Would you marry an alcoholic?

[Lolaandbehold]

"Inspired" for want of a better word, by the heroin addict husband thread, I have a dilemma of my own.
The short version is this. If your beloved fiancé told you that he was an alcoholic, would you go ahead with the wedding/marriage?

The long version:
A close friend of mine has been with her boyfriend for 4 years. Engaged for one year, getting married soon. Wedding booked and paid for.
He hasn't been a big drinker in that time, no more than anyone else. Has a few drinks when he goes out, has maybe two big nights a month at most when they'd have a few too many but nothing unusual. Recently he told her that when he's alone, he has started to drink heavily and can't stop. He decided that he didn't like the road he was heading down, realised that he was becoming dependent so made the decision to quit.
Since then, he's fallen off the bandwagon a few times and this time denied it. She figured it out easily enough and he came clean subsequently and told her the truth. He's now back in AA and determined to commit to sobriety.
He is a wonderful man in all other aspects, he adores my friend, she loves him. We as her friends are really fond of him. As an aside and so as not to drop feed, my friend wants children, as does the fiancé. They are both in quite high stress jobs.

YANBU He's committed to staying off the booze, he's a lovely person. They can get through this together. She should marry him and have a family with him.

YABU Don't take the risk; it will all go horribly wrong.

No no no. Nope. Never.

I did. He wasn't necessarily an 'alcoholic' in the strict sense but he had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol due to severe depression. He did, and still does, regular therapy including substance abuse counseling. We have very clear boundaries and he knows if he crosses them he's out. I love and support him fully and he's committed to doing what he needs to do. We don't have any DC and have no plans to, if this makes a difference.

Absolutely not. I know 3 alcoholics and the things their loved ones have been through with them are shocking. One died in his 40s which was devastating for his mother, wife and children.

If your friends life is anything like the partners of the alcoholics I know, she will likely always feel uneasy, she’ll never fully trust him, he won’t be a partner she can rely on, she’ll always be waiting for the next time, possibly be abused, any kids will see things no child ever should, she’ll be his punchbag, if not physically, then emotionally, she’ll lose closeness in friendships as she’ll try to cover up for him. They’re always sorry when they’re sober, they’re always going to stop but never do or not for long anyway.

She is crazy if she marries him.

No.

@youboozeyoulose of course it's a choice. Like when alcoholics chose to stop.
It's like every other addiction.
Heroin addicts or smokers aren't treated like they have a disease - its an addiction. Addiction drives awful behaviours.

Active addiction is not a choice. Why would anyone choose that lifestyle and all the destructive factors that go with it? There is a choice at the start around if you pick up a substance but if it takes hold it's definitely not a choice. Someone in recovery who relapses, again there's an element of choice but in the madness it's definitely not a choice.

@NeverAloneNeverAgain but not everyone who has to deal with trauma turns to addictive substances. There are choices made. Addicts will chose every time to take the substance until they chose not to. The physical symptoms caused by their drug of choice may make them feel that its out of their hands but it isn't really. Thanks for engaging in debate without feeling the need to swear and name call.

I was married to an alcoholic for 30 years and it's definitely a choice. My husband was in rehab several times, in hospital under section 3 times. Each time, he detoxed, had counselling etc and swore he would never drink again. He was even given medication that made him violently ill if he drank.
Guess what? Every time, he made the choice to pick up the bottle again. It's a choice.

100% not. I was married to an alcoholic and it was awful. Absolutely awful.

Never having had any alcoholics in the family, I have no idea if it is a choice or not. However, it is definitely my choice not to date or marry an alcoholic. I also would not marry a smoker, a drug addiction or a binge eater. Life is hard enough.

Marriage no
kids definitely not!

as a child of an alcoholic, it ripped our family apart and now it’s repeated with my sibling who has a turbulent relationship and their adult children have nothing to do with either parent due to my siblings alcoholism and their partners enabling behaviours. Ripped the family apart. It’s been a turbulent process which has affected the extended family too.

pressed send too soon, it’s an addiction, not a choice! It’s an illness but they need to want to get better or they never will.

No. I married an alcoholic - he wasn't at the time as bad as he became. He would self medicate when we were planning the marriage.

However his problems became much worse. Couldn't hold a job down. Hiding alcohol arround the house. Disappearing to go outside to go drink when I wouldn't keep alcohol in the house.

Behaviour - argumentative when drunk, paranoid, controlling, jealous. When drunk all of these behaviours were much worse.

Then financials - there is never money living with a drunk. Every penny just goes on booze.

