he says i have to give up alcohol

[mumatha]

My partner says I have to give up alcohol. I barely drink at all - maybe a brandy and hot water to help me to relax and sleep every couple of weeks - but he will not tolerate this.

he is teetotal, and hates me seeing friends in pubs or anywhere where alcohol is served. and yet he is happy to down cokes in a workingmen's club which his father (who drank beer) belonged to, surrounded by other people drinking alcohol. he did not criticise his father who drank alcohol, or his best friend who is a heavy drinker. yet he says i have to give it up. it aappears it all has to be on his terms.

he is a good man in so many other ways, but is also given to bouts of raging insecurity where i am concerned if i don't return his texts quickly or if he does not know where i am. he is suspicious of my socia media accounts, and says I cannot have male friends as it looks 'improper'.

this morning is typical. he woke me at 5am, fuming, because he had been through my handbag and found a minature of brandy. i have to work today (yes really) and yet that did not matter. he also mistook a plastic cake decoration as 'mistletoe' which he then hid from me. the sad thing is it is my mother's xmas cake decoration, which i was going to return to her tomorrow. it is especially poignant as my father passed away this summer and the fact that my elderly mother had made a Christmas cake at all this year is amazing.

when i asked for it back, at first he said he didn't know where it was, then after a bit of badgering from me, he took it out of his bedside drawer and threw it at me.

i work hard at our relationship and am committed to him. and i have worked very hard to make our first xmas as a couple good with major compromises on my part as to when i see my children and my mother.

but it seems that that is not enough. what do i do?

[ChasedByBees]

This is not even approaching normal reasonable behaviour from him. Ditch.

[Italiangreyhound]

I think it is good you have seen relatively early on what he is like and you can now take stock of your relationship, mumatha.

If it were me, mumatha I would not want to be in a relationship with someone who controlled when I saw my kids or my mum, quite aside from what I drank or anything else!

Please take stock, he does not seem to have your interests at heart.

Although on a side note I would look into why you can't sleep and find a another way aside from alcohol but that is health related and nothing to do with your current partner's wishes or 'demands'.

Please look after you, mumatha. And my thoughts are with you and your mum, it is a tough time.

[FryOneFatManic]

The miniature of brandy could easily have been for feeding the cake (the decoration being there made me think of the two together).

In any case, this chap seems like a bad idea. This is only the first Xmas, and he's already being very controlling.

[Hissy]

I have lived with a man like this. worse, I have a son with him so am stuck with him for life :(

we split in 2011. i've ranted/raved/spoken to him. i've done the freedom programme, beat the agoraphobia his life left me with, private thereapy, attended free groups.

thought i'd reached a place where it was ok, and he knew what's what, and gave me some respect.

WRONG! today i've had him attempt tp tell me off for going to live in south america 10 YEARS before I met him... he used to literally torture me for hours over this fact when we were together. sleep deprivation/verbal abuse/ terrorism. awful.

it's 4 fucking years since I dumped him at T2 ffs! this prick STILL thinks he has a right to dictate to me.

he doesn't, he never did do!

don't be a prick like me, bin him now, before he totally and utterly fucks your life in every imaginable way.