I am furious with my husband.

[AuntLucyInPeru]

We work together in our worn company. There was a networking 'do' on tonight 6-8.30 (10 mins walk fromhome) so I suggested he go as it was more his line of work than mine. He went to the pub afterwards and ignored my calls/ texts for an hour asking him where he was and if he was coming home. At 9pm he called, said he'd gone for ONE drink with an interesting new contact an would be back soon. An hour ago. Still in the fucking pub, pretending he can't hear his phone. EVERY FUCKING TIME he goes for a 'networking drink' it's the same. Home 3am throwing up everywhere and being a bolshy drunk. We're not talking every month. We're talking a couple of times a year. I NEVER do this. I am fucking furious. We have a 3yr old and 5 yr old so i can't even leave the house to drag the cunt home. What do I fucking do now.

Wow, OP, if you're still around, hope this morning is peaceful.

The blaming you and calls of controlling are astounding!

One thing you can take from this though is that you can't control or manage the things your H does. Only he can do that.

All you can control is how you deal with it. By assuming that he won't be back for dinner, by assuming that he'll be late and shouty, and to be utterly firm on the fact that you will NOT be clearing up after him, that he won't be excused from parenting, that he will have to make sure that his inability to control his consumption is not your problem. There is no point you getting upset about it, the only person that suffers is you, and you haven't done anything wrong, only he can do anything about it. You calling or texting him won't make a difference, as by doing it it's attention. If you stop the calls/texts, it'll panic him more tbh!

By telling him that he sorts himself out and makes sure that neither you or your children suffer as a result of his decisions, you will place the responsibility where it needs to be.

Then you sit back. Only if he fails to clear up, if he shouts do you act, and that is to tell him you'll be locking the doors and upplugging all phones when you go to bed the next time he goes out on a bender.

It's a shame, cos I know to do this, you actually lose some respect for him, and that's a slippery slope.

Show him he'll lose you if he doesn't respect you and your home.

"Vomitting I guess you cant avoid but make him clean it."

He could avoid vomiting all over his house regularly using the same method as the rest of the non-alcoholic population - drinking less.

Except he is an alcoholic, so he can't/won't.

Advice about how to minimise and contain his alcoholism, putting the responsibility for his behaviour on her, is pointless.

From her reaction it's obvious that she has been doing just that for years.

The only way out of this ugly mess, for her and her children, is for him to accept he has a problem and stop drinking with help. Or leave.

No child should have to hear their father coming home drunk in the early hours, shouting at their mother for hours, vomiting all over the house, bringing drunk strangers into their home.

Once is too many times for that kind of bullshit. This is an ongoing pattern.

It's time to break it.

Right, the op acted like she did ( txts etc ) because she knows how this situation usually ends up and was trying to get him home, ffs!!

Op, my advice ( and ive faced similar ) , today detatch, totally, discuss work, kids, but if he trys to justify last nights behaviour walk away, & let him that yiur not going to induldge his moaning.
Then tomorrow , or next day have a proper talk .

so anyone that vomits after a big night out is an alcoholic? god AA will be busy in my area!

OP is it really only twice a year or is there more to this? What's he like the rest of time? Sorry, but I do think its an over reaction if its a couple of times a year. You work together - do you have time apart to follow your own interests?

What is wrong with you people?

Getting so drunk twice a year that you can't stop drinking, come home and shout at your wife for hours and puke all over your house is a problem.

And that's before you even get to bringing random drunks into a house with children and giving them spirits to drink.

Particularly if it is only twice a year that you get the chance to drink like that

No child should have to hear this kind if stuff going on every 6 months. It's scary, upsetting and damaging.

And yes, AA would be overrun if all the people who are problem drinkers sought their help.

Luckily lots of binge alcoholics think regularly drinking until you vomit is "normal".

Given that your husband does this a couple of times a year, every time there is a networking event, why on earth did you suggest he attend this event? If he always stays too long/drinks too much/ignores his phone why did you text him about dinner? Why did you continue to call/text when you know rom previous experience that he is not going to answer?

