# Getting out



## alrightythen

I’ve been reading many stories on here about alcoholism. It drives me crazy that I can’t have more “understanding” of the problem. My husband of 14 years started drinking 11 years into our marriage. We’d never had a drink together before then. He only had as a young teen. The drink quickly took him this time. He said he hit bottom with his self esteem and stress and remembered it made him feel good. Three years into his drinking and I’m ready to call it quits. He’s never been violent. We have two young kids who adore him. It’s a very hard call to make but last year he said he wanted to get sober and was for 3 months before secretly starting up again. When it got out of control again (missed our kids first day of school, unreachable by phone etc), I kicked him out. He’s been out 9 months. So much has changed with him. His style has changed. He dresses like a teenager now. He looks aged. I’m heartbroken for him. He thinks he’s found the holy grail of life in alcohol and it’s sad. I told him he wasn’t coming home until he was sober and he got sober for 3 weeks. The final straw for me was when he relapsed (binged) he told me wanted more freedom to drink on the weekends and that he didn’t have a problem with alcohol. He has it under a control…despite DUI, running off to Mexico with Covid just to drink, and living away from us to drink!
For 11 years I had a wonderful, kind, hardworking husband. We had already been through so much together. Now, I don’t hear from him for days. This is so hard for me to accept. I’ve tried everything I can think of.


----------



## DownByTheRiver

I'm so sorry. Your husband doesn't want to quit drinking so he's not going to anytime in the foreseeable future. You know he's an alcoholic because he's letting this affect his relationship and responsibilities. 

You're really just enabling him by keeping him there. Look, you divorce so the kids know that this is not acceptable and don't model after him. If in 5 years he gets sober and stays that way for 2 years, you can always consider taking him back. But you don't need someone who puts alcohol before the family. 

You are powerless to do anything about it. He has to feel the consequences and then he may or may not ever reach a point where he wants to clear his head instead of running from his problems by anesthetizing himself. You know a lot of alcoholics are anesthetizing themselves to some pain of some sort that's bothering them from the past. It's above your pay grade.

You should get a family law attorney and file right away so that you can protect your assets from his drunken binging. That way if he does do anything foolish with your money or spend a bunch of it on anything which could be also women, it will come out of his half of the settlement. You have to protect your assets. 

Good luck


----------



## alrightythen

DownByTheRiver said:


> I'm so sorry. Your husband doesn't want to quit drinking so he's not going to anytime in the foreseeable future. You know he's an alcoholic because he's letting this affect his relationship and responsibilities.
> 
> You're really just enabling him by keeping him there. Look, you divorce so the kids know that this is not acceptable and don't model after him. If in 5 years he gets sober and stays that way for 2 years, you can always consider taking him back. But you don't need someone who puts alcohol before the family.
> 
> You are powerless to do anything about it. He has to feel the consequences and then he may or may not ever reach a point where he wants to clear his head instead of running from his problems by anesthetizing himself. You know a lot of alcoholics are anesthetizing themselves to some pain of some sort that's bothering them from the past. It's above your pay grade.
> 
> You should get a family law attorney and file right away so that you can protect your assets from his drunken binging. That way if he does do anything foolish with your money or spend a bunch of it on anything which could be also women, it will come out of his half of the settlement. You have to protect your assets.
> 
> Good luck


Thank you. Luckily we have separate bank accounts. He has no money and I have enough and have been supporting myself and kids for a year. I do have compassion on him as he’s just very beat down and drinking makes him feel so good. It’s a reason but not an excuse. Ironically, his father left him when he was 2 for alcohol. He swore it would never be him and that’s why we didn’t drink…until he did. Our son is 5. He bested his dad by 3 years 🤷🏻‍♀️. Very sad.


----------



## Harold Demure

I’m so sorry to read your story and hope we can help you by sharing our experiences of friends or family members’ alcoholism.

Firstly, none of this is your fault. Alcoholics view drink as the be all and end all, prioritising it over everything, and I mean everything, else.

The fact that your husband is an alcoholic does not mean you have done anything wrong. It does mean he has an illness that only he can start to cure.

You can try to support him but there is a limit to what you can do and there comes a time when you can not do anymore and it is okay to walk away.

It is so difficult to understand the WHY? and you shouldn’t beat yourself up by not being able to understand it. Logic etc goes straight out of the window where alcoholism is involved and, in our experience, there is no one thing you can point to as the reason. In fact, it would be so much easier to cope with or understand if there was. That’s the frustrating thing about alcoholics, the apparently meaningless waste of a life.

It is okay to cut someone like this out of your life and more often than not, the right thing to do, especially where children are involved. Alcoholics not only self destruct but are destructive to those around them. Your kids may adore their dad now but it may help you to talk to adult children of alcoholics to see how their lives have been affected still after many years.

Do you feel you are the one putting all of the effort into trying to save your marriage and him but you are the one feeling guilty and see his ongoing alcoholism as partly your failure? If so, please don’t. 

The reality is that you probably know all of the above very well but it is tough not to feel the sadness, guilt and grief. Even after all these years, it is still a dark cloud over our lives.

I wish you all the very best for a happy future for you and your children, you deserve it.


----------



## TJW

Harold Demure said:


> It is so difficult to understand the WHY?
> 
> Logic etc goes straight out of the window


I'm not sure anyone really does..... like so many illnesses. Your husband is not unlike millions of people who suffer from addictive illnesses..... alcohol, food, drugs, daredevilism.... in a lot of those cases, there is a genetic predisposition - which is a large "hidden" factor when observing only the behavior. There's a primal urge inside them....I inherited fingernail-biting from my mother..... 69 years later, I still find myself unconsciously doing it and have to force myself to stop. Addiction has been well-defined as failing to stop a behavior even in the face of incontrovertible evidence one should....


