to think this is unacceptable from DH.

[Yolo89]

I have spoken many times about my DH who suffers from some form of depression and has an alcohol issue. He has temporarily moved out so he can sort himself out. We are also getting counselling. In his latest fiasco, he got us a letter of eviction on our property as he has paid no rent for two months. He is without a job at the moment and has taken this room which obviously costs money, whilst not been able to afford our rent. We recieive UC at the moment. He has a high paying job so if he is working it is fine. But he is not.

When he got the letter, I asked him for all the emails sent to the LL. He had not replied to some and then not responded enough to some of them. Plus he paid NO rent. None. I was shocked. And shocked at how he is shcoked at this, as if it is happening to him and he is not at fault. He didnt know how to respond to them. I had to with a plan. I cant fathom how someone that is intelligent is like this. Is this the alcohol problem taking over? He does not drink every day and not rolling around drunk but it seems to impair something. I just cant understand it?

Midwest - apologies if that wasn't how you meant it. I am pretty sensitive right now about everything. What did you mean by 'challenging conversations'? I am listening to everyone and digesting. i just dont think I am putting my DH above my DC at all. I do everything in my head and heart to give them a lovely childhood. I am trying to minimise the impact on them on this. I understand what you are saying though.

Plan- thank you for your thoughtful words. They mean a lot and a very lovely way of putting things. Not disposing of people.

The Dr calls him once a week at the moment and he recently upped his anti-depressants as I suggested they were not working. the Dr does know of an alcohol issue and DH does know the anti-depressants cancel out the effects. I have authoristation from DH to discuss him with the Dr, so I might call again this week. I don't believe he is as bad as suicidal though he says he has had these thoughts. He just is very up and down due to alcohol withdrawal/craving possibly and depression.

Emergency - under the NHS you have to be suicidal to get seen by a psychiatrist. I asked. He is seeing an alcohol service at the GP surgery but he is very much left to his own devices to wean himself off which obviously he is not.

Yes people with addiction are very selfish. This is all part of the issue.

PlanDe - you have really summed it up perfectly and it is what I recognise on some level but it is good to have someone else see and say it. The depression and the alcohol are the fundamental issue here. It is not our relationship. He feels I am too critical of him. Which comes down to him being depressed/not motivated/addicted to his phone. etc.
I told him Im willing to work on not being so critical but he needs to take responsibiliy for what he is doing.Which he says he is but he is not. He is blaming me.

My rope is only so long, but I guess I am holding onto it to try.

He had the DC at his place last night and spent a few hours here just now cleaning the house with me, as it is essentially out childrens mess!

He is trying.Long way to go I know.

So from what you are telling us:

He doesn't want to stop drinking
His parents don't think he has a problem
He sees you as the root of his problems, making life hard for him by making him do stuff that is hard - like paying the rent
He is prepared to make life get so bad that his family is homeless, on UC and he is passed out on the street

I'll be honest, he doesn't want to fix this. His primary relationship is not with you, it is with the alcohol.
You, and the best counsellors in the world cannot fix this - currently you are enabling him by running around and sorting out all his problems for him so he doesn't have to.

He could go to rehab but what would he do there - he doesn't actually want to stop drinking. Plus when he left, he'd be back with his enabling mates and parents who think he never had a drink problem in the first place.

My GM stayed with my GD 'for the sake of the children' - she thought she protected them from his alcoholism. Every single one of her kids has a mental health problem and so do some of her grandchildren as the trauma went down the generations as they struggled with parenting.
Only when she was dying did she acknowledge she had made the wrong choice. But it isn't the 1950s anymore when divorce was stigmatized and you had to stand by your man.

Your children need you. He won't change.

What I meant by challenging conversations are conversations which have clear accountable actions and deadlines for him.
It is really rubbish that you are left doing all the adulting here but I don't see any alternative.
He is always going to be the dc's dad and you may always love him but that doesn't mean the right place for him is living with your family.
Particularly if he is behaving like a particularly dysfunctional teenager blaming mum the whole time.
I'm not projecting personal experience but as a dc social worker I saw addiction impact a lot of families, it was bad for dc.

An addict who blames their partner for their addiction is not ready to face up to it imo. Addicts have to be honest with themselves first and foremost, and take ownership of the problem.

