Update on New Partner Wet the Bed

[NewManIssue]

I’m not sure how to link to my previous thread, sorry!

So. I told him it was a deal breaker and since then I’ve learned a LOT about him. He is very keen to change his life and all the signs and actions are good. He’s definitely got a shit relationship with alcohol bordering on alcoholic if not an alcoholic however he has made massive efforts to change this and the effects are significant.

we had a great weekend away and since then he’s gone from strength to strength. I’ve asked what he gets up to when we’re not together as we aren’t in one another’s pockets at my request, and all good. He’s making so much effort that I’m giving him a chance to see if it continues. He knows if it doesn’t I will walk. No repeats of bed wetting.

I know the nay sayers will call me an idiot but I’m not stupid and neither is he. I literally said I can’t have a relationship with an actively drinking alcoholic. End of.

So we shall see see. Still early days! He’s got more support than me in this as all his friends male and female are rooting for him and feel like a relationship with an adult is what he needed to do this. Everyone previously sounds like party people which I am but within reason. I’ve got a responsible job and a quiet life I also love!

Luckiest escape you’ll ever have!

I think the people who are saying run know what a long, arduous journey you will be embarking on. If he's genuinely reached a point where he is going to try to recover with help, rather than just going through the motions to keep you, then that's good. However, to put it bluntly, all the help and good intentions in the world often don't work. Or they work for a while, then stop. Or they work eventually, sometimes decades later. The chances of an alcoholic recognising their problem, getting timely and effective treatment that turns their life around at the first go, are very very slim. It's typically a stop and start process that has their loved ones veering from optimism to happiness to disappointment and misery many times over. Now, if you're in an established relationship with someone you love deeply, you may feel this is better than leaving them (though tbh, it's a tough call) but to actively choose this road with someone who as yet there are no real ties to is not a wise decision for your own wellbeing.

As others have said, alcoholics are told not to enter into relationships when they are in recovery.

I have a friend who was an alcoholic in recovery, ignored this advice, and later regretted it badly.

Warmest wishes to you. Hard decision but best for both of you.

Op I do hope this decision has come from you and you alone. MN is prolific for LTB and suggesting you have low standards/are stupid/co-dependent if you don’t follow the advice given here to the letter. But you know the situation better than the faceless strangers on the internet who will doubtless have their own relationship struggles too.

Obviously the best move to end things if you truly believe that’s what’s best for you but I do hope you haven’t let the advice here sway you too much, it isn’t real life.

@fattytoadboy

Even AA strongly recommend being single in your first year of sobriety so you aren’t distracted and don’t impact someone else during the crucial and difficult time.

That’s fair and I’m sure op has taken that on board in her decision making. It just always worries me a bit when I see people taking advice from here so literally. It’s important to remember that those advising you are not real life friends, you don’t know the motives behind their replies. I’m not saying she’s made the wrong choice, it’s probably best for both of them given the circumstances. However I just hope it’s a decision she came to on her own not solely based on what people here have said.

MN is great for support and advice and I’d say most posters are genuine but you will always get those who are dicks for the sake of it. And when you are vulnerable or unsure it’s easy to take other people’s views very literally.

If MN has a role in preventing a woman walking into a challenging and miserable relationship through lack of knowledge of what life with an alcoholic looks like, then brava! That's a job well done. If the OP wanted to make her decision with no input she wouldn't have posted. She did, and many many people who may not know the man better than her, but certainly have more experience of alcoholism, have taken time to share often very painful stories, and thoughtful advice to help her. To dismiss other posters as just part of some childish 'LTB' culture is rude and demonstrates a real lack of emotional intelligence given the situation we are discussing.

Very predictable that anyone with a slightly different opinion should be dismissed as having low emotional intelligence. Kind of reiterates what I was saying.

As I’ve said it does sound like op made the right choice. And I also said that many posters here are genuine and helpful. My post was just about having a little bit of caution. Take the helpful advice on board, don’t assume it’s all given in good faith. Naive to think every single person posting on MN is there to be kind and genuine.

From Personal experience, ultimately without sacrificing yourself there is no option other than leaving and I think this thread has helped the OP see this
As I said upthread I left when the drunk version outweighed the sober version.
He was the love of my life

And equally predictable that you are claiming to be 'dismissed' for your 'different opinion' when it wasn't your opinion I disagreed with - why would I when you say you agree the OP made the right choice, as do I? What I disagreed with was your dismissal of other posters opinions as being based in a MN culture of urging women to leave. If you have read this thread and the posts from women who have experienced alcoholism, and your takeaway from that is to 'urge caution' because not everyone is 'kind and genuine' then it really isn't a very emotionally intelligent response to the thread. Do you think people are inventing their experiences to be 'unkind'?

