I have been with my partner a year and a half, we are both single parents, I have my lo full time, he has his kids shared with ex. Since quite early on in the relationship I had a slight niggle about how much he drank, was often not sober sounding when we spoke on the phone but as I didn’t know him very well yet it didn’t really click. At Christmas this came to a head, with two weeks off and no structure or routine it became clear there was a real issue. The rest of the relationship is amazing I should add, otherwise I’d have been off.
After Christmas he acknowledged there was a problem and stopped drinking for a couple of months, there has been one binge slip up and now he is enjoying a couple of drinks in my company but I feel that the goals are being pushed a little every so often, like more days of the week he’s having one or two drinks and so on.
I am worried about this, on occasions where I have raised this with him sometimes he’s been responsive and even thanked me after for raising it, most recent time though ended up in a silent argument (he won’t argue, just refuses to talk). There is a massive and deep routed issue in his life with denial and sticking his head in the sand when anything difficult crops up and he definitely used/uses alcohol to deal with stress and things that finds too painful to deal with.
I am pretty anxious about this, and deep down really cross that I am having to deal with it, although don’t say that to him.
What is the right thing to do? The relationship is really good in every other way and when he’s not drinking or drunk (which is not often now to be fair) then I can’t fault anything. Should also add my lo is completely protected from all this, apart from obviously the anxiety it’s bringing into her mothers life😢