I did a terrible thing yesterday and I don’t know how to make it better

[HowDoIMakeThisBetter]

Yesterday, I travelled several hundred miles to my uncles funeral. DH drove me, my mum and my daughter. He didn’t want to go in the first place (he’d only met my uncle once), but he did it for me.

I rarely see this side of my family, and they are all heavy drinkers. I have a tendency to overdo the booze, but successfully keep it in check most of the time.

Late in the evening, after a LOT of booze had been consumed by all, my older, very charming, male cousin, lead me into the hallway and tried to kiss me. I batted him off and went back to the kitchen with the rest of the family. This is where things start to get hazy.

The whiskey was opened, to toast my uncle as it was his favourite drink. I have never got on with whiskey - it makes me feel dreadful, but I stupidly joined in never the less, and after this point, I can’t remember anything at all.

Apparently, my cousin lead me out of the room again, and I ended up submitting and kissing him. I don’t know how many people witnessed this, but DH was one of them.

I’m told that I then fell over and passed out in the kitchen, and was carried into the living room and put in the recovery position. Once it was established that I was still breathing etc, they then put me in the car and we drove home.

I woke up at some point and spent a couple of hours chatting to my mum in the back of the car about various things, but the earlier incidents weren’t mentioned.

I didn’t know what had happened until DH and DD (15) told me this morning.

DH is rightly upset, furious and humiliated.

I feel full of drinkers remorse - for allowing myself to get so drunk and disgrace myself, for setting such an appalling example to my daughter, for upsetting and worrying my family (particularly my mum and aunt), but most of all for hurting DH, who I love dearly and have never even thought about being unfaithful to.

Right now, I’m too ashamed to call my mum or aunt to apologise, but that will come.

Right now, I just want to curl up and die. I’ve had suicidal thoughts in the past, but have never acted upon them. I’m having these thoughts again now. I don’t know what to do, or how to make this better.

I don’t know what I want from this thread, I guess I just wanted to write it down.

Your cousin is at fault, not you. He took advantage of you

I disagree. You are both at fault. You are responsible for yourself, the choices you make and your actions. Your cousin is equally responsible for himself.

A roomful of adults getting pissed after a funeral is a bit pathetic.

You need to get some help for your drinking, accept rsponsibility for what happened and stop minimising your role. Hope your husband forgives you and your daughter can forget. I would be disgusted with you.

I think you need to look at what getting so pissed gives you (otherwise you wouldn't have done it ever more than once).

I have anxiety.

For many many years (blimey, I must have been 33 or something before I was able to put a name to it) I didn't even know I had it. I realised I welcome the disassociation from reality that drinking gave me. I've had some monumentally bad nights and gotten horrendously, horrifically pissed, out of my mind. Many more times than just the once.

I can't say I know the answer either for myself (or for you) although for some unknown reason since starting with HRT patches I've tried to drink my way through a bottle of wine in a night twice in the last 8 weeks, as was my usual practice, and not even gotten past the first glass! No idea if the patches are the reason! When I did have a drink that couple of times the bottle lasted me 3 days which is NOT normal!

But for me I do at least know that it's anxiety and a desire to dial down that horrendous level of stress that I operate at day in and day out (which is exhausting) that has sent me in the direction of boozing to excess.

You mentioned the suicidal thoughts and I wonder if whatever lies at the heart of them is the driver for using alcohol - the getting mega pissed is a symptom of something else, it's not the actual root cause (I don't believe). Of course, we all react to alcohol differently and I am firmly in the camp of just a few glasses of wine and honestly that's enough for me - but it can also (with no predictability) also be too much so that I can't stop at that point so I have been trying to get a handle on this myself. I have improved thankfully.

As long as you recognise this as a wake-up call then that's the main thing, and you can move forward with addressing the underlying problem and then thinking about the drinking too. Good luck

I don't think I have been to many funerals where people get drunk. Usually I am served tea and coffee and there is no alcohol available at all. Alcohol and funeral seems to me to be a very bad idea.

Tackling your alcohol problem would be a good place that start making amends.

Can't believe everybody sat by and watched your cousin take advantage of you when you were drunk and vulnerable.

OP please don't do anything to hurt yourself. I have no off switch either but I'm finding it really difficult to access help through my local council.

Perhaps you could go to an AA meeting? There is no commitment and you aren't expected to say anything, just sit there and listen, if anyone asks if you are an alcoholic just say you honestly don't know at this point.

It's easy for people that can drink normally to judge, but you are not a bad person and you do feel remorse and are absolutely taking responsibility. Big virtual hug for you. Drink lots of water and try to sleep it off.

It's done now and in the past. You are will be feeling anxious and depressed because of the alcohol leaving your system. Don't make any rash decisions today you won't be thinking straight. This is not worth ending your life over. People make mistakes like this and they get over them. It will work out whatever your husbands decides to do.

Speak your dh make it clear to him how sorry you are and how you remember non of it. For you to be in the recovery position he must have some faith in that being true. No one on there right mind would snog there own cousin in front of their dh and dd. He hopefully will eventually realise this.

You need to protect this from ever happening again by giving up drinking. This would be a clear sign of remorse to your dh. Tell him you are sorry. Have a bath and a cry and speak to your family it's not as bad as you feel it is right now

You should be able to get falling down drunk without someone forcing themselves on you.