Friends of a poster can be over invested so it can be very helpful to ask others who don’t know the person at all.

Hi

for those asking, of course I made the decision myself but the shared experiences on this thread helped me hugely. I’m very aware of the LTB culture on MN, it’s bordering on ridiculous at times, but this didn’t feel the same. There were genuine tales of heartache and heartbreak and pretty terrible backstories - 2-3 months in I don’t have that type of investment in the relationship.

I do miss him but no heartache, I wish we’d just been friends tbh!

You made the right decision. He needs to recover for himself and by himself (with support) otherwise there would be a world of pain, stress and trauma ahead (yours, not his).

I’ve lived the alcoholism experience (my ex, not me) and it is truly horrific for the sober partner. I would never recommend someone stays in a new relationship with someone who has not seriously addressed their demons (whatever they are). The sober partner can end up traumatised for many years and never fully recover from the experience.

Absolutely this. Some of them have met him and say how good we are as a couple. They don’t see what I see!

In our early days our relationship felt like a fairytale. He treated me like a queen. People would say what a fantastic couple we were, how in love we were, they were all so happy for me. We got together when I was in my late thirties and he early forties (divorced) and it seemed like a proper grown up relationship at last. I felt like it had been worth waiting for. But ….. I had no idea he had a hidden drink problem. Two years and second child on the way later he could no longer hide it and he pretty much flipped overnight from being in a very senior role to sitting on park benches all day boozing (I’m not exaggerating). He lost his job, we lost our home and I became a single mum. And yes before I finally left, this ‘senior professional’ had wet our bed and the sofa. I remember one time we were in a hotel and he locked the bathroom door and proceeded to fall asleep in there in a drunken haze for five hours!! It was so stressful with two young children, one still a baby, with baby stuff in the bathroom. I remember and can feel the distress I was in like yesterday but it was twenty years ago. I was so ignorant of what alcoholism was as I didn’t really drink, had little interest in it. I thought alcoholics put vodka on their cornflakes and only drank spirits from the bottle.

Never would I want someone to go through the terrible stress I went through and the distress of my life and our children’s futures shattered all for booze. Don’t be swayed by people saying what a great couple you are or could be. There’s a whole highway of hell you have to walk on first.

I recommend trying to seek out a documentary about television journalist Ed Mitchell’s decent from professional newsreader to full blown alcoholic. It was like watching my ex’s life. I suffered from a form of PTSD which only started to heal once my children became adults.

He did eventually get better but only a couple of years after I left and he ended up in hospital and the doctors telling him there were no more chances, he wouldn’t be alive next time. But that’s what it took, not me, not our children, but his death sentence.

Oh my goodness, this is one of the heartache Messages I referred to earlier

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m gonna go and look up that documentary right now.

I hope you and your children are very happy these days xxx

Thank you. We are. They actually have a good relationship with their dad but I thank god I didn’t let them grow up with him in the house. When I read about someone thinking about ‘being there’ in the early days for an alcoholic (or any addict) I want to scream and beg them not to do it. I don’t know how easy it is to find the documentary, I watched it in real time as it was happening to me, but it was like Ed was my ex and I was Ed’s wife.

If you can’t find the full documentary there may be some parts on Youtube.

@NewManIssue I think I’ve found it. It’s on Youtube and called Saving Ed Michell. The quality is a bit degraded (it looks oldish). It says 2008 but I had left by then so maybe I was watching retrospectively rather than in real time.

I’m currently watching it on YouTube thank you so much. This is the sort of thing I need to keep me away from him and realise that I made the right decision.

Same. The well-meaning but oh so naive posts that see 'seeking help' as a magic charm that will instantly remove this inconvenience from the relationship. The posts urging the OP to 'give him a chance, he deserves that' are very difficult to read from a perspective of knowing the hard way what that looks like. I'm sorry for what you went through and appreciate you naming it as trauma. That feels validating.

I’m watching it again too! It still gives me shudders, it’s so close to what I lived through and saw with my own high flying ex. 😬 Weirdly we lived in that area. Maybe they shared a bench sometimes.

OP i am sending you such a hug. This is one of the threads that makes Mumsnet what it is - an army of women sharing their own experiences to help each other from dangerous life choices. And you listened. I wish you all the very best.

Just popping back to say well done, and to offer you a big hug. Hopefully he continues with his sobriety and succeeds. He couldn't have done it with you because that's not how it works.

And you meanwhile will have the calm life you deserve. All the best :)