AIBU to think my sister is overreacting about our drinking?

[ByJollyQuail]

Just after some outside opinions because I'm genuinely not sure whether my sister has a point or whether she's being overly judgemental.

DH and I have been together since university and are now in our early 50s. We have two sons. Our eldest has just finished university and starts a graduate scheme in investment banking in London in a few weeks. Our youngest gets his A-level results in a couple of weeks and, hopefully, will be applying to study Economics and Maths and will be going to university sept 2026 after taking a gap year travelling. He plans to go after Christmas and is using money we saved for him to spend on whatever he wanted, he’s chosen to go travel all over South America solo we plan to meet him in a few countries.

DH retired early a couple of years ago. He's not old enough to draw his private pension yet, but we'd planned well financially and he reached the point where he simply didn't need to work anymore. I still work two days a week because I enjoy it.

We've always been sociable people and, if I'm honest, we've always enjoyed a drink. Even back at university we were the ones organising nights out, and that side of us has never really changed. We travel a lot, go away for weekends, love jazz bars with live music and dancing, go out for meals, have friends over regularly and I absolutely love hosting dinner parties. Our house has always been the one where people gather.

Life has changed recently though. Our boys are adults now and quite rightly have their own lives. They both have girlfriends, they're building their own futures and we've naturally had to take a bit of a back seat as parents. That's exactly how it should be, and we're proud of them, but it does mean our lives are much quieter than they were when they were younger.

In a few weeks our eldest will move into London for work, and next year our youngest will head off travelling before university, so it'll just be the two of us most of the time. We actually like each other's company and have always enjoyed going out together, so that's never worried either of us.

The issue is this. My sister stayed with us for a long weekend recently. One evening we had friends over for dinner. We opened wine while I was cooking and everyone had a couple of glasses over the course of the evening. The next night we went to the pub with friends and I had three glasses of wine over several hours while DH had a couple of pints and a whisky. The following evening we stayed in, cooked dinner together and shared a bottle of wine while watching a film.

A few days after she'd gone home she rang me and said she was actually worried about us. She said she'd noticed we seemed to drink every day and thought we'd normalised alcohol to an unhealthy extent. She even used the word "alcoholics", which completely took me aback. I’ve said to her we just like having fun, we aren’t drinking at 8am every morning, we aren’t arguing, we like good alcohol that’s all and we don’t really have any responsibilities.

The thing is, she's not entirely wrong that we drink most evenings. If I'm not commuting into London the next day I'll often have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. If I'm off the following day we might share a bottle. If we're out with friends we'll drink then too.

Neither of us has ever missed work because of drinking. We don't drink in the mornings, don't hide alcohol, don't become unpleasant after drinking and we can easily go without if one of us is driving, we're travelling somewhere or we're doing something where drinking isn't appropriate.

My sister barely drinks herself. She might have a glass of prosecco at Christmas or a wedding and that's about it, so perhaps her idea of normal is very different from ours.
DH thinks she's being ridiculous and says we've simply reached a stage in life where we have time, disposable income and enjoy good food, entertaining and a drink together. He says we're not neglecting anyone or anything because there really aren't many day-to-day responsibilities anymore.

I wasn't worried until she said it, but now I'm wondering if we've drifted into drinking so regularly that we've stopped noticing it.

AIBU to think she's overreacting?

I presume the OP isn't ever going to come back.

I think you're sister may just be concerned about your health especially as she rarely drinks. I must admit that I drink wine most nights and it does get to be a habit. I'm 74 and in good health, very active and still work part time. I'm also a survivor of breast cancer and probably not even supposed to drink white wine. If someone mentioned how much I drink I think I'd get quite defensive and tell them to mind their own business. You do lots of things right to keep yourselves mentally healthy, I assume you don't smoke or eat an unhealthy diet. My advice for what it's worth is make an effort to cut down a bit, have 3 alcohol free nights a week (I'm going to try this) and carry on enjoying your life. You have made a great job of parenting so congratulations for that. You sound a lovely, interesting fun couple.

This is why people don't retire early, they want a purpose in life. Why not continue to work, make money and get into philanthropy rather than alcohol. Like JK Rowling or any other philanthropist...
Your sister is right , you do drink too much and can't face counting the units.