----------



## Bluesclues

My husband has been in recovery from alcohol for almost nine months now. We went through a decade of him cycling through heavy problematic drinking, weeks/months of abstaining, starting again but this time drinking like a “normal person”. Rinse and repeat. His problematic drinking always seemed to happen when things were going really well in our lives. I could not understand it, it felt like he was sabotaging himself and us.

When he went into treatment last year his clinician sent me this video on understanding addiction as a disease. It is super long and even though it is directed towards parents of addicts I found it helpful as a spouse. It helped me put to rest a lot of the whys (why did he love booze more than me, more than the kids…)





I know it is hard but I am really proud of you for taking the hard stand that you did. I spent way too long fighting, begging, bargaining, trying to control the outcome. I finally let go of the rope and resigned myself that he would probably die from this and it was not within my control to change that, only he could.


----------



## alrightythen

Bluesclues said:


> My husband has been in recovery from alcohol for almost nine months now. We went through a decade of him cycling through heavy problematic drinking, weeks/months of abstaining, starting again but this time drinking like a “normal person”. Rinse and repeat. His problematic drinking always seemed to happen when things were going really well in our lives. I could not understand it, it felt like he was sabotaging himself and us.
> 
> When he went into treatment last year his clinician sent me this video on understanding addiction as a disease. It is super long and even though it is directed towards parents of addicts I found it helpful as a spouse. It helped me put to rest a lot of the whys (why did he love booze more than me, more than the kids…)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I know it is hard but I am really proud of you for taking the hard stand that you did. I spent way too long fighting, begging, bargaining, trying to control the outcome. I finally let go of the rope and resigned myself that he would probably die from this and it was not within my control to change that, only he could.


This is a great video. Is it on YouTube? I’d love to send it to someone else.


----------



## alrightythen

Harold Demure said:


> I’m so sorry to read your story and hope we can help you by sharing our experiences of friends or family members’ alcoholism.
> 
> Firstly, none of this is your fault. Alcoholics view drink as the be all and end all, prioritising it over everything, and I mean everything, else.
> 
> The fact that your husband is an alcoholic does not mean you have done anything wrong. It does mean he has an illness that only he can start to cure.
> 
> You can try to support him but there is a limit to what you can do and there comes a time when you can not do anymore and it is okay to walk away.
> 
> It is so difficult to understand the WHY? and you shouldn’t beat yourself up by not being able to understand it. Logic etc goes straight out of the window where alcoholism is involved and, in our experience, there is no one thing you can point to as the reason. In fact, it would be so much easier to cope with or understand if there was. That’s the frustrating thing about alcoholics, the apparently meaningless waste of a life.
> 
> It is okay to cut someone like this out of your life and more often than not, the right thing to do, especially where children are involved. Alcoholics not only self destruct but are destructive to those around them. Your kids may adore their dad now but it may help you to talk to adult children of alcoholics to see how their lives have been affected still after many years.
> 
> Do you feel you are the one putting all of the effort into trying to save your marriage and him but you are the one feeling guilty and see his ongoing alcoholism as partly your failure? If so, please don’t.
> 
> The reality is that you probably know all of the above very well but it is tough not to feel the sadness, guilt and grief. Even after all these years, it is still a dark cloud over our lives.
> 
> I wish you all the very best for a happy future for you and your children, you deserve it.


Yes and no. He does keep saying he has to “fix” this but he’s dancing around the problem. Joined a gym and changed his diet. He has to attend classes for his DUI twice a week for nine months and I found out he would drink wine on Zoom through them. He’s very very sick. But refuses to see it. And classic alcoholic.


----------



## DownByTheRiver

alrightythen said:


> Thank you. Luckily we have separate bank accounts. He has no money and I have enough and have been supporting myself and kids for a year. I do have compassion on him as he’s just very beat down and drinking makes him feel so good. It’s a reason but not an excuse. Ironically, his father left him when he was 2 for alcohol. He swore it would never be him and that’s why we didn’t drink…until he did. Our son is 5. He bested his dad by 3 years 🤷🏻‍♀️. Very sad.


It's hereditary. It's too bad he didn't just completely stay away from it but I know that's not easy with today's culture.


----------



## Bluesclues

alrightythen said:


> This is a great video. Is it on YouTube? I’d love to send it to someone else.


It was posted on Vimeo. I can’t figure out how to just post the link though, lol.


----------



## Diana7

Does he still drive when he has been drinking or did he get banned?


----------



## gold5932

I've posted this before. You need to think of your kids. My adult child is forever screwed up thanks to me staying with her alcoholic dad. You've been by yourself for a year, file for divorce and move on. You are probably young enough to have a long relationship with someone that doesn't cause you heartache all the time. Wondering where he is, if he'll be home drunk, if he'll be drunk in front of the kids, etc etc etc. Stop thinking "oh he'll change" . Even if he did stop, would it be the same as before, NO it would not be. 

None of this is your fault and stop blaming it on his father. My ex's dad didn't drink at all, neither did his mom or their parents. You need to come to terms with divorce and moving on.

My ex died a month ago from alcohol. It's a horrible way to die and it's horrible for my kid to not only lose her dad but know alcohol killed him.


----------



## alrightythen

Diana7 said:


> Does he still drive when he has been drinking or did he get banned?


No, he doesn’t. He said he feels a lot of shame about getting a DUI and won’t ever again but 🤷🏻‍♀️. It’s been two years since the DUI so at least as far as that he hasn’t reoffended.


----------



## SpinyNorman

alrightythen said:


> I’ve been reading many stories on here about alcoholism. It drives me crazy that I can’t have more “understanding” of the problem.


Alcoholics Anonymous has stuff for relatives of alcoholics, a friend said she liked it.
al anon link


----------

