Leave alcoholic partner?

Corvus

Same old story. I'm not a new poster.

How long do you wait for an alcoholic to get sober? He's in a treatment centre, second time around after managing just a few weeks off the bottle. He said anyone would drink if they had to live with me.

He lost his job last year due to drink. My wages aren't enough to pay the mortgage. We're running out of money but he says if I divorce him then I'm not giving the marriage and family a chance and he will get sober.

any advice welcome ... especially from people who have been in this situation...

nearlyrich

I have not been married to an alcoholic myself but I have been in an abusive relationship everything was my fault...it wasn't and it isn't your fault either. I have a really close friend who was married to an alcoholic and I never knew until they split up. I knew he was useless with money and changed his job a lot but she kept quiet the fact that he spent all their money on alcohol and got sacked for being unreliable several times a year. The number one priority is your wellbeing and that of your children, if he was truly repentant would he be saying the nasty things he is ? What would you say to your best friend if she had the same problem?

Savvy_Sue

Corvus wrote: »

Same old story. I'm not a new poster.

There's a clue there to your answer ...

Corvus wrote: »

How long do you wait for an alcoholic to get sober? He's in a treatment centre, second time around after managing just a few weeks off the bottle. He said anyone would drink if they had to live with me.

Why would you stay if that's what he believes? Surely you'd be doing him a favour if you left.

Corvus wrote: »

He lost his job last year due to drink. My wages aren't enough to pay the mortgage. We're running out of money but he says if I divorce him then I'm not giving the marriage and family a chance and he will get sober.

So let's turn this around: why can't HE get sober in order to give the marriage and family a chance?

Corvus wrote: »

any advice welcome ... especially from people who have been in this situation...

I admit, I haven't been in this situation. However, I do believe in the sanctity of marriage and all that, BUT there are limits.

Get support for yourself, and let him work out whether he wants to get sober or not.

Good luck ...

JBD

OP, your partner sounds incredibly manipulative.He is trying to dump the responsibility for his own bad behaviour on to you. I suppose that it is a positive step that he is in rehab at the moment, however he really needs to accept responsibility for his own actions. Whether he stays sober is his choice, not yours or anyone elses. No one else can drive him to drink.
No one can really advise you on whether to stay with him or divorce him ,that is your decision but I do think you have to decide on setting boundaries.
Also I notice in your post that you don't say if you still love him or not. How would you feel if he does manage to stay sober? This isn't neccesarily going to solve all your problems. There may be other factors to consider.
I hope you manage to make the right choices for yourself and your family. Best of luck.

tabskitten

Why are you asking the question? You know the answer and you know what you want to do.

You do not need us to justify your decision for you, and you do not need to feel guilty for it.

Blackpool_Saver

Once they get 'sober' that is not the end of it, then they have dry drunk syndrome, look it up PLEASE, just get away while you can.

Blackpool_Saver

Unfortunately when many former drinkers go through the grieving process over the loss of their old friend, the bottle, some never get past the anger stage.
It is a very real loss. The drink has been their friend for many years and one they could count on. When the whole world turned against them, the bottle never let them down. It was always there ready for the good times, the celebrations, the parties, as well as the sad, mad, and lonely times, too.

Finally their old friend let them down... they got in trouble with the law, lost a job or career, almost lost their family, or the doctors told them they had to stop drinking... whatever the reason, the circumstances of their life brought them to the point where they made a decision to say "so long" to the bottle.

Whether they realized it or not, they began the stages of grieving -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance -- the same stages most people go through when they have a great loss in their lives or have been told they have a terminal illness.

First comes the denial -- it's really not that big a deal, I've always said I could quit anytime -- and then the anger and depression when they realize just how much that had come to depend on their old friend alcohol.

Many make it through the process to the final stage -- accepting the loss, learning and growing through the experience, and moving on.

Some never make it. It's sad to see them, sometimes many years later, still stuck in their anger, bitterness, and resentment at having to make the change in their lives. They haven't had a drink in years, but they have also never had a "sober" day.

You even see them in the 12-step rooms... been in the program for years and years and their lives seem to be a constant unmanageable struggle. All those years and they have no more of a spiritual awakening than they did the first time they walked into the room.

"Dry Drunk" has been described as "A condition of returning to one's old alcoholic thinking and behavior without actually having taken a drink." Or as one wise old drunk put it, if a horse thief goes into A.A. what you can end up with is a sober horse thief. Or a personal favorite: you can take the rum out of the fruit cake, but you've still got a fruit cake!

