What will I say to DH?

[Loosingmymind]

Aaaaaaaagh!

Bloody DH. He went out last night at 6.30pm to DJ at a pub. The pub closes at 1am. I woke at 5am to find he stil was not home, phoned him and got answerphone. I panicked as is soooo cold out and when he goes out for a drink he drinks until he has no memory of where he has been and can hardly walk.

So I phoned police and hospital to see if he was there (was shaking and in tears). No sucess so phoned him again and he said he was on his way.

I'm taking DS to see a show at 1pm and he was gona take DD (20mo) swimming at the same time.

AIBU to tell him that I don't want him to take her as he might still have the alcohol in his system? Or will he be OK by then? He will probably only wake up at 11.30am.

BTW this is not overly unusual, he always drinks to excess when out and is never home before 4am. The next day he is always v tired.

I just want to scream, he knew what our plans were today!

You said once a fortnight OP, now it's once a month.

When is your day off?

Wake up woman - he is treating you like an idiot, he has no respect for you.

Are you seeing the doctor about your back or your mental health issues? I hope it is support for both...

If you are hurting yourself, you are not gettingthe help you need at home, he is NOT BEING A GOOD DAD and working in partnership with you, does he know about the self harm?

Sweetheart you have changed from saying it happens a couple of times a month, to saying that it is once a month. You are minimising it.

Look, he works 14 hours a day. I bet he leaves before they are up (or not long after) and gets home when they are in bed. He has 12 hours a day, twice a week max to spend with his children. Thats 4x24 hours a month. He chooses to spend one in every 4 of those chances a month in bed with a hangover, having made their mother sick with worry and leaving her to cope with pain and extra work. He puts himself at risk of being attacked or getting in a fight.

Now does that sound like a good father to you? And that is just for now...just wait until the children are old enough to see his behaviour and start learning from it.

altinkum - I really don't think you are being helpful here quibbling over a definition when the OP's husband has clearly got a problem and is behaving unacceptably.

Maybe once a month wouldn't be so bad (except that she did say once a fortnight and is now minimising it), if it was planned, she knew when to expect him back, she got her chance to have a break from being with the children, and he behaved towards her in a respectful way.

But he isn't doing any of those things, which in my book makes him a bad parent regardless of how frequently or infrequently he is getting drunk.

Im seeing the Dr re back. Am on several painkillers. Have only ever cut myself once and that was last night. I felt like an idiot. DH does not know bout this.

I think i said once or twice a month at 1st but i then said probably ìs more like once a month. I should really keep a note of them.

Im not defending his actions by saying that he is a good dad. In my opinion he is a good dad although it does drive me crazy when he wastes half a day in bed.

I feel like i'm being selfish though if i bring this up as he does work long hours.

He is trying to get a new job closer to home to see kids.

I agree in that i don't think he will change, but when i talk to him later Im hoping he gets a wakeup call.

I dont get a day off but I don't want one to be honest.

if he is an alcoholic, you can't cure it, you have to find ways of being kind to yourself .
it sounds tough for all of you that he works such long hours, but the pain you are having,. and the self harming you are doing to alleviate this, need sorting.
did you say you had made an appointment?

cross posts.

Altinkum- as an aside from the op's issues which I fully agree with alibaba.

On a recent genteics program (I wish I could remember which one but it had CF as well)the gentetic link with alchol was not strongly proven. I though I agree that compulsive bahaviours etc may be inherited.

Before we had dc's we lived a clubbing lifestyle Dh more so than me. Dh has always been a great Dad, but he'd do this sort of thing quite a bit once dd1 was born and it used to annoy me too. Mostly the fallout the next day and the anxiety of worrying that he'd been run over dur to drunken stupidity. It was hard to get my feelings across without sounding like a nag, dh's usual arguments were 'i don't do it often' 'i wouldn't mind if you did it in fact I wish you would' and 'you knew what I was like when you met me'. Lovely.

I can't claim that anything I said ever changed his behaviour, but he did change gradually over the years and now dd1 is 11 I can't remember the last time he went out till the early hours - there'll probably one such occasion over the Christmas period. Things that did help was explaining to him how worried I'd get and to ring me if it looked like becoming a big night, which he did learn to do. I then had to train myself not to get cross just because he was out, after all he is allowed a social life so long as it's not every weekend.

You need to speak to someone in RL about the self harm, before it spirals any further.

Please.

However you feel now embarassed ashamed the GP will have heard it before at the time you were overwhelmed and action needs to be taken now so you don't feel like that again.

Please don't brush it under the carpet, if you don't want to talk to the GP, write down what happened and if you know why and give it to the GP s/he should be able to put some more support in place. Additionally if you want to talk to someone in RL today the samaritatans are very good.

I known they're is a compulsion to keep going for the children but admitting you need more help is the first step in things changing

Altinkum Sorry to hear about your niece DD2 has CF hence the reason we were watching. I don't think it was on BBC4 it was about three adult the two women and a man with alchol dependancy.

Bad parent? Let's see. Treats mum with a bucket load of disrespect. Can't see beyond his own needs to get slaughtered. Regularly in no fit state to provide basic care, never mind to interact in good way with them. Needs to rebalance absence through work with weekend time, but instead chooses to be Mr DJ (any bloke who does this job for free is doing it for the ego kick) and effectively remove himself for a couple of days.

Alcohol - from Community Alcohol Teams: Health, Wealth, Relationships, Work. If alcohol is affecting any of these one has a problem with alcohol.

OP - your threshold for what is a serious problem appears incredibly high - no idea how old your DH is but I'd guess in his head he is about 18. Your excuse making means he won't stop and you will have to put up with this, until you choose not to?

