[Anonymous]

I’m married to a person for 3 years that has an alcohol problem. I knew when we got together that he had this problem, but when I started to date him, he slowed down his drinking. He told me when our child was born that he would stop drinking, this didn’t happen. I don’t want to make him out to be a bad person for drinking because he isn’t abusive towards me when he drinks. He has always drank and came from a bad childhood. He went to a couple of sessions with a therapists, but then stopped all of a sudden. I don’t push the issue because we end up getting into big arguments and I don’t need my 2 and 4 year to hear them. So I stopped asking him or doing anything about it. He knows that I won’t buy his beer, but he always finds a way to drink every day. We have been getting along really well this past few months. My thing that I need help with is how to go about telling him that he needs to quit, because it is affecting his health and spending the quality time that my girls need.

Also, I need advice on how to get him to actually sleep in the same bed with me. We both work 3rds, but on his days off I try to stay up with him so we can spend time with him and when its time for bed I ask him if he is coming upstairs and he replies that he will be up in a minute. He always ends up falling asleep on the couch. I’m the kind of girl who likes to cuddle to go to sleep and I don’t get it. I end up getting less sleep than I actually should be getting because I have to get up with the girls and make sure that they get the attention and things that they need. I don’t like asking for advice at all, but I figure I will get someone else’s opinion that doesn’t know me or my husband. He isn’t a bad guy at all, he is sweet and caring, but it seems to me like he is married to the bottle more that he is me. I have a big heart and I hold on to hope, but hope doesn’t always last that long. I hold my family close and also my friends. You can kind of say I have a big heart. I’m good at giving advice and it working out, but when it comes to be needing advice…I’m clueless.

I just need to know what I should do or go about doing things. He is 9 years older than I am(I’m 23), and I’m worried about his health and if he will be around long enough to see the girls graduate if he keeps up what he is doing. And I’ve also tried to get him to see a doctor about health problems…he refuses to go. Please help, I would greatly appreciated it!

[Anonymous]

Hi Bigheart,
Thanks for replying to my post. 🙂

As someone who had a drinking problem, the motivation to quit has to come from within himself. You can never quit because someone else wants you to. It just won’t work. There may be issues he needs to resolve that are the motivations behind his drinking. I don’t really know how I stopped. I just know that as soon as I started making changes in my life for the better, I no longer wanted to drink. So maybe try to get him to focus on other things. I’m sure he has goals or hobbies he’s abandoned. Try to get him to reconnect with who he is and who he can be. Focusing solely on the need to quit to drinking didn’t help me. It only made drinking more attractive. And the more people complained about my drinking, the more I felt the urge to drink.
Good luck.

[April Masini, your AskApril]

You’re making a lot of excuses for him. 😳 He is an alcoholic who isn’t taking care of himself and won’t sleep with you. You’re not going to change him. He has to decide things are bad enough in his life that he wants to change. As long as you enable his behavior by staying with him, he’s going to continue doing what he’s doing.

I know it’s tough to think about, but unless you pick up and leave him (or kick him out) because you don’t want to live with someone who’s married to his alcohol and not you, and who doesn’t care enough about his daughters to take care of himself to be there for them, he isn’t going to see how bad his behavior is. He may be sweet and have a good heart, but at the end of the day, you don’t come first. His daughters don’t come first. His drinking does. That won’t do. You need to move on and hope that he cares enough about the loss of you and the girls to do something to change his life — but if he doesn’t, at least you’ll have a shot at a healthy life without him.

I hope that helps. I know it’s tough to hear. Let me know how things go, and I hope you’ll follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url].

[Member]

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