His behaviour is unacceptable but you seem to be setting him up to fail and you are stuck in this repetitive cycle of behaviour which is achieving nothing.

Coming home once and drunkenly shouting at your wife after disappearing off the radar all night, bringing drunk random people into your home with small children sleeping, upsetting your wife and scaring her, making a mess, keeping her from sleep, is plenty.

If you do it again, choose to do it ever again, despite knowing how she felt last time, then yes you do have an alcohol problem.

But this is not "regular drinking until you vomit", or I have read the whole thing wrong.
I alsi haven't referred to regular drinkers in my post.
And I agree, the other issues, shouting, bringing people in etc. is not acceptable and I dud say that in my post

Actually, never mind knowing how your wife felt the first time. If you didn't have a drink problem you'd be so ashamed that you'd choose never to behave that way again independently. I was making it her thing again and not his. Argh. It is easy to fall into. :(

also and did

I hope you're ok this morning AuntLucyInPeru, and I hope your DH is feeling fucking awful!

Since when was binge drinking down to alcoholism? His reactions after a drink are astounding? Maybe learnt behaviour from childhood? Perhaps that's the issue that needs addressing not the drinking!! Op needs to trust him, hen pecking him before end of networking isn't cool! He's trying to provide for a family-manners may indicate that he stays for a drink afterwards? It's not as if bang on finishing time (not sure as holes in story here) he can say sorry mr p - wife needs me to go home she is hungry!!! Think a bit of give and take and support of each other is needed!

i realise my post makes it sound like I am also blaming the OP and minimising her husband's behaviour. That is not my intention. His behaviour is out of order but the OP, for some reason, seems to be facilitating this behaviour by actually suggesting he put himself in this position and then setting herself up for disappointment by waiting for him for dinner when she "knows" he is not going to come home on time, etc. Why is this?

there has been lots of VERY good advice on here Lucy.

you should read through this thread and come up with an action plan for next time.

if you do the same thing as you did last night you'll have the same result.

it's time to start playing hardball. he is an alcoholic and you have to be tough.

just adding, I used to drink a lot every weekend and I turned into a horrible, nasty piece of work so now I don't drink at all as I knew my dp didn't deserve it. it isn't hard to not drink.

drinking to the point of incapasitation twice a year does not make someone an alcoholic. No it's not ideal but let's not get all hysterical. Someone who is unable to moderate their drinking when out should ideally not drink andthe more regularly they do so the more likely it is they have an alcohol dependency problem. But to brand someone who goes out twice a year and gets drunk and doesn't come home until midnight (which isn't actually that late considering) as an alcoholic is ridiculous.

Yes, I agree that if you drink to a point of being unpleasant then it should be addressed.

but op still hasn't answered the question as to whether he comes home in this state shouting and screaming if she doesn't spend the evening texting. Because yes, there is a difference between coming home looking for an argument regardless and coming home to continue the argument that was started by the op while he was out.

If op had started the thread saying she was the one at the event and that her dh had started calling and texting while the event was still on and after it had finished and that by the time she got home she was furious and they had a screaming row the dh would have been to blame and the op would have been told to switch her phone off in future and that he was a controlling w and to ltb.

It's all in the detail. If the op is spoiling for a fight all night and eventually gets one then yes, she is in part to blame for the fact a fight occurs. If the dh would have come home drunk spoiling for an argument regardless of whether the op had texted/called him all night then it is all down to him and his drinking.

I know exactly how you feel OP.

My husband is also a binge drinker. Because he only does it about 3-4 times a year I didn't think it meant he was an alcoholic, but when I decided to join a forum for friends and family of alcoholics, they soon straightened me out. Any behaviour where the person has a regular lack of control over alcohol, be it every night, or twice a year, is alcoholism. Binge drinking as a grown adult is exactly that. They simply cannot draw that line of 'right, I'm pretty plastered, I'd better stop drinking now.", as a normal adult, without a drinking problem could. Instead they drink until they can't physically hold the bottle up to their lips anymore.

