Living with an angry alcholic

[Kerri]

Hello all

I appreciate reading other stories and feel like I am not alone.

I just can’t live with my partners anger and irritability and know it has something to do with her drinking a bottle of red wine every night

she sleeps in every day and is always tired. She often retreats to her room during the day to lie down.

i can’t talk about it as it just makes her hide further - I find bottles in her room and empties in the bin. 
I have left the room and sleep in my own room, about 5 years ago now, as I couldn’t sleep with the tension next to me and being shouted at before bed was not pleasant. I feel like I’m always doing the wrong thing.

Now we have a boy, 14, who is avoiding school and not leaving the house! So the stress is bigger.

i can’t leave as we have two teenage boys -17 and 14 - and I live to keep supporting them each day

She Doesn’t wake in time to have breakfast with us and leaves the dishes and the chores to me in the mornings.

she doesn’t want to walk with me, she won’t do anything if I have suggested it, she won’t do housework and I am so tired of living in this mess!

maybe I just have to ask her to leave! Easier said than done:) it’s her house too. They are her kids too.

im sure she has anxiety and depression - she has been drinking like this for over 10years - I’m sure her work is stressful and she did her phd amongst this too - but once that was finished 3 years ago - the stress did not leave.

I like bushwalking and camping - so does she and she wants to come - but she is no longer fit and strong. She does no physical exercise now. She doesn’t want to walk with me- she just doesn’t want to miss out on walking with the boys.

lucky for me I walk daily with my dogs, I got to the gym with my 17 year old and we play volleyball, I go to yoga, I haven’t drunk alcohol for 18 years now. Or more. And I like to look after my sleep time as best I can. This is all very helpful for me. 

how can I best help her - and help myself and the boys?!

it is really hard work.

thanks

kerri

[smallwolf]

Hello and welcome.

Thank you for sharing your story. It sounds like a challenging and difficult situation to be in. 😞 You are wanting to support your partner, while be there for your sons. In your post it is obvious how much you care about your family.

It would be understandable if you're feeling exhausted and torn about what to do next. Anyone (including you) deserve a to have a partner who can share the load, emotionally and practically. The fact that you're maintaining your own health and routines, like walking, gym, and yoga, shows your resilience.

Supporting someone who struggles with alcohol can be really hard and especially when they are resistant to help. Please know you’re doing your best in an incredibly tough situation. I know there are some community related support groups from partners of alcoholics...

I cannot remember the names of these groups, but...

Last thing, if you do a google search for

beyond blue alcoholics

you will find a number of links to the stories of other people, similar to you and the replies they received. Hopefully, some of these might resonate with you.

Listening...

[therising]

Hi Kerri

I feel for you so deeply as you face so many challenges all rolled into one. I believe one of the toughest things to do in life is manage what is so multifaceted in nature, while trying to gain a really good sense of the best way forward.

Probably the biggest challenge, when it comes to living with someone who drinks, is them seeing drinking as a solution to a number of things. As a gal who rarely drinks these days, I can relate to drinking once having appeared as a solution in my life, especially in relation to depression, social anxiety and so on. As you'd know, life requires a lot of different skills and tools. While yoga provides skills/tools for self management, walking the dogs and camping may be a tool for connecting with animals and nature, going to the gym may help develop a skill set or be a tool for social interaction or offer a workout (of relaxed energy in the mornings or stressed energy after work), there are no skills or really healthy tools to be found in a bottle. Kerri, not sure whether you can relate but I found that when I stopped drinking I woke up to the fact that I didn't have all that many skills or tools in my backpack for life. When traveling life's paths, pays to be able to reach in and pull out what we need. The more skills we develop and the more tools we gather, the better off we are. I suppose you could say that if the only thing in our backpack is a bottle of wine (when it comes to coping), that's what we're going to reach for because it's better than nothing.

Trying to manage what a drinker believes or imagines can be a huge challenge, that's for sure. If they don't believe alcohol is a major sleep disruptor, it can be a problem as they remain tired, run down and somewhat dysfunctional. If they refuse to believe drinking is a depressant, in the way it suppresses certain chemical/biological functions, then that's also a problem. If they won't believe you when you tell them about certain facets within them that come to life when they've been drinking, this can be a massive problem. Another problem can involve having to manage those facets strategically, especially for the sake of your own mental health. While my husband and I began as great drinking buddies around 25 years ago and while we still live together, our paths kind of separated in a way when I stopped drinking and woke up to the need for self development. If there are 2 major things I've become conscious of, when it comes to living with someone who relies on alcohol, they relate to 1)their struggle or refusal to change certain beliefs and 2)the need to continue on my own self development path, while also taking my kids on that path too (for the sake of their mental, physical and soulful sense of wellbeing). For a drinker, the self development aspect can create the illusion of 'You're all against me'. Of course, this is not true. The truth is we and our kids can simply become a tight knit group of self developers who are happy to include new members who wish to join.

I think that until someone's ready to develop emotionally or it's not until they finally feel the overwhelming need or have no choice, they'll tend to rely on the emotions they gain from drinking.