(Disclaimer: this may not apply where the addict is self-medicating because of untreated/undiagnosed MH issues).

All the time your husband is treating you as part of the problem, he's avoiding the problem. The counselling is just a smokescreen, so he can be seen to be doing something, even though that "something" may be pointless. Don't let him turn this into an "us" issue when it should be a "me" issue.

Not only is he avoiding facing up to the alcohol issue in any meaningful way, he is jeopardising the welfare of his children. Claiming UC for the family and failing to pay the rent is financial abuse: that is family money, to keep a roof over the family's head.

As you are in arrears, it should be possible to ask UC to pay the rent money direct to the landlord (this is known as an "alternative payment arrangement). However, you are currently not living together.

This is a change of circumstances that must be reported to DWP and I advise you to do that and start your own UC claim. Not only is that the right thing to do in terms of benefit law, it is the right thing to do for the security of your family. And it will put you in control.

Please bear in mind that if you were to lose your home because of rent arrears, the council may well refuse to help you because you (the collective you) have made yourselves homeless intentionally by getting into rent arrears. Of course, you would be able to challenge this on the grounds that you were being financially abused, but the outcome of such an appeal is far from guaranteed, and it's hassle you don't need.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is exactly the advice I would be giving if you were a client of mine, and I think you need to know what the implications of carrying on as you are could be.

Pointy - yes I agree. I am hoping the counsellor will work through my limits in the coming weeks. Thank you

Please bear in mind that if you were to lose your home because of rent arrears, the council may well refuse to help you because you (the collective you) have made yourselves homeless intentionally by getting into rent arrears.

Actually this thought had crossed my mind as well. In reality with much grumbling the council would house you in a bedsit which could be out of area.
( Although some councils would state they only have a duty to your dc and not you in this situation they would in reality house you because dc's emotional needs would not be best bet by taking them into care.)

Oh OP, you’re being so naive here. Take it from the XW of an alcoholic. By working on being less critical of him, which let’s be honest means not telling him that the things are his fault are his fault, and allowing him to lay the blame for drinking at your door, all you’re doing is making it easy and consequence free for him to drink.

You’ve been served with section 8. Jesus wept, even the mere thought of that makes my stomach hit the floor.

Honestly you need to ditch the idea that a counsellor will talk him out of his drink problem, because they won’t. He’s said he doesn’t want to stop, so he won’t stop. You can beg and plead and lament the man you loved all you like, none of that will make a blind bit of difference to an alcoholic who isn’t yet ready to lose his relationship with booze.

I assume your H is still paying rent for the room he’s living in? What does that tell you?

OP I’m going to be really fucking harsh here and I know you won’t like it but one day by god you’ll agree with me. You need to wise up, and quick. You’re facing losing your home, your DC are facing losing their home. How much worse are you prepared to let things get. You’ll be lucky not to get SS knocking, although in your DCs case I wouldn’t call that lucky.

I am completely offended about some of these nasty comments. I am actually a SW student, so you can buggar off about SS. Are you kidding?

Well, put on your Social Worker hat objectively and look at your situation from the outside - served an eviction notice, alcoholic/mentally ill father, enabling/co-dependent mother...

Well your reflective practice skills are failing miserably then.

Are you one of life's rescuers?
I think you are from what's been said and I promise you, that way lies a life full of regret, unhappiness and future adult kids who will confront you one day with the result of the choices you are making now.
Have some dignity OP.
Confront the possibility that you may have a saviour complex.
Your life, the lives of your children should not be shaped by a selfish, self serving drunkard who projects all his miserable failings on yourself.
You are far too valuable, far too important and far too sensible to continue with this sort of life. You and your kids deserve much, much more out of life.
Do you really want this horrible, damaging, judgemental style of patriarchal role modelling to cascade down future generations?
No. Of course you don't.

I’m going to be harsh.
You’re children are at risk of homelessness because of an alcoholic Father and a Mother who continually puts his needs first and makes excuses for him. There is alcoholism, debt and homelessness, that is not protecting your children. Walking away from this man, making yourself financially secure, securing a stable home for your children and creating healthy relationships with them is protecting them.

