[bigdrunner]

Hi guys,

Would really welcome some advice.my wife is 46. She’s had what I would call a problem with alcohol for about five years, but it’s got steadily worse. We’ve had serious chats about it many times, I’d say at least 6 or 7 times, and we’ve split up three times. The last time in 2018 when I also discovered she had built up £44k in secret credit card debt. She remortgaged to pay it off and bought me out of my half of the house so I’ve been paying half her mortgage in rent for the past 18 months with £125k burning a hole in a bank account as my house purchase fell through so I ended up staying, believing her promises.

Her drinking slowly increased, until a point in May this year when we had another serious chat. For the first time ever she admitted she had a problem and that she hated who she became when she drinks. She promised never to drink again. That lasted seven days.

This is what I sent her that day in and effort yet again to help her realise the effects on me.

Sent on Friday 22nd May 2020

Hey, thanks for opening up to me earlier, and in a way I’m pleased you’re also aware of and worried about how bad things have got. I can’t find what I wrote in 2018, but it was a similar to this. As I said this morning, I want to be blunt, deliberately so, because that way you understand how significant an issue this is and how much needs to change. But also because I want you to know that I want to help and support you.

I love you. But you drink too much and you drink too often. And when you drink you become someone I really don’t like. I don’t and never will have any problem with you drinking, but when you drink so much, and so often, and when you become someone who staggers around asking me the same questions again and again, arguing with the kids, and who regularly passes out on the sofa it starts to get beyond boring.

When we split up in April 2018 I wrote you a note telling you that this was your last chance, and that if you ever went back to the way you had been at that point that would be us done. I hope you agree I’ve been patient and determined but you’re now back at that place again. The place where it feels like there are three of us in this marriage. Where the person I still love gets replaced night after night with a horrible imposter. Someone I hate, someone who when she reaches even for the first glass makes my heart sink with the horror of the prospect of spending the evening again with her. Not a person I recognise, not a person I like, not someone I respect and definitely not the person I married or want to spend my life with.

I offered before to help you, and I offer that again, and I want to support you, but only where you are willing and able to help yourself. Let me know please and I will do whatever you need and whatever it takes, including supporting you through professional help if you need. But, and we’re in that place again, this remains a huge deal. I cannot and will not, however much I love you, spend the rest of my life with someone who’s behaviour affects me so terribly in this way. I will not tolerate this any longer.

I’m so pleased you’ve recognised this, and have admitted that you get grumpy and become a different person when you’re drunk, as I was never convinced before that you fully understood the horrible effect your drinking was having on me, as if I was being selfish by raising it.

As I said earlier, right now I do not want to come back onto the house deeds but really do want to give you a further opportunity to get things under control. Break the habit, fight the urges, remember please how it makes me feel and, if it helps, be terrified of being on your own, because that’s where you’ll end up. I doubt I’ll move on, but I’ll definitely move out.

Please, I’m begging you. It’s horrible beyond words seeing you stolen night after night. Please know this is a big deal, and trust me when I say that you drink too much and that you drink too often. I hate the effect it is having on me and of having to share a sofa with you time after time when you become that different person.

Talk to me please. Hug me please. Love me please. But more than anything, please recognise that this is a real problem that if you don’t sort out will leave me with no choice. I need to be blunt about the fact that I will not spend my life with someone who’s behaviour makes me so miserable.

Xx

After that first week things returned pretty much to normal, with her drinking about 70-100 units a week. Then, this past week, she’s just reached another level, see my diary below.

I would welcome advice from those who have also lived through this, either as an addict or someone who lives with one. I worry she’s hiding or at least trying to hide her drinking from me, and she really doesn’t seem to care or be able to control herself. She never just has one, there’s always time for one more. And she is not a happy drunk, she a staggering, slurring argumentative, snarky and belligerent drunk, who I hate, I absolutely hate. Come the next morning there’ll be empty wine bottles hidden behind the cornflakes, or sometimes thrown out of the kitchen window into the garden. I’ve found them in the boot of her car, in her work bag. Every time she goes to the shop to ‘get the kids some lemonade’ she’ll come back with two more bottles of wine. Every time I go out, either for work or to the shop or for a run, if an evening I’ll find her drunk when I return. I stopped drinking entirely almost three years ago in an effort to help, but to no avail.

