How much do you need to drink...

[TheSheepofWallSt]

... to smell like you’ve been on the piss?

I know, I know.

But exDP has just turned up (planned) at my house to stay for the weekend so he can spend time with our son (2.5yo). He does this once every 6 weeks approx- I would rather it was more often but....

He’s walked in this evening (around 8pm) smelling like a brewery. Says he had two cans on the way up from london.
I call bullshit. Surely two cans isn’t enough to stink like you’ve been out all night?

That or, more likely, he’s been gently soaking for weeks.

He’s definitely a functioning alcoholic, and after DS was born his drinking escalated to such a point I had to leave him when DS was 7 months. He was gaslighting me about how much he was drinking and when. I could never leave the baby with him as I was never sure he was actually sober.

After our separation, he seemed to pull himself together (once the pressure of day to day parenting was off....) and was very supportive financially/ visited often etc. And was always sober and drank moderately (medium glass of wine with dinner, a single whiskey before bed- I consider that acceptable- I know some wouldn’t).

Now, I’m lucky if DS sees him once a month, we get no financial help, and now this. I’m livid and have told him as much once DS was asleep-... ofc he refuses to acknowledge he’s “fallen off the wagon” again. Instead he tells me he has “a couple of cans a night, maybe a couple of glasses of wine... sometimes a bit more”.
When I repeated back what he’d said - and added - so maybe 4 pints and half a bottle of wine a night?- he got annoyed “no it’s not that much”- Id repeated his information verbatim and then qualified it with a different measure of quantity.

Sorry this is a ramble. I’m just so annoyed. He’s falling to pieces and DS is losing his dad- because I’ve spent 2 years facilitating, nurturing, and safeguarding their relationship and I think tonight I’ve for the very first time asked myself if this guy is bringing anything to the party. I don’t know what else I can give. I’m working 60 hours a week, I’m solely responsible for our son and Im in weekly psychotherapy. I’m sick of doing all the work, and then disrespected like this....

Arrrrrghhhhh!!!!

Sorry this is so ranty! I’m so cross!

(Ofc DS naturally adores him... so would never ever stop him seeing his daddy, unless there was a safety issue....)

He is an alcoholic. He isnt going to tel ml you the truth. You know that. HE isnt going to help with your child. He is going to be a burden.

My partner stinks after about 6 pints .

I'm super sensitive to it as don't drink much

This is the thing. I don’t mind a drink- not that I drink much any more- so the smell of booze isn’t an automatic nose wrinkler for me.

He smelt like old booze- you know, the morning after kind of fruity/ sweaty smell? And he’s always been fastidiously clean and splashed with Bois Noir.

I’m really depressed by it. Am in bed with the toddler, working through a backlog of work email. All I want to do is go into the spare room, shake exDp awake and ask him to leave.

I’m so fed up...

Eugh yep I know the smell . My partner sometimes smells like that after a heavy night ( rarely ) .

Couldn't imagine it on the regular . Sounds like he needs help .

Is he functional for spending time with your son still?

Don't let him get you down

Well... I’ll put it this way.
I would (have and do) leave DS with him for an hour or so when he visits, but only in the day.

I wouldn’t leave him alone in charge of DS in the evening. ExDP was raised in a (mansion) house where drinks o clock began when you dressed for dinner. That’s never left him- and it’s like when 6pm hits, he’s pouring a drink come hell or high water.

Which was fine when we were dating and didn’t have a child.
Now we’re separated and do have a child, it’s quite a different thing, somehow...

Hi Sheep, I hope you manage to work it out.

It's impossible to know what goes on in the mind of someone else (even a partner) but I've been your ex, and your description rings absolutely true. Even if your ex appears to be in denial he might know that his drinking is a problem - it's just that admitting that, or even acknowledging it, is too difficult for him. Nothing will change unless he can get himself past this.

Maybe explaining to him why you don't feel it's safe for him to have DS in his care will help. He may not react well now but the event will be a shock which might help him open up to help and change now or later (along with the fact that it's true). The lack of financial support is a fundamental moral issue as well - he absolutely needs to step up to this if he wants a relationship with his son based on love instead of obligation.

We're all so different, it's wrong for me to think I can know what will help a complete stranger, but I'm 50 now and if I had 10 minutes with my 25-year-old self I'd have a few choice words.

Quite honestly as the child of an alcoholic myself I would say he's not fit to be around your child.

At the very least as your child is so young I certainly wouldn't be allowing unsupervised contact or any contact involving ex driving him.

And why is he staying at yours?

@graphista

No he isn’t allowed to drive. There’s no car available here for him to drive anyway.

I wouldn’t leave my child with him if I thought he’d drunk anything in the previous 12 hours. I keep my house dry and (this is awful I know) I check his suitcase etc on arrival for alcohol.

He stays here because he lives 300 miles away, and his primary residence is a boat in a harbour. I can’t let my son go there for access for obvious reasons.

There’s no alternative except no contact, and I won’t do that at this stage. Whatever my suspicions are, I have no proof, - and he does love our son, who gets an awful lot out of his relationship with his daddy.

I am the MOST extraordinarily protective mother- I’m taking no risks. None.