It is a soul destroying thing to have to live with. When DH tells me he's going for a drink I get that tangle of dread and anxiety in my stomach, which stays there all evening. I can't get to sleep properly because I know I'll be woken up at some point by a shitfaced, unreasonable, yelling, crying, vomiting mess. The last time he did it I was laid in bed next to him for 3 HOURS while he rolled around groaning and alternately having a go at me/ crying. I just wept silently until he fell asleep. An hour later I was awoken to him vomiting everywhere. I am emetophobic, he knows this, but he refuses to clean his vomit and I can't bear it to be in the house so I invariably end up wrapping up my face in perfume soaked scarves and take my contact lenses out so I don't have to see the vomit properly, then I clean it and bleach the area. All this in the early hours, on no sleep.

As others have said, even once is too many times for this to happen.

I hope you're feeling ok today OP.

Alcoholism is being unable to control yourself around alcohol or when getting drunk. It does not refer to the requency or not of this happening. If he pulls this shit oly a few times a year, then yes, it is still alcoholism. Binge drinking is a form of alcoholism.

OP, this is unacceptable. You know how your Oh saw his father drinking like a cunt and now he does the same (albeit not as frequently)? What do you thinkyour Dc will be like as adults, knowing their father did this? This is a form of abuse to them (and you) - his behaviour this way prevents them from learning a normal set of values for behaviour, for treating others (how he is horrid to you), for controlling their own impulses and for how to approach drinking. Am sure you will say they don't know, but even if they don't know something is going on now (and I bet they do on some level), they will do sooner than later.

He needs help.

"drinking to the point of incapasitation twice a year does not make someone an alcoholic."

Yes, it does.

Drinking until you are incapacitated is not at all normal and doing it regularly means you have a problem with alcohol.

And the woman in your example would be lying if she left out the bit about the reason her husband was so pissed off that she was out drinking and ignoring texts.

If she added the bit about her inability to stop drinking once she started, that he had every reason to expect her to show up at 4am with other drunk strangers, to start a row and wake the children, to vomit all over the house, then no, nobody would say he was controlling for wanting her to stop drinking and come home.

This woman is obviously tying herself in knots trying to deal with and minimise an alcohol problem that hurts her and her children and puts them all in danger.

It is pointless to try to stop him drinking, to try to control the situation, but her attempts to do that are an understandable and common response to living with an alcoholic.

Blaming this on her for being a nagging bitch is embarrassingly shit.

I heard that one defintion of a problem with alcohol is that if it CHANGES your personality, then there is a problem. Even if it makes you technically a 'nicer' person, it means that there IS a physical effect, that could then go on to creating a longer term problem with alcohol.

Most of us drink, it makes us a drunk version of ourselves, but our fundamental personality doesn't change. Most of us know when to stop.

If there's vomiting, every time, no matter how in frequent, we are not sucessfully managing that relationshop we have with alcohol.

I can totally understand the OP and why she was upset. I would have been beyond furious.

Whether or not you call him an alcoholic, he certainly has a drink problem. And he needs to face up to that in the cold light of day.

My mother was like this, and it made life extremely difficult for my Dad, and for my brother and I during our teenage years. She didn't go vomitting everywhere, but the excrutiating embarassment of having a drunk mother - God I can remember it now.

I would go to Al Anon (it helped my Dad) and try and get him to GP / AA.

Hi all.

how was everything this morn op?

i dont think your H is an alcoholic but abuses alcohol. so it is a big problem like everyone says.

i agree you need to play hard ball here because when it does happen its so disruptive.

its not as though you are stopping him from drinking but you expect he observes boundaries and behaves fairly sensibly after "blow out" so you aren't being the unreasonable one.

please break the cycle by having a talk when sober and informing him you WILL call the police to have him removed if this ever happens again and let him know even though it happens x2 a year, he does abuse alcohol and puts you and children in a very difficult place.