My husband of 20 years has a funny relationship with alcohol. He spent the first 12 years of our relationship completely teetotal. He started drinking the odd beer now and again after our first child. He has this pattern where he doesn’t drink for months on end then he’ll start having a few beers on a Friday eve, then it becomes 3/4 of an evening all over the weekend, then he starts buying crates of beer and suddenly it’s one or two every night, then the usual pattern is he will get completely pissed and be a colossal fuckwit towards me - then he gives it up again.
About five times in the whole of our relationship, he has got completely off his face and behaved appallingly. Saying unpleasant stuff to me, shouting and swearing, and at one point exhibiting self-harm. I managed to shield the kids from those episodes. Most of the time they were asleep as it happened at night.
He is unreasonable, irrational, makes no sense and is unable to co-parent effectively after drinking. I’ve started to get quite twitchy and anxious when I see he has bought a crate of beer.
Tonight he started complimenting me more than normal and getting very soppy with all of us. Telling me not to worry about stuff (minor finance issues) and generally reassuring me and being lovely. The problem is that when he becomes really emotional, it usually means he has been drinking in his office, and that a few hours later he will potentially become argumentative.
He did. I was trying to put my ten year old to sleep which is extremely hard as she has ADD/ASD and cannot sleep well at all. During lockdown with the lack of school and exercise to regulate her, her bedtimes are becoming ridiculous. At 12.30 I realized she was still awake so I came to her room and asked her to clean her teeth (again) and get into bed. Normally my DH would back me up on this tricky bedtime, but when he appeared he was obviously drunk. I took my daughter in the bathroom and made her do her teeth, and I started trying not to cry. I’m fucking tired, I’ve had the kids 24/7 during lockdown and I find it really frustrating when DH is supposed to be supervising her bedtime whilst I put the other one to bed, he was downstairs drinking and playing PC games.
Crying seemed to annoy him as he started asking why I was crying. Then he got louder and louder so I told him I would film him so he could watch it the next day to see how he behaves. I then told him I was tired and I was off back to bed. He started BELLOWING at the tip of his voice that I ‘wanted a fucking argument as usual’. I told him repeatedly that I’d didn’t and was going to bed but when he is pissed, he doesn’t actually listen. He stamped up the stairs shouting at me and woke my youngest. He was terrified as he has never actually seen Daddy that loud and angry before. My oldest started crying as well and was begging him to to stop.
He did and he went to bed but I’m left physically shaking, and very tearful. The problem is I grew up in a household with violent parents and I feel like I’m ten years old scared in my room.
The two of us have worked really hard to give our children a safe, stress free, happy household so I’m furious that he has behaved like this in front them.
Our relationship has always been relatively good. He is supportive, kind, caring - particularly during some bad health on my part. We get along great and he makes me laugh. But every now and then he gets leathered and I can’t handle it.
I don’t know if I should just be writing this off as him being pissed and not worrying to much about it as I’ve only seen him really drunk about five/six times throughout our 20 year relationship, or if I should be really worried. I felt unsafe and scared in our home earlier and my children were bewildered and scared as well.
Any advice? Am I overreacting to a stressed out DH who has had a few beers to decompress, or is it something worrying?