The material presented
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I had known my husband for almost six years. We got married in 2009. I discovered last fall that he had a drinking problem because he got arrested
for OWI and he had a blood alcohol level of .352! Of course, I couldn't find him that night and after calling numerous police stations and area hospitals and driving around with my family for hours looking for him (we thought perhaps he'd been carjacked or had an accident and slid down an embankment or something and no one could see the car), I find out the next morning around 11:00 am that he is in jail. I thought there had been some sort of mistake! I cannot believe that I had no inkling of his problem. Later I find out that my stepson found an empty vodka bottle in his car last summer, but he never told me!
He had to pay alot of money to the jail, to get his car back from the impound, court costs, lawyer fees (his lawyer was expensive and totally worthless, he might as well represented himself!) . He has the jail sentence behind him (4 days). Now he has to do 24 hours of community service which I think we have lined up at a local church. He has to attend alcohol education awareness classes which he hasn't started. And he is on probation for a year.
He lost his license last fall for 60 days. I had to drive him to and from work twice daily. We live about 32 miles from his place of employment. I put on alot of miles those weeks! I had a job offer during that time, but I had to turn it down because he had no transportation to work if I went to work. :( He got a hardship license in December. He is allowed to drive to and from work ad to pick up his son and go to court-ordered events. It sucks because I can't even send him to the grocery store when I need something while I'm cooking! :(
I was upset because of all the money that went out the window because of his drinking. We live in an old house that needs alot of work. My husband is handy and can fix things but he works alot and things don't get done. We could have hired alot of things done with the money that is down the drain because of booze. I know I have to move ahead, but I can't help but hold this against him somewhat. I don't have a job right now. I worked until last June and he told me that I could quit my job and work on the house. I did painting and I do yardwork and keep up the household chores, etc..., but I wasn't even home for three months and he was arrested!
The big problem now is....he's drinking again. I have caught him on at least 3 or 4 ocassions since he has been arrested! He admits that he needs help, but he hasn't started any type of counseling or attend AA meetings yet.
I don't feel close to him at all right now. We had a fairly happy marriage until all this. I had noticed that he flies off the handle really easily and gets so loud and worked up about issues that aren't even issues. I told him he needed anger management (little did I know he was drinking, too!) and he said he probably did.
I'm scared that our marriage isn't going to survive. Btw, this is my first marriage. His second. His ex-wife told me last fall that he used to drink when they were married, too. He told me that he didn't drink that much, but I don't know who to believe. She said the drinking didn't help their marriage, but it wasn't all of their problems. I wish she would have been so kind to have shared that information with me before I married him! Evidently she wasn't worried about her son being with him and possibly drinking as he had him half-time a few years before we married. I'm 50 now. I have no children of my own. I waited and waited to find someone that I thought was the right person for me. I had opportunities and offers before that I was hesitant to accept because of drinking or other factors and now here I am stuck with someone that also drinks. I would have probably ran far and fast if I had known about the alcohol overuse.
I don't know what I should say to him. I have kept pretty quiet. I was really angry last Saturday. One of my friends invited us to a surprise bday party for her husband and it was a carry-in dinner. I made a dish to share and went upstairs to shower and get ready. My husband showered while I was putting on my make-up and drying my hair. When he came out of the bathroom, I noticed that he wasn't acting quite right. I asked him to smell his breath. Yep, he'd been drinking. At first he denies it, but then he admits to it after I insist he has been. He said he had drank that morning. I know that was also a lie because this was like 4:00pm in the afternoon. If he had been drinking in the morning, he wouldn't act drunk at 4:30pm in the afternoon! I told him that the party was off. I left and went to my parents' house for a few hours. Another thing that perplexes me....he seems to be going off the wagon when we have his son. We had his son last weekend (his son is 14 1/2) and the last few times I have accused him of being drunk, we had his son for the weekend. Not sure what to think.
Our sex life is non-existent. It was getting rotten before the arrest because I am having troubles with menopause and I have zero drive. I don't know if he drinks to make peace with the fact that we're not intimate much? I could force myself to be sexual with him, but I don't even want him to touch me now. If this doesn't improve, we are really headed for a divorce.
Help! Any advice, stories, etc.. much appreciated.
Aloha L and welcome to the board. It is good that you checked in...log this site in your favorites and come often cause you've already been on a long journey.
Your share is normal to most of us cause it is similar with what we have been thru also...we will share with you that which is different because we did what was different.
Don't be thrown off because he lies...people lie because of the fear of what they are hidding getting out in the open. He knows it is a problem about as much or more than you know...he's he one that has it and it is an uncontolable desire to drink whether he wants to or not. It is caused in a compulsion of the mind and it comes with allergies in his body and behaviors...so the OWI and the marriage problems and more. The disease has been using both of you and one of your parts has been covering up for him and fulfilling his responsibilities...like driving him to work and doing the remodeling work. We call that enabling...enabling the drinking to get worse and continue. The unfulfilled promises are also normal because the drinking is primary and comes first everything else waits for a different opportunity. The money part? That also...start with using money for booze that might be used for the family some way and then the expenses (all of them) that come from out of hand addictive drinking. It is a disease...search the net for the AMA definition of alcoholism and keep an open mind. Alcoholism affects everyone it comes into contact with and so we are all here...thousands of us. There maybe help for him if he wants to go find and use it. There is help for you...go to the white pages of your local telephone book and look up the hotline number for Al-Anon and call it. Find out where and when we meet in your area and get to the earliest meeting you can. When you are there look for as much information on the literature table that you can have and read it all and make plans to attend meetings regularly.
