[quote Mollymol]@Aquamarine1029 he already has children and he’s actually a really good dad. It’s a strange situation as although yes he’s an alcoholic, he’s massively cut down and it doesn’t affect his day to day life. He works and sees his kids a lot, he’s not passed out or drunk all the time, he’s fully functioning and more motivated than me! It’s his health I worry about though and what’s really going on inside his head.[/quote]
It does affect his day to day life, it's taking over his thoughts. It's not normal to be counting down the hours until you can drink again. Not just mentally counting down the hours either (and perhaps moaning to you about it in a similar way to when you're working and it's nearly time to leave), but looking visibly a bit 'twitchy' meaning you notice that's what he's doing without him telling you. You're seeing what he can't suppress. The tip of the iceberg, if you like. He admitted himself every day is a struggle.
He's a functional alcoholic. Whatever type of alcoholic you are the only solution is to never drink again ever, not even a little bit very occasionally. Zero. Before when he had that chilled out feeling during the day, that's drunk. Not blind drunk, falling down drunk, passing out drunk. But still drunk. And possibly doing all the things you're not supposed to do when drunk, like driving.
That's a feature of a functional alcoholic - you never/rarely see them visibly drunk. Because they've got a tolerance to alcohol, so an amount that makes the average person drunk doesn't make them drunk. Because you're so used to slightly-drunk them, that you don't realise you barely know what stone-cold-sober them looks like, slightly-drunk them has become what you think of as 'normal'. Because they're so used to hiding their alcoholism and they've had a lot of practice at it, so they're really quite good at not appearing visibly drunk, even when that's exactly what they are.
When you're dating, slightly-drunk them is probably literally all you ever saw. So stone-cold-sober them is the anomaly as far as you're concerned. They're not a morning person, you tell yourself. Or they're having a bad day. Are you a 'morning person' when you're hungover? That's the functional alcoholic, every day. Hungover. Or still drunk from last night, depending on how bad it's got. Of course they're stressed, they have a busy job and it's the end of the day. They need a little peace and quiet after work, maybe they're a little snappy for no reason, or maybe they reach for alcohol as soon as they get in. That's natural with a stressful job right? Except loads of people have stressful jobs and don't drink, snap, or require absolute peace on return from work. Plenty come home and happily chat to their families right away. Because they're not alcoholics. The functional alcoholic is stressed because they need a drink, they haven't had one all day (you hope! But they may well have, I've worked with plenty of people who have a pint or two at lunchtime, every day).
Raise your bar my lovely, you deserve way better than "he's not falling down drunk or passing out". It's good that he went through a detox and has cut down. But it'll creep back up again. It already has, the detox never lasted, did it.
My ex did this on repeat, although he never fully detoxed. He was slightly out of hand, back to relatively functional through cutting down, until he was back to square one again drinking more than even he was happy with. All the while deluding himself that he wasn't an alcoholic because he had some degree of control over his drinking, as well as the fact of his functioning. In reality it affected every second of his life, even when asleep. He was permanently either under the influence to some degree or suffering withdrawal to some degree. I'd never come across a functional alcoholic before. I wish I'd realised sooner, then I could have left sooner and started living my life instead of playing second fiddle to alcohol, which was always his first love.