Your comment about him not wanting to give up and blaming you reminded so much of my ex husband( it was cannabis not alcohol although some issues with alcohol too and my issues) - I left him in the end A few months later he wanted to give up cannabis and try again- shortening the conversation he said he didn’t want to then he was going through the motions - tbh I had enough - a few months later he thought he would use cannabis the rest of his life. The things your dh reminds me of this .

You should have your own Uc application. I would consider if cab are open for advice to talk to them .

He can’t be claiming rent on 2 places. You shouldn’t need to pay councils tax if you are a student living on your own . It is very complicated by fact you are not on the lease. But it is messy.

I am completely offended about some of these nasty comments. I am actually a SW student, so you can buggar off about SS. Are you kidding?

Which of the comments do you feel are inaccurate from a social service perspective?
This is a situation you are going to run into a lot as a social worker if you work in children's services.

The positive is that when you come out the other side of this you are going to have a lot of lived experience to inform your practice.

Hopefully your counseling will give you more space to reflect on how to center your dc rather than your DH which is what you would ask a service user to do.

It might be worth considering whether there are any links between the impulses that drove you to choose social work and your current behaviors. It is possible that there rescuing tendencies, you certainly wouldn't be the first social work with them.

In terms of enabling:

By agreeing that you are too critical (when you know you are not) and saying you will work on not being too critical you are allowing him to continue the fallacy that a) he is not an addict, b) any poor behaviour, including drinking, on his part is your fault, not his, and c) it allows him to give himself permission to carry on drinking because there is no problem, you are just too critical

You are enabling him. You might not be going out and buying alcohol for him, but you are accepting responsibility for his issues which gives him permission to carry on doing what he’s doing and tells him that, despite what your words say, underneath you agree with him that what he’s doing is reasonable.

You need to draw lines of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and stop facilitating his poor behaviour by giving him mixed messages and wiggle room.

Children’s Services were involved in my situation and they made it very clear that any active alcoholic (ie not in recovery) in the home was bad news for my children and that it was my job to protect them (not my DH’s). They went no further than that because my husband left, but they stayed in contact and they were automatically notified of his later attendances at hospitals in our county. You should know as a SW student that the effects on children of a parent’s addiction and alcoholism are taken far more seriously now than they used to be.
Follow the NACOA Facebook page and Instagram page if you need any reassurance that total separation from your husband is best for your children’s mental health now and in the future.

Hope Clearwater makes a very good point. My H was worse than OP's, I ended up calling the police and having him removed after he threatened to kill me. I had follow-up from Social Services and from the police. They let me be because I was so very clear that I was not ever going to let him back.

OP you can tell me to bugger off about SS all you like but doesn’t make it any less true. My XH was actually forbidden by SS from having unsupervised access to our DS because of his alcoholism. I’d long since already said he wasn’t seeing DS anymore anyway, but you can be sure they would have had some very serious questions for me if I hadn’t. The trigger for SS to be alerted was actually nothing to do with either me or DS, it was an incident with police involvement completely unrelated to us.

You can kid yourself on all you like. Remember though, any SS involvement in your family could effectively put the kibosh on any ambition you have to become an SW.

I think you know all that though, otherwise you wouldn’t be so defensive. I do sincerely hope you give yourself a shake before things get any worse.

You know what the saddest thing about your threads is? The consequences of all this don’t have to be so terrible for you and your DC. Losing your H and your DCs’ father to drink is terrible enough, but you seem determined to go down with the sinking ship, and take your DC down too.

You are not the captain of this situation OP and even the most talented and able sailer can’t change your H’s course while he still wants to drink.

Oh, and my DS has had lots of counselling to help him deal with his father’s alcoholism, and it still breaks his heart to see what his father has become. He hates his dad, and my DS is the loveliest most kindhearted boy you could ever imagine. He’s 12 now, and we left his dad when he was just 6, and it’s taken me years of emotional support, taking all night and dealing with various maladaptive behaviour to get him to a point where he’s happy and stable. You have no bloody idea the damage exposure to an alcoholic parent can cause, and at the moment you seem far less bothered about preventing that damage than you do destroying yourself and your DCs’ lives to enable you H.

And you can bewail how offensive my posts are, but come back in 5 years time and tell me what you think then.