Plenty of people retire early and don't drink or drink very little and have purpose in their lives. My daughters are in their twenties, one of them doesn't drink at all, the other on average once a week. Many of their friends rarely drink. Lots of people have hobbies and interests and can function well without drink.
What a crazy thread.

OP,

The grammatical difference between your opening post and the ones you posted last night is vast.

I assume alcohol had been consumed.

A simple question: If you were ‘locked away’ from a bottle or can for a few days, as of this minute, you can see it but can’t open it….would you go stir crazy? Get angry? Go mad?

Or would you be calm?

You may not be alcoholic now, but you are just further back on the slippery slope. I drank most nights for 30 years, and I thought I would never be able to stop. The problem with alcohol is that we're all brainwashed into thinking it's a sociable thing to do do, but in reality it's a poison and as time goes on that bottle of wine will become two, or you will start buying boxes. I have stopped drinking completely after reading a book called The Easy Way To Control Alcohol. It has helped a lot of people including celebrities to stop drinking without feeling like you're depriving yourself.

Your sister wbu, i would never comment in someone elses lifestyle choices, be it over eating, smoking, being sedentary - drinking is not the only vice

That attempt at drunk typing was a bit too obvious.

I would assume

Yes I thought that, MN seems to have a lot of dubious threads lately, I don't get the point. It's tedious.

I have troll hunted rather too much so will stay mum!

🤣
Slurring her words and pissed as a fart.
It's your liver and you can do what you like with it 😄

Have you read all the OP's posts or just the first? As they go on through the evening, and she gets drunker and drunker, it's very clear there is nothing fun or lovely about her or her husband. Her life sounds sad and crap and she sounds afraid to be beyond uncorking distance of a bottle. She definitely needs to do something about it but I'm not sure "only" drinking 4 nights a week will help at all at this stage. I doubt that she'd even be able to cut it down to that.

No I haven't read anything apart from OPs original post so my reply was based on that. I gathered that she'd get a lot of flack and just wanted to say something positive.

When there are 600 posts on a thread, it's always a good idea to tap 'see all' to see all OP 's updates, before responding.

I learned that the hard way, when I was a Mumsnet newbie 😅

What puzzles me, is your resistance to counting your units. This is the obvious step towards answering your question about whether you drink too much. It really isn't hard to do.

I'm rather saddened by your comment about socialising. I hardly drink at all (one or two a month), and it doesn't stop me socialising. I've also been married for a long time (nearly 50 years) and we still have loads to talk to each other about.

Even if you aren't drinking too much now, you sound like this can only get worse.

I always think of Gogglebox' Steph and Dom who seemed to enjoy a daily tipple. I don't think having one or two glasses of wine on an evening is a big deal and I say that as someone who doesn't really drink but reading all your messages yesterday, this seems very different. It's almost like you are too scared to stop, rather than just doing it for the enjoyment of it.

Quality is more important than quantity. Living 98y with no alcohol sounds a bit boring to me

Yikes 😬

Maybe that’s what you should go with - I’ve been thinking we haven’t had sex sober in a long time. Let’s make this years goal great sex sober! That might be something he’d think is fun to aim for?

because you may both be fit and healthy now but that doesn’t change your alcohol related cancer and other health risk, and that you are significantly increasing the likelihood you don’t have a healthy old age.

Mumsnet has a very unhealthy attitude to drinking imo. This weekend I shared a bottle of wine with my husband, open another one last night (think there about a glass left) oh and I had a vodka. This week I will probably have none. No doubt I would be classed as an alcoholic on here

Does your husband only have sex with you when drunk?
Do you think he's crazy and insane?
Are you deeply lonely?

Try cbd drinks! I’ve swapped out wine for these.

I don’t think you will get the answers you want on mumsnet - everyone on here is T total. You will get called an alcoholic. Drinking this much over a long weekend, particularly if you have guests, doesn’t seem that mad to me. My family/friends would easily drink this - we are also very sociable.

But heavy drinking doesn’t just shorten your life. If you are drinking enough to damage your organs etc you won’t just conveniently drop dead. You are likely to have an excruciatingly painful and undignified death.

Talk to anyone with a relative who has had cirrhosis of the liver. It aint pretty.