Your H is reasonable to be worried about your drinking and you need to get support for it if this kind of drinking is an issue for you but I feel it is worrying that he is angry with you rather than worried about whether you are ok.

What your cousin did was awful, but this really needs to be a wake up call for you. You cannot handle alcohol. It is not your friend. You need to get help to stop drinking. That is the only thing you can do to make this right.

Bluntness, women typically get blamed/stigmatised more for sexual behaviours more than men

Oh, cmon, now the husband is also at fault and a sexist pig? Anything to stop her being in any way responsible?

I strongly recommend she does not state to her husband, aunt, daughter and mother she was assaulted by her cousin and that her husband is a sexist pig by blaming her when her cousin was fully to blame, that she was taken advantage of and assaulted.

I do not think it will go well for her. Others take is clearly different. I also think it's a terrible example to set her daughter, who witnessed it, by exclaiming she was not to blame.

You should be able to get falling down drunk without someone forcing themselves on you. I doubt anyone would even begin to disagree with that!

Your H is reasonable to be worried about your drinking and you need to get support for it if this kind of drinking is an issue for you Yup!

but I feel it is worrying that he is angry with you rather than worried about whether you are ok. That really does depend on OPs previous behaviour when drunk. There comes a time for every alcoholic (and yes, OPs own words do paint that picture) when family lose the ability to worry about them and live in a simmering anger at them. It can take years, decades, for that to become the case, but it is the usual outcome of alcoholic behaviour!

With the best will in the world, nobody should be offering OP any wriggle room to blame anyone else for how she is currently feeling (note I do not include actions. behaviours, just feelings). She needs to take full ownership for the effect her drinking is having on herself. Her negative feelings will only be addressed when she is no longer masking them with drink, and the emotional come down after a drunk!

Why the fuck would you get that drunk in front of your daughter...

I accept that point however given the op had pushed him off earlier, then passed out straight after and had to be put in the recovery position then I think it is clear she lacked capacity to consent.

I agree she needs to take responsibility for the drinking. I don’t think she needs to take responsibility for the cousin kissing her.

They are two separate things.

You have a serious drink problem and are deflecting and minimising your own role in this.

God help a bloke on here if his wife had posted this.

No, Bluntness, hardly - but the DH being more angry at her doesn't equal her being as culpable as the "womanising" cousin for the kiss. It might do, it might not. (We all live in a sexist society so it's no great surprise that people are sexist). Nor am I advising her to state any such thing. My advice to the OP has been limited to essentially "stop drinking".

They are two separate things. I hope nobody has said anything different.

But focussing on the cousin won't get OP sober. So he is, at this moment in time, irrelevant to the OP (if not to her DH).

All you posting she needs to get a grip of her drinking and seek support are nuts! She doesn’t do this every weekend - she got hammered at a bloody funeral?! You kissed him back and that is so out of order that yes you really do need too sincerely apologise and rebuild trust and yes in the future you should NEVER drink so excessively again that you may snog someone else but really let’s not go overboard!

How many times does someone need to have a blackout and lose control then to make it a drinking problem?

The op says “I have a tendency to overdo the booze”.

OP I really sympathise with you on this. I myself am a problem drinker and have only just admitted that it's a problem. I've had so many nights where I've got totally pissed and done awful/embarrassing things that I'm utterly ashamed of. Many of those nights haunt me to this day. I've hurt and embarrassed those I love.

Please know that things will look better in a few days. You will feel like shit and will have to have some difficult conversations but hopefully you can all move on.

But you do have to take control of your drinking before something even worse happens. It's so difficult, even after everything that's happened the amount of times I feel like cracking open a bottle of wine is ridiculous. But I have to stop myself and remember that I don't like the person I turn into when I drink.

As a Pp said above, this is not worth ending your life over. Yes it's shit, but you can get over this.

Agree with category12 above, totally.
Control your drinking = cut back for a bit then proceed with gay abandon again next time you feel like it.
What you can do to make amends is practical and positive action. Get to some AA meetings, and when you have done a few, and accepted your issues (I think you can be an alcoholic even if you don't get wasted daily!) then apologise to the more distant family. Don't wait to apologise to DH and DD. And never drink again.
It is a poison, and it causes depression.

Mouseville65 maybe you should read the OPs own words before talking about posters 'being nuts' for saying OP reds help for alcohol issues.

Apart from anything else it isn't usual behaviour to get so drunk at a funeral that you pass out!

Curious - I was making that point really re her H.

It would be very unreasonable of him to be angry about OP cheating when it is clear IMO that she was too drunk to consent and didn’t consent earlier in the evening when he tried it on.

Very understandable that he would be angry at the drinking, feel very upset about his DD being exposed to it, maybe even feel like he couldn’t cope with it etc etc...

I can get absolutely pissed too but only when I'm in a safe environment as you supposedly were. You were there with your family, including your dh and DD. Someone should have intervened especially when they saw how drunk you were. Your cousin is a scumbag

All you posting she needs to get a grip of her drinking and seek support are nuts! No, we just have personal experience of alcoholics.

OP herself says, very clearly, repeatedly, that she has a problem with alcohol. As do her family, she says.

Some of us know only too well how fucking awful that can be!

Offred Sorry, I read my post back and it does read as though I am correcting/disagreeing with you! Sorry, I meant to agree with you and expand on your post a little.

I'll try whole sentences next time