Marriage and parenting with an alcoholic .

[pukkapad2026]

I’m not quite sure how to even phrase this but I’ve recently met a man who was married to a lady with an alcohol addiction.
This addiction escalated form a casual weekend wine enjoyment to a couple of litres of vodka/ wine per day.
the scale of the addiction did not come to light until Covid when the husband realised that she was drinking through the day from morning through the night.
Their children have no memory of their mother sober and she continued to work in her own home as a carer to other children and continued to drink drive all through the years.
She went to rehab for some weeks but it didn’t work out. Her children who are now adults have all but ostracised her and have various psychological and psychiatric disorders, apparently as a result of the effects of drinking. They ended up caring for their mum towards the end of the marriage unbeknownst to their father.
He left some years ago and the chosen came with him. They were teens at the time.
They do not have a relationship with their mother and the lady continues to drink at home on her own but works a few hours per week.
i can’t help but feel that despite the awfulness of the whole situation , leaving her was awful .
I have no first hand experience of living with the effects alcoholism and I feel like someone’s gonna have to go. I will call you up and down me to come on para going to Holden to take your money in a couple of minutes. my ignorance is obvious here , I’m sure .
Can anyone shed some light on your lived experiences and maybe explain why no feel like this. I have overwhelming sympathy for the mother / ex wife and of course the kids but it’s niggling at me about him leaving her alone. It feels cruel.

I have no idea why there are so many typos here but i do apologise .

Id have left a lot sooner than he did. Alcoholism is appalling for everyone.
Nobody should have to live with that.

Sounds like you don't really have the full story here OP, maybe the husband gave her multiple chances to sort it out and she didn't/couldn't? In which case he was more than justified in leaving - he shouldn't have had to sacrifice years of his life trying to get her to change. I imagine the facts of what really went on are far more complex than any Mumsnet post could ever convey.

Yes. Of course, I can only imagine what went on. I get the impression that she was functioning for many years but I think when his children starting asking to leave , he knew he couldn’t go on any longer. It is true that I only know half the story . Is it unusual for someone to start drinking so heavily having been a moderate drinker for twenty years and why does this happen. How does it happen that you can go from a bottle of wine a couple of times per week to litres of alcohol per day ? Is there usually something traumatic that happens to escalate this especially when children, work and driving are involved ?
Again, please excuse my ignorance . I’m not tee total binging I don’t have lived experience or indeed any knowledge surrounding addiction. Thank you.

How does it happen that you can go from a bottle of wine a couple of times per week to litres of alcohol per day ?

Addiction is insidious. No one wakes up one morning and thinks "I'll drink a bottle of vodka today." They get there over years of gradually increasing their consumption. It can happen for many different reasons but it's important to remember that generally alcohol starts off as the solution but it becomes the problem.

I wouldn't judge someone for leaving an alcoholic OP. I don't think you would either if you had ever shared your life with one.

Google adult children of alcoholics.

im one. I don’t want to talk about it here but i wished my sober parent had left and taken me and my sibling out of that situation.

alcoholism creeps up - it’s not a static disease.

Living with an alcoholic destroys the mental health of the spouse and the children. You have no control over whether the person continues in their addiction or recovers, yet your life is absolutely ruined by the chaos, conflict, poor treatment and poor choices that the alcoholic makes. I became an absolute shell of myself - physically ill from stress and anxiety. You cannot cure them so at the end of the day you can only choose to save yourself and your children from having your lives ruined too. Nothing changes if nothing changes. In some cases, leaving gives them the impetus to change, in some cases they just continue on as is; but at least your life and your children’s life has improved.

To be honest I’m surprised that you think they should have continue to live an awful life just so the wife/ mother wasn’t left alone. Why should the addict’s needs come before the need of the partner and children for a healthy and happy life?

OP, like a lot of people, you think addict = victim.

In victim top trumps, it’s a hell of a lot worse being a child or spouse at the mercy of an alcoholic than being an addict. They’re pitiless. They don’t do love or family. They do damage and pain.