I left my ex at the height of his drinking. He was arrested for assaulting me. I lost my home (his mortgage). I was in debt trying to support us both.

Two years after I left he was dead.

Not a nice story. I wish I hadn't married my exh.

The key there is those people committed to their 12 steps and re actively in recovery I.e attending meetings etc.
someone who is drinking now and again I wouldn’t trust at all.

No. Definitely not. You are not the priority in their life.

My XH is an alcoholic. He went through a long "rock bottom" in our early 30s then seemed to pull out of it. After a couple of years of him being in recovery, I thought we'd come through it and decided we would be safe to start a family. Almost as soon as I was pregnant the recovery slipped. I kept hoping it was a blip, something he'd get through. He seemed to at first but in the last weeks of my pregnancy he started what was a swift slide to another rock bottom. He made the first few months of my DCs life a type of hell.

Luckily, I was in a type of detached shock. The bubble of new motherhood gave me a perspective I didn't have before. I left him when DS was a few months old. I didn't think it was permanent, I hoped he'd get help, go to rehab, find some way to regain his sobriety. For years I was emotionally open to him coming back if he got sober again. But he never did. It took a long time for me to recover my sense of normal. His alcoholism had been building through our 20s and I had been a slow boiling frog, gradually sliding to a point where I viewed deeply inappropriate behaviour as normal. I can see now that he was never actually sober in the years where I thought he was and that we were safe to have a child. He had just found his way into a functional phase and my perspective was coloured by how good it was compared to the awfulness of the previous years.

Your friend should step away from her fiance until he is sober. She can't drag him up but he can drag her down. He already has done, even if she doesn't realise. She needs to live a normal life while he gets better. So that she knows what normal feels like when he claims to be in recovery. Otherwise, it's just too easy to fool yourself into thinking things are better than they are.

@DrManhattan absolutely agree about the choice of dealing with trauma. Someone who picks up to deal with trauma essentially runs from it and its a very dysfunctional 'coping' method as the reality it is doesn't deal with the pain or reason why. When the using stops what you get left with is the reason you used in the 1st place and then the time spent in addiction. Not everyone who experiences trauma will become an addict and trauma is subjective so what I feel is traumatic someone else may not. It can be a vicious circle to justify using. I think we'll need to agree to disagree around the option of choice in active addiction though. Yes the withdrawals drive the repeated using but it's the fear of them, and the obsession that keep people in that circle. It overtakes everything. It's powerful enough that an addict in addiction would step over your dead body to feed the addiction. In recovery not so much which is where the choice, imo, lies.

No way it's not worth the trouble

Sounds the daftest question in the world if your a sane person obviously no

My aunt was an alcoholic when she was young but has been sober for decades now. She was sober by the time she had children and had been a wonderful mother. It's crazy to think some people would deem her unmarriable.

However, I don't know much about her alcoholic years, maybe they were short lived and not as bad as the situation in the OP. And I suppose it's possible she's been falling off the wagon without me knowing (but even if that's true she's still a great wife and mother).

not knowlingly

As the sister of an addict , no way would I marry someone in active addiction or in the early stages of recovery. My sibling wasted 10 years of their life drinking. Slowly slowly the drink took over more and more of their lives until eventually all they did was drink from the minute they woke until they passed out drunk. They stole , lied, cheated .... anything to get a drink. They had numerous episodes of alcohol induced psychosis , which is terrifying and it got to the stage where they had liver damage in their mid 20s. In the end it was the courts who made them get sober , they had been arrested so many times that the judge said it was rehab or prison. Their first 6 weeks in rehab was in medical where they had to be detoxed and they nearly died from withdrawals. They are several years sober now but have been left with severe mental health issues and we all live with the knowledge that any day could be the day that they fall off the wagon and our lives are plunged into that madness again.

I wouldn’t have children with an alcoholic. Whether it’s genetic predisposition, learned behaviour or both, alcoholism runs in families.

It’s in mine on one side and I loathe it. They range from heavy social drinkers to alcoholics with the odd non drinker thrown in. There’s no one who can have a couple of drinks with a meal and stop. I’ve seen it in 4 generations.

The absolute hilarity of you accusing anyone of being narrow minded when you dismiss the insight and experience of those who know better than anyone the destruction wreaked by alcoholics because they have lived it. It is 100% a choice. There is literally nothing else it could be when many people literally choose to overcome it and successfully do so. Apply a little critical thought, FFS.

No. Not worth the risk. It will likely mean financial hardship and being widowed young if he can't get sober. Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for people with addictions as it is an illness, the trauma it causes to those around them is just unbearable.