Glad you're being so cautious. Shame you have to really.

The next issue is that as your son ages he'll become more aware of your ex's drunkenness and that means it's somewhat normalised for him which puts him at greater risk of developing an issue with alcohol himself in the future.

I do think you need to consider setting some rules about your ex drinking/being drunk around your child.

@graphista

My ex doesn’t drink around my son, and has never been visibly drunk or even tipsy. As I say, he soaks- I’ve never seen him falling/down drunk. Just never seen him 100% sober sober either. You’d never know unless you knew him intimately. And frankly whether they have a relationship in future looks unlikely, whatever I do. His father just won’t sustain the commitment without my handholding and I’m sick of doing it....

Sadly I agree that you're right that a long term relationship with his father is unlikely.

Awful situation

Let him suffer his own consequences.

If he wants to have a relationship with DS, he needs to clean his act up and it's not your job to facilitate everything for him.

Why isn't he paying you CM?

Crikey, I keep imagining Poirot with the dressing for dinner malarkey!

Yeah he'd had more than two pints.

@costacoffeecup

Yeah it’s funny, he had this childhood of immense privilege but was at best neglected and at worst abused, and then sent to board at 6.
Both parents dead now, and he’s the last of the family. I feel so afraid he’s going to end up entirely alone. Partly why I work so hard to keep him “part of the family” Is for him, as much as it is my son.

@RantyAnty
He’s got a degenerative illness (dx same time I had the baby) and hasn’t been able to work as much as he did. He was well paid before, is scraping by now. Gets some PiP disability but not much.
I sympathise but he can afford to drink so...

My ex is a heavy drinker. My children are a little older now and I feel so sad when they know its time to go to his and they will 'be going to the pub again'. They know. He's crap but not crap enough to withhold contact iykwim.

I’ve spent 2 years facilitating, nurturing, and safeguarding their relationship and I think tonight I’ve for the very first time asked myself if this guy is bringing anything to the party.

I get it, I really do but you haven’t been doing the above, you’ve been enabling a lazy and selfish man to pretend to be a parent. Despite all your efforts, he’s still useless because that’s how he chooses to be.

Stop enabling this fuckwit and start focusing your energies where it will be the most beneficial and that isn’t enabling a reluctant parent. If you don’t, your child will only grow up expecting this crap behaviour from his father and you will exhaust yourself for not much reward.

What AgentJohnson wrote

You're still very much playing out the same roles as you were when you were in this relationship with him i.e provoker, enabler and codependent. Checking his suitcase on arrival is policing his drinking; that action is pointless and does not work.

re your comment:-
"I feel so afraid he’s going to end up entirely alone. Partly why I work so hard to keep him “part of the family” Is for him, as much as it is my son."

This line of thinking is codependent behaviour on your part. He is not alone; he has his beloved alcohol to accompany him.

You cannot act as either a rescuer or saviour in a relationship; neither approach works. Its a real shame you have not already worked this out by now.

Why are this man's needs seemingly more important here than yours or your son's?. Your also son needs to see better male role models than his alcoholic feckless father. And why too is he seeing his child at your house rather than at say a contact centre?. I know perhaps why, because you were talked into it and such a place would not let him in drunk. Facilitating contact arrangements with such a man in the first place was never going to work. This man's primary relationship is with drink; its was never with you and its certainly not now with his child. His ill health is also not enough to stop him drinking himself to death. He is also financially responsible for his son and he should be paying towards his child's upkeep. There is enough money for drinking and he continues to self medicate with alcohol.

Did you grow up yourself by the way seeing similar too?. Where is your own support here from family and friends?. Attending al-anon meetings may be of great benefit to you as well, at the very least you need to read their literature.

It is not your job to facilitate contact with him and his son. It's all on him.

It seems you're helping him to the detriment of your own mental wellbeing and you shouldn't be. You know he's an alcoholic so its not a surprise that he turns up drunk.

I'm amazed that you don't mind a known alcoholic drinking a bit.
If he's having any, it's too much, and he will definitely be lying about how much he has had.

@Bluetrews

No I didn’t say that I don’t mind him drinking -I said I find one glass of wine and one short an acceptable amount for a person to drink of an evening, and acknowledged some would feel that that in itself is a problematic amount for anyone.

I’ll be honest- this thread has had an air of AIBU about it. I’m a parent, doing my best, and trying to balance the psychological damage done by absent fathers for sons, with the psychological damage done by normalising addiction.

So it’d be great if the rock and hard place I’m between could be acknowledged, rather than implicitly blaming me for the scenario.

Just popping up sheep to say what marvellous job you are doing for your boy. Maintaining the balance in tough circumstances.

IME you’ll always have sad days and be worried by your ex and his behaviour - it’s part of your maternal instinct. And you’re a nice person. This is his dad. You’ll worry. That’s natural.

Just try to give it only a reasonable amount of headspace.

I did psychotherapy after splitting from my ex and found it immensely helpful in boosting my confidence. I hope to are finding the same.

Rarely in life do people mention you are doing so brilliantly - but you are. So I’m saying it. Try to say it to yourself too.