Strange situation on family holiday :(

[LittleStar1985]

Hello, I wasn’t sure where to post this so hopefully it’s ok here. It’s a bit long, I apologise.

I have just returned from a family holiday to Greece with my husband and 2 young children. The holiday was an all inclusive and we were all so excited. I was slightly apprehensive as my husband likes a drink and on our previous all -inclusive he went a bit crazy with the free cocktails and had to keep going to bed at 8pm but he said he’d be better this time etc so anyway we went on holiday for 14 days and first few days all fine but then another English family arrived and my husband made friends with the dad who had brought a load of expensive whisky at the duty free so he invited my husband up to their room to taste some of this lush whisky and that’s kind of where it started, he was gone for 2 hours and was so drunk when he came back and then the rest of the holiday was a bit similar, he would start on the cocktails and tequilas at 11am and then then by 7pm he was falling asleep and so I had to take the kids to the evening entertainment on my own. I voiced my objections a number of times and he said he’d be better the next day but he never was so I just gave up.

So anyway, on day 7 or 8 of our holiday, I was sat watching the kids by the pool, my husband was in the room still sleeping at 1pm and one of the entertainment staff came up to me and said ‘would your husband like to play volleyball’ - you know the classic entertainment stuff and I said I’m sorry he is sick today in the room not sure he will be out just yet etc etc blah blah and the guy asked if he needs him to get the hotel doctor and I said no it’s fine, just a few too many tequilas but he’ll be fine and then he looked at me so kindly and asked if I wanted to move sunbeds nearer to the entertainment because then he said he and his team can entertain my kids and I can relax a bit, well with this I burst into tears, I was mortified at doing it but I couldn’t help it.
From that point on, this entertainment guy made it his mission to give my kids and I a brilliant holiday, he got us up and playing in the pool, he watched the kids whilst I went to the toilet or to get them drinks, he gave them pool toys and he made sure he chatted to me throughout the day. He was my age (35) and we had a few things in common here and there. I added him on Instagram as he asked permission to put a picture of my kids winning a trophy on the hotel Insta page and I said yes then he said he will add me too. Anyway, just a lovely man who never overstepped the line, didn’t talk about personal things, didn’t flirt at all etc and introduced himself to my husband and was so polite and discreet. On the day we left, he came to say goodbye to us all and literally out of nowhere I had this wave of utter sadness, I had to stop myself from getting teary and we said goodbye, he gave T-shirts to my kids, shook my hand and said we will keep in touch etc and hopefully we can come back one day.

A few days after returning home, he messaged me on Insta to ask if all was ok, did we get home ok and hoped we had a great holiday etc and I thought ‘I should just ignore this’ but classic me, I replied and now we are chatting quite a bit maybe 2 or 3 messages a day just random things or he will send me a funny meme etc but I feel like I can’t stop thinking about how lovely he was and how much he saved my holiday, the kids loved him and all the others- and I didn’t miss my husband once when he was off drinking it up in the room during the day and that is sad isn’t it because I love my husband so much.

i know that my marriage has some issues that need sorting and I should provably just ignore the messages of this dude but I can’t bring myself to do it. I know that lots of these foreign holiday types can just latch onto tourists with another agenda but I am
not naive and there is no sense of that here. He hasn’t said anything close to romantic or overly personal, just genuine kindness and interest in us.
I don’t suppose anyone else has ever been in a situation like this? I don’t know if I should just delete this person and move on…. I mean move on from what exactly!?? Arghhh. Confused as hell.

LittleStar1985

the therapist said that if you have to pay for drinks then a physical transaction has to take place and it will allow my husband to pause before he gets a drink

If your dh isn’t pausing to think about his alcohol habits when he goes down the pub and does 6 transactions for the 6 pints he has then signing to put his consumption for that day on the hotel room bill isn’t going to have him pause to consider his alcohol consumption.

He said that there is alcohol everywhere and there will always been social gatherings and pubs etc so the CBT is not taking away the temptation completely, it’s about re-training the mind to see the temptation differently, or something like that

This is him coming up with excuses that he will always be a drinker

I have several friends who will admit to being alcoholic who can’t touch alcohol because they know it is a slippery slope

They too would say similar

Apart from one who stopped over night the rest would stop for a few weeks then make a deal with themselves that they would only drink a glass of wine at a party, then it was a glass on a Friday night then after work each evening and the one glass became 2 or 3 then a bottle then they were getting through the next bottle.
Like my friends, until your dh can think of himself as a non drinker and firmly shut the door on alcohol then he isn’t going to move forward.

Whilst he he is making the observation that alcohol is everywhere .
Even whilst he is sipping on his bitter lemon, he is telling you and himself that alcohol is more important to him than anything and he is helpless against it and it is just time before he starts again

He needs to replace alcohol with something else. Whether that be Marathon running or Learning to play a musical instrument. Or studying for a better job. One friend took up horse riding which broke the cycle of what she did after work. So instead of hitting the pub she hit the stables

Feeling stupid is a way of evading responsibility, not a form of useful self reflection. Its a wate of time snd energy. None of us think you are stupid! You are caught in a very common family trap: even when you have identified your dh as the person with a problem you are caught, by the logic of the family system, “helping” him get better and restraining and retraining yourself to scaffold him and support him in gettnetter. In reality you can neither make nor mar him.

As for this “make new memories “ crap this is ridiculous. He will need years of sobriety before he is in a position to try to make it up to you and for him to deliberately choose to act the role of a loving, attentive, father snd husband. I bolded that part “make it up to you” because that is the crux of the matter. He abandons you snd the children for drink—that is his task to repair and its not going to happen returning to the scene of your supposed crime. Tell DH he needs to choose a new place for the holiday and figure out how to pay for it. Its up to him to manage whats on offer. He is still an alcoholic even if he limits himself to a few drinks if he continues to focus on getting to the drink instead of being present for his wife snd children.