He is going to drink...what are you going to do? is a well put, well asked question to the MIP member. You will get well from what you do inspite of what he does. Get into the program and focus on you and the program for a while before asking yourself what you want to do long term. You're not in it or here for him...you here for you...he might have been the shove and then I am so grateful for the shove the disease gave me into the rooms of Al-Anon also.
He's a sick person...not a bad person...Let go of control and let God have him...you got yourself to fix. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
Story here, don't know if it will help or not. No, you are not alone.
I met my ABF when he was in 15 months of an 18 month sobriety period. He started drinking, when my current husband started threatening to kill us or just plain gave me troubles every day of the week (and he was the sober one). At first when ABF started drinking, I had no clue about alcoholism. But the 2-3 beers he drank a day, seemed to help keep him mellow and i really didn't mind too much. But it Didn't take long for it to turn into 5-6 beers a day. Then 6-8, then 8-10, then 10-12, then 12-15, then 15-20. I knew by bf had been in a lot of trouble, in jail, and lost his family, all due to his drinking. At about the 8-10 beers a day period of our relationship, I started finding out what some of the things were he did while drink, that landed him in jail. So then I started feeling a little ticked, that he chose to get sober, when his life had hit rock bottom before, and that he wasn't willing to do it in our relationship, for me.
The more he drank, the more he slept. He stopped doing anything he use to like to do. Was just in a constant state of intoxication. Every little thing ticked him off, every little thing worried him considerably. Is tarted getting more and more irritated, that I went to work, busted my butt 5 days a week, to put food on the table for all of us (3 of my kids and my grandson), while he got to stay home and sleep all day. I would come home, nothing would be done around the house. He did cook dinner for everyone, but would go to sleep immediately after. I was snapping at him constantly, because I was becoming more and more irritated at his "Eeyore" attitude. It didn't seem to matter any more if i had any money for lunch while i was at work, if the kids had lunch money, or anything else. he needed every spare cents he could find anywhere, to buy just one more beer. I just decided I wanted more for my life than what was currently going on.
When the drinking first started back up, he would throw up. The more beers he drank, the more days he would throw up. At this latest stage, at 15-20 beers a day, he was throwing up everything he ate (which was only once a day, because he was afraid he was going to throw up and didn't eat any more than that 1 meal a day). He started having diarrhea, and what not. I made him go to the doctor, because I was tired of it. Seems his only diet, was those 18 beers a day (on average). So, after a lot of tests, the doctor finally told him it was the drinking that was making him throw up. He has acid reflux, but the meds would take care of that. His esophagus was infected (from throwing up daily for over 2 years). He has his first granddaughter due in 3 months. We calculated he was taking in about 4000 calories a day of beer (empty calories), and nothing else really. He tried two days after the last doctor visit, to quit on his own, and about freaked out on me, as he was also out of his bipolar medications, and trying to cut back on drinking. The following Monday, he got himself into detox, spent 2 days there, and is now only 16 days sober.
My whole point is this. Had I not decided I wanted something different for myself, he wouldn't even be 16 days sober. I had been dropping little hints about looking for an apartment for him, that he needed to get clean to see his granddaughter grow up, and that he needed to get his throwing up problems taken care of for months. But until the doctor explained to him what happens to an alcoholic's body, he just wasn't paying any attention. You must decide what you want to do for yourself. You can't change him, you can't wish him into changing. Start working towards what you want to do for your life, to make YOU happy. Then ask him if he wants to be along for the ride or not. If not, then there is your answer. If he does, he will get the help he needs. Please keep us posted. If you need a cheer squad to help you keep going for YOU, just give me a shout!
P.S. My bf has only thrown up 4 times in those 16 days of sobriety (actually due to gall bladder issues and acid reflux now), and has gained 12 pounds, because he can actually eat food and keep it down now. He is starting to act like the sober man I fell in love with 2.5 years ago. That is sort of what kept me going, the memories I had from before he started his 2.5 year drinking binge).
I do not know that I saw "drinking" as such as a red flag for me. Now after being in al anon for a few years I do but for most of my life I can't say it was a really big red flag for me.
I think its time to stop beating yourself up. Marriage is always a gamble. We can know someone for ever and then they become an alcoholic. There are no guarantees.
I know that al anon has helped me tremendously. I learned to set boundaries, stop punishing an alcoholic (easy to do), start focusing on myself and really look at how and when I got caught up with an alcoholic. When I was in a relationship with an alcoholic/addict I was obsessed with when they used. Like you I refused to go with him to certain social events. There were good and bad parts to that. One was, like you I missed out on certain events. I isolated myself tremndously. The good part was that I gave him a clear message I was not going to take the "fall" for his alcoholism using. Of course I did pay for his drinking/using in so many other ways too. But in time I learned how to separate myself off from that.
Al anon can help you in so many ways. I would really encourage you to give the program a few months. Whether your husband remains an alcoholic or not is irregardless of what the program can offer you. I used to believe it was all "the alcoholics" fault but I learned that I can really over react to someone using an drinking around me. I can also become very very controlling of others.
A book I would highly recommend for you is one called Getting them, Sober. Toby Rice Drew(the author) has a wonderful way of making suggesitons about the many baffling and confusing situations you are currently in. I really do think that book has helped me to turn many a difficult situation around.
I eventually left the alcoholic/addict I was involved with. Did my life get better in some ways yes but the program is tremendously helpful to me.
I know I can be happy with or without a mate. Currently I am not dating because quite frankly I do not know how to do it that well casual dating is something very new for me. I have dated a few people and said no after a while all for good reasons and I still say no today to various "offers" I have because my priority is to my own wellbeing rather than to take care of anyone else but me. I did not know how to say no before but I do now. That is progress for me. I do not currently care if I have a "partner" or not and that for me is tremendous progress because my life totally revolved around having someone before.
