Hi The Bard
Thank you for sharing your experience, I have felt very grateful reading it because I can relate to many of the things you’ve shared and I am having a really tough time at the moment.
I’ve been with my partner for 3 years, we live together and he has 2 sons who I love to pieces. In the last 8/10 months I feel he has now become an alcoholic but he is completely unable to face it, to talk about it with me, and for me it is a huge weight because of that.
As so many people say, when he is sober things are great. We spend time together, we do normal things, we chat, we laugh, and I love the time we spend together when he’s sober.
The other side of it is he now does the whole secretive thing too which I massively struggle with because what it means is, he now will not drink in the house because I will ‘nag’ him so he goes out on walks round the local park but buys cans of lager to drink when he’s out. This in itself is so hard for me because honestly, its embarrassing that he is a 37 year old father and he sits in the park drinking. I’ve literally begged him now not to do it, I’ve begged him to please just drink in the house and I won’t say anything, but he won’t do it. I have recently realised that this is a replacement for the way he used to drink, which was when he had finished work.
The thing you also said about how the next day it’s like nothing has happened, I hear you. There have been so many occasions he’s been drinking and I’ll try talking to him at the time (and get nowhere) then the next morning it’s like all back to normal. Then I think to myself, it’s better to talk to him when he’s sober, but that’s a complete no go. He either completely ignores me and changes the subject or walks off. Like literally, just gets up and walks out of the room when I’m in the middle of talking.
Back in October, he wrote off my car and told me he was suicidal. In December he left a very high pressure job which I praised him for, I tell him all the time I want him to get the help and support he needs and I will be there with him every step of the way. He has had bits of work since December but is now unemployed. Neither of these things have stopped him drinking, make him get help or stopped him lying and being secretive.
My feelings are that if he cannot accept this problem and get help, I can’t be with him. I do not want to spend years and years of my life unhappy, being lied to and ignored when I talk about things that upset me or when I try to offer support. It will grind me down and I will become a person who is not truly me and who I don’t want to be, it’s already started to happen. But I feel this huge weight of guilt and responsibility and I can’t get away from feeling I am a terrible person if I leave him. All I want more than anything in the world is for him to take that one step, admit it’s a problem and ask for help, and I have told him many times in a loving empathic way I will stick by him to get the help he needs, I will do anything he needs me to do to get better. But how long do I wait? I just go through this constant back and forth inside myself every minute of every day and it is emotional turmoil.
At the moment this is where I’m at: I don’t believe he is ready to admit it’s a problem, get help or change. I do not judge him for that at all but I don’t want to live my life like this or have our relationship in this way. Every single day all that goes through my mind is ‘say it, tell him, tell him if he won’t get help it’s over’ but every day I can’t say it. I currently feel like I couldn’t live with myself if I actually did it and I have completely taken on responsibility for him, his life, his feelings. I’m genuinely scared that it will continue to get worse and I will continue to not leave and I don’t want to live this life.