt. It took work but feels worth it. I am now pregnant with our first child.
If he started drinking again I would have to leave, I would not raise a child in that situation but (naively or not) I believe it is behind him.

Yes, well, Dh stayed with me. I’m coming up to 3 years sober. We have a very happy marriage and family life. I decided I needed to stop drinking, so I stopped, and I never looked back. No relapses. No dicking anyone around. I sorted things out for myself and my family because they mattered to me. I was drinking 200 units at least a week before I got sober.

In my experience, addicts who get sober are in a much better place than your average non-addict, because they are accountable and have worked on themselves. All the people I know around me who are absolute hot messes are not alcoholics. But you have to sort yourself out. My life now is 1000x better than it was before, even when I wasn’t drinking heavily. I’m way more together than most people I know, and have a healthier relationship. But it’s because I’m not a dickhead. You can be an alcoholic, but you can also just be a jerk. One doesn’t necessarily cause the other.

I don't have an alcoholic partner. But I did grow up with an alcoholic mother.
The damage that occurs is for life. She chose the drink over me my whole life, I spent my childhood watching her swing between merry, manic, aggressive, weepy. I cleaned her up when she had accidents, I got her medical help too many times to count when she made stupid decisions under the influence. I was her carer and therapist for a long time. I will carry the trauma of growing up with her for the rest of my life. I don't drink and I cannot be around anyone that drinks to this day. She's still alive, she's still an alcoholic and she is completely alone.

If you have children, Please choose them. Choose to keep them safe.

I have a friend who was/is an alcoholic, he's married. He drank a lot, at their house he once poured me literally a half pint of brandy and the same for himself, I had a few sips and he drank the lot and I suspect drank the rest of mine too. He couldn't walk past a pub without having a few. He had some sort of drunken event (I never knew what exactly) and he and his wife decided he would go into rehab, he's never drunk anything alcoholic since coming out must be 20 years ago now, but still goes to AA meetings. They are still together.

I stopped drinking for a number of reasons, the main one being that I could see my new marriage wasn't going to last. I loved him so much. So I went to rehab. That was in 1989. I"ve been sober ever since

It’s rare to change and stop. It can happen. I know 2 who are sober - one man. One woman

but manymany couldn’t /wouldn’t stop and in my case I had enough of the lies and drinking and had to say enough

for my own mental health and for the happiness of dd

it was tough

only you @Christmasbiscuittin can decide how many chances /blips/drinks you can put up with

but if you have kids you need to seriously think how the alcoholics behaviour effects your kids

and it does

and was it worth staying together for the children?

No. It never is if they won't stop drinking.