Those who quit drinking but are still angry about it, wind up living miserable lives and usually make everyone else around them miserable too. If it has been said once in an Al-Anon meeting, it has been whispered thousands of times, "I almost wish he would go back to drinking."

ailuro2

Sell up and leave before you end up putting the poor man into an early grave.

Really, he has wasted enough of his life on you already.

He will recover far easier and be able to make a fresh start in a place of his own without the memories of you driving him to drink all the time.

There is nothing stopping you getting back together once his recovery is complete and you have learned how to be a better partner to him, maybe you can have counselling together at some time in the future to see where you are going wrong.....;)

And so on and so forth, it's sometimes easier to agree with them and take a bit of blame to persuade them to set you free. Run while you still can.....as fast as you can! it osunds like you've seen the light and just need a bit of encouragement to run towards it.:)

I left an alcoholic who wouldn't admit he was an alcoholic, we were engaged and living together, which was quite a big deal for me twenty years ago... thankfully I realised I couldn't keep living like this, had a lightbulb moment and finished it, said I needed time to myself etc, not "you're an alcoholic and can't change", as I'd heard the promises from that story and stayed so many times before.
I got my name off the mortgage and bought my own little place. It wasn't easy but I got there. Those were the days when a single person could afford a little flat of their own,these days you might be looking at renting a houseshare.

Sadly, many years later I had heard he had been in treatment but it wasn't helping that he always came out and started drinking again.
I drove past him a few years ago, and he had that funny walk that people who have been abusing their bodies for years end up with, that funny shuffling walk.

For me, I'm happily married, I hardly ever drink, my DH likes a drink but once a week or so, not every night, we have a wonderful DD, a nice little house and are generally living a nice littlle life that some people might find boring but we appreciate the daily hum of life with no arguments or dramas.

newcook

My ex was an alcoholic and a self harmer but would never ever admit that it was him who had the problem – it was always someone else’s fault. He would go ‘dry’ for a couple of weeks (usually when he was in hospital for cutting himself or taking a load of pills – though never enough to kill himself) and he always promised he would change. He didn’t. I left him just over 2 years ago and hear through the grapevine he is still in and out of hospital and still blaming everyone else but himself – even still blaming me because I left him!!

Only you can decide whether the marriage is worth fighting for – unfortunately most alcoholics need to lose everything and hit rock bottom before they realize they are the one with the problem and only they can be the ones to change it.

misgrace

Corvus wrote: »

He said anyone would drink if they had to live with me.

Usual cop out phrase, turn the guilt on you, its all your fault blah blah blah.

Unless he can admit he is the problem, or the alchol is the problem, then dont give him another chance, he has to prove to you that HE wants to get better, and make his marriage work.

Good luck in your decision. <<<< hugs>>>>

Pee

Two points - one he is blaming you for his drinking... hard to imagine how it can be your fault, but if it is, you should leave.

Two - He doesn't want you to leave. He wants you to give the mariage a fair chance.

My experience is with an ex who was my first really major boyfriend. I agreed to marry him. He was a heroin adict and when he gave up heroin, that became an alcohol addiction - actually much much worse to live with than a heroin addict.

He tried a couple of time properly and no sooner would he be out of hospital that he would be drinking again. I gave up drinking to avoid tempting him and even that didn't help. Many years later, i eventually worked out the only choice for me was to end things. I still had to look after him for a bit, but that was the nature of our relationship. Eventually he moved on and drank himself to death.

I wish that had never happened and I look back at what I did and try to work out what might have helped. If we had of had children, that might have helped. If it hadn't helped, I cannot imagine the mess and the fall out there would have been. Not a gamble I was willing to take.

The other half regret - it's not even that, he made his own choices and I made mine, - is that I didn't in the very first place say, this is enough, I want you to leave. If you sober up and can act like a normal thoughtful human being, please call me and we can spend some time together, but for now, you need to live in your own space, you need to deal with you own issues and I am not going to be there protecting you from the big bad world anymore.

Now, whether that would have worked or not is anyone's guess. It either would have or it wouldn't have. I wish I'd done it, because if it had worked, he would still be alive and if it hadn't worked, I could have moved on with my life a lot sooner. (But then I wouldn't be with my boyfriend now, so really, how things happened was for the best in the end.)

Do you have children? That may change your view... for instance I wouldn't want to leave the father of children and that makes it more important to try anything to help him, but equally his behaviour might be affecting them badly.

My ex would be asleep and making no sense by about six in the evening.

With regard to covering the mortgage and costs, one route would be a judicial separataion, meaning you can sort out financial matters without actually divorcing.