Good post, Craig.

tar clam.

OP - it looks like your dh is holding you to ransom. He will know how little you would wish a fractured marriage, and is using that to get away with what he can. He isn't a good or nice person at all from the sound of your messages. As the little ones get older they will understand more of this. 20 month olds are old enough to notice lots of things, without talking about them.

This really doesn't sound like an equal relationship.Maybe I'm unusual, but I think that couples ought to be socialising together, particularly if they are not together a lot during the week because of long working hours/looking after small children. I don't think it is good generally for a relationship if one or both parents is having all their fun outside of the relationship. It means that they come to associate being at home with chores and arguements over drinking, rather than with fun and excitement at being together (like you get at the start of the relationship).

I would not be happy at all if my DH was working all week, then going out drinking to excess and being hungover, when he could be with me and our DCs. I would see that as a straightforward choice between us and his social life/drinking. When you have DC you should look after them, not carry on as if they weren't there and just assume the other parent will take care of everything.

Your DH is immature and selfish. He is putting his drinking above you and your children and his whole attitude towards your concerns indicates that he doesn't care enough about your feelings to alter his behaviour. If you choose to accept that kind of disrespect, then he will continue to be disrespectful.

Personally, I'd rather have no man than one who couldn't care less about my feelings or his responsibilities towards his DC.

He's 28, I think the people who he goes out with (my cousins are amongst them) are part of the problem. Some of them are alcoholics and DH seems to try and keep up with them.

Like I said I will talk to him later and hopefully he will see how this is having an effect on me.

I think he has convinced me that this is ok hense me not seeing it as a big of problem as it is.

If i mention to him I think he has a problem with binge drinking he won't listen.

I'm not going to hold back later though. And i'm going to show him my cut from last night, although i'm worried this will look like i'm blaming him for it, which i'm not.

Kinda wishing hadn't started this thread! Although it's given me a kick up the arse.

OP - I'd be careful about the cut thing. He would very easily be able to point to it as you emotionally manipulating him, ( and so dismiss your position) when in fact you would be being reasonable in every respect. I would have nooo confidence he would be able to interpret self-harm aspect in any way.
Really best wishes to you for later.

My DH used to do this. It was a nightmare. The last time he did it was christmas 2 years ago. He used to do it when he was stressed or upset or down, which led to a complete abandomnent of responsibility. The time at christmas was at a party given by my brothers' friends. He embarrassed my brother, kept me up for hours when I was co-sleeping with 3mo DS, threw up on a handmade jumper my mum had knitted for DS, and had a hangover all xmas eve and was unable to participate, including cooking for the family which he had planned to do. He was embarrassed, I was humiliated, my brother was angry and his friends were unimpressed. All this led from what he would have considered 'normal' night out drinking, but which would not normally have had consequences like that - he could have slept on sofa, nobody would have seen his behaviour (who mattered) for example. I'm trying to say that yes, your DP has a drink problem, as did/does mine, but it was a 'mirror' being held up to his behaviour by my family and others that caused him to realise that drinking like a teenage student was not normal or appropriate in a 29yo married father. His mates have always been binge drinkers, he learnt to drink in a culture where drinking is secret so when you do it it's a big deal, everyone brings booze and gets wasted and that's normal. He then found 'mates' in pubs here who behaved the same way.

Sorry this is a bit of an essay but I'm trying to say that he clearly thinks his behaviour is normal and acceptable. He won't realise it's not until he feels consequences to it (and maybe not even then) but don't give up hope. Although my DH does still get drunk (and so do I to be fair) he arranges it in advance and makes sure I don't need him the next morning, and stays over with friends so I have nothing to do with the state he gets in or the next morning. He doesn't do it often either. It has been two years and i now trust him completely to get back after a night out at a normal time (2-3am) and not be vommiting or comatose with drink! He has also never drunk around my brother since and apologised to my family...and me of course.

He's in a culture of heavy drinking, I'm not sure that makes him an alcoholic, but that's not the point. Some people are happy with their husbands going out and getting drunk once or twice a month, indeed there's lots of jobs such as in the City where it is very normal, if undesirable. I have a friend whose husband has fallen asleep on the train as drunk and ended up god knows where, he rolls in really drunk as I've seen him. I would hate it, but she doesn't seem to mind, he does it infrequently, and he is very helpful the rest of the time, so for her it seems tolerable.

However, she is not you. You are in pain a lot and effectively a single parent in the week. Your husband needs to know that him staying out so late (and like others, I would personally be more worried as to where he was than the state he was in, it's quite a regular 'absence', I'd want to know exactly whose house he was at) is affecting you. I personally think that until he grows up, or you set better boundaries, that you should go to bed and get a good nights sleep when he goes out. I get the feeling there's a 'mother' dynamic there, he's the naughty child who doesn't want to come home and you are up all night crying and stressing (and now self-harming). It sounds like a terrible dynamic all round.

So, even if some other people go out drinking, he's not 'some other people', he's your husband and you need his help on the weekend. You need to talk to him about whether the DJing can continue (I would say not). I get the impression that it's a bit of a implied threat that he will leave if you don't accept this. You don't have to accept this, call his bluff and tell him straight you can't put up with it any more.

YOu also need to go straight to the doctors on Mon and explain you feel like self-harming even if you only did it once, the circumstances are highly likely to repeat themselves. It would be a good time to review your pain medication, perhaps consider counselling as well.

"when he goes out for a drink he drinks until he has no memory of where he has been and can hardly walk"

You have a massive, massive problem here. If you didn't have children, it would be copable with, but this is not good role model behaviour, nor good husbandly behaviour.

He needs to sort himself out.