I have everything ready, mortgage offer etc, to go, just waiting for the right house, but should I ever expect her to change? The thought of the rest of my life being lived like this terrifies me but when sober she’s good company, and the memory of how much I once loved her burns strong, so at what point do I think I’ve given enough?

Friday 7th August. And again. She’d managed a whole bottle by 18:30, and had finished the 2nd by 20:30. She was absolutely wasted. Barely able to stand and slurring to the point it was hard to understand. She started the third bottle but had passed out by 21:30. I watched tv for an hour while she slept. At 22:30 she woke with a start and microwaved a huge plate of food, most of which she spilt on the sofa. 20 units. 110 for the week.

Thursday 6th August. Incessant. Drinking from 17:00, all night. One can of beer, the rest of the bottle of wine (8 units). Then two gin and tonic and two cans of coffee spirits. 15 units. She was slurring and belligerent as well as unsteady all night. She passed out about 22:30 and I went to bed at 22:55, leaving her on the sofa.

Wednesday 5th August. I went out on for work for two hours. When I got home she had been out to get two bottles. She also admitted when she got back from football training that she’d been in the pub while it was on and certainly will have had a small wine albeit I didn’t see and can’t be sure so won’t count. She drank a whole bottle and a small glass of a 2nd and was her usual slurring and unsteady self, going on her usual Facebook mission to be belligerent, commenting disparagingly on posts of mine. 10 units.

Tuesday 4th August. Out for a meal. Two large glasses and one small. Snapping again at both kids and then passing out on the sofa after we’d got home at 21:00. 8 units.

Monday 3rd August. I went to the garage to have a tyre fitted at 16:00. Back at 17:30. She’d drunk almost a whole bottle while I was out and had hidden the empty back in the fridge. The 2nd bottle was also chilling. She had a beer while she cooked tea and was wasted, making a mess, staggering around and unable to read the recipe – she tried to make a risotto but gave up on measuring the rice and then decided to cook it first before she added it to the stock. Needless to say it looked awful and she argued with our daughter at tea time as she refused to eat it. She then drank almost another whole bottle. 19 units.

Sunday 2nd August. One large glass in the pub at 17:30, then a whole bottle and a further small glass. 13 units. She was slurring and sleepy long before bedtime.

Saturday 1st August. Hard to know where to start! She was drinking from 13:30 with two large glasses in the pub, followed by a whisky at 15:00. She drank two further bottles and was awful, slurring, unsteady and arguing with the kids. She insisted on watching a German film with subtitles so the kids disappeared upstairs before I was able to convince her. She could barely walk or talk by this point going on and on about how hot it was (it wasn’t that hot) in bed despite still wearing most of her clothes. She then tripped over the bed. 25 units.

[bigdrunner]

This forum has been a real eye opener for me, so useful. To know I’m not being paranoid and that there are others going through this as well is really reassuring to know.

What I really struggle with is the sense that I’m living wth two people. The smiley, friendly, professional lady who I see at breakfast time, and the slurring, unsteady, argumentative lady who passes out on my sofa 4-5 nights a week.

Do alcoholics know that they’re alcoholics? My wife always denied her problems for years, before finally admitting in May she hates who she becomes, but every time we speak or even when we separate, it’s maybe 2-3 months before she’s back where she always was.

She started at about 15:00 yesterday and had 2.5 bottles be for she passed out just about 21:00. Somewhat ironic but I spent 90 mins reading this forum while she snored next to me.

Really don’t know how much longer I can manage this – is there any likelihood it’ll get so bad she’ll decide to do something about it, or does it just get worse and worse until she gets ill?

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