You can’t cure them. Only they can do that, and usually they don’t want to.

They will hurt, endanger and impoverish you with a merry, pissed smile. Before breakfast.

When you say "met a man" do you mean that you are in a relationship with him or considering a relationship with him?

If alcoholics could or would recover for the sake of their loved ones, then there would be very few alcoholics in the world! Most leave a number of damaged friends and relatives in their wake. The spouses who leave no doubt do so after months or years of agony and second-guessing themselves. Sometimes the loss of family will be the rock bottom that an addict needs to seek help and start the recovery process.

I'm amazed Emma Willis, who seems to be an intelligent and sensible woman, stayed with Matt and chose to expose their children to his various addictions. It worked out for them but significant damage will have been done to all of them.

I lived with a functioning alcoholic. Leaving is not a decision taken lightly, especially when you have DC together. It’s also the case that drinking is rarely in isolation. Mine included emotional abuse. My crunch moment came when he started sleep walking and urinating in places other than the bathroom. How could I stay when DC was potentially going to witness that? You don’t just up and leave. You have conversations. You have arguments. You beg and plead. But it erodes your self-confidence. I also struggled to sleep because of his awful snoring (worse after drinking) and fear of him getting up and peeing in the night.
As pp, said it’s a slippery slope. XH only drank on weekends, only Fridays and Saturdays. But then Sundays cos it’s still the weekend. Then week nights if football was on. If he ran out of beer, he’d have spirits instead, but they’d be quadruple measures. Lockdown was bad for us cos he WFH so no worries about driving and being over the limit in the morning.
If this chap has many DC and his XW was their main caregiver, he will have tried everything first. But presumably he was worried about their safety, especially if she drank-drove. If you struggle to understand this, I’d be cautious about getting romantically involved with him (if that’s on the cards). My DP now and I have similar issues with our exes (not the same but enough for understanding) and it really important in our relationship to have that understanding.

I would have no problem with him leaving her, but if he knowingly let her drink drive and care for small children when intoxicated and didn't report her, I'd be out of there.

My friend was married to an alcoholic. She was 60 when she finally left. She deeply regrets wasting most of her life on this man. She also regrets putting her three children through living with him. She says he’s still drinking and still lying.

Thank you. I , of course , understand that the last thing we want for our children is to witness any form of the effects of addiction but Infind it sad I guess. As a mother , I have great empathy for another who has lost her marriage and her children and I’ve no doubt that he tried everything and his children are now paying the price. A friend recently said to me when I told her that I was seeing a man and when she asked why he’s divorced and Intold her , she said ‘ poor woman that he left her alone’…. an off the cuff remark that cut, so maybe that’s why I’m thinking like that. Plus I’m a child of an alcoholic parent but have no memory of the drinking as he gave up when I was very young. I also recognise that alcoholics do not deliberately drink to hurt the ones they love the most .

No, most alcoholic don’t drink to hurt the ones they love most but their loved ones are absolutely collatoral damage in the addiction. I’m also the child of an alcoholic and certainly it affected me badly. Parent addiction is a well known ACE (Adverse childhood experience).

You can’t make someone sober. Trust me , myself and many have tried

he did the right thing for his children

same as I said enough after 2yrs+ of heavy drinking - prob nearer 5 - but the last 2 were the worst and knew my daughter then 6 and myself deserved better

yes he prob feels guilt over leaving and you def can’t judge the poor man

he did what was best for his children /family

loving and living with an alcoholic is hell and leaving him was the best thing for me/dd tho hard as I did love him dh lots. Obv. I married him

They lie and gas light you and you start to doubt yourself

Your dad managed to get sober @pukkapad2026 and well done him as it is hard

so great you have no memory or a bad childhood but dd has seen and heard things that no little child should ever have to

and ex will die from alcohol and then that’s more heartache I will have to deal with as yes dd loves her dad but she is also very sadly aware of what he is like and his drinking