Questions via Email: Spouse keeps drinking

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

I really enjoy your blog.  I am almost a year sober, and as grateful as I can be to be sober today!

Been married well over fifteen years.  My spouse is a good person, a good partner, very supportive.  But they continue to drink.  I am becoming so resentful that they won't stop even though I know that my sobriety is my own responsibility.  I have asked them to stop even for a couple of days a week but they are not willing.  I am worried for our future.  I guess I don't even know what I want to ask -- magic wands don't work in this situation I suppose.  Do you have any insight when one person gets sober and the other stays in the hopelessness of booze?

Yours Truly,

Resentful Spouse

 

Dear Resentful Spouse,

There's a key piece of information missing in your email, and although germaine to both my answer and your question, strangely it both does and doesn't make any difference, ultimately.  That piece of information is this:  Is your spouse an alcoholic?

Because booze is most definitely not something that in and of itself leads to hopelessness.  Booze leads to conviviality (good word!), relaxation, camaraderie, bonding, romance... it can lower inhibitions for the terminally uptight.  It can take the edge off a difficult day.  Hell, it can even convince some white guys we can dance!  Booze is a social lubricant (but not a sexual one, kids.  Don't get those confused.  Ouch!).

As with anything, used responsibly and in moderation it's fine.

Unless you're an alcoholic.

So your concerns for your future and your idea of your spouse being in a state of hopelessness are either more -- or less -- accurate based on whether or not your spouse is in fact an alcoholic.

AA is not against drinking as an institution.  (Or in one, for that matter.  I know a few people who were wrongly institutionalized, and who really could have used a couple of drinks while they were there -- and god knows when I was in jail a couple of shots of tequila would have definitely taken the edge off.  But I digress.)

What we're about (and by stating this here I'm not suggesting that you don't know this) is offering a solution for people who have tried to stop and discovered that they can't -- that they, in essence, do not have the power on their own to remain sober.  We offer a solution for them to choose if they so desire.

This is a very different thing from people who do not want to stop drinking -- no matter how many people around them think they should, and regardless of the relationship those people have to the drinker.

The facts are, as you lay them out, that your spouse does not want to stop drinking.  Period.

So stop talking to them about it.  Stop mentioning it, stop raising your eyebrows, rolling your eyes, sighing in the kitchen, frowning, lowering the temperature of the room with cold condemnation or silent scorn.

To put it bluntly, and as difficult as this is to both hear and do, I suggest you shut up.  NOT shut up in meetings, or with sober friends or with a sponsor, or in your journal or in your prayer -- just to your spouse about their drinking.

Sorry.

But really, if you don't and your spouse is not an alcoholic you are being a royal pain, and if your spouse IS an alcoholic you are doing far more harm than good by harping on their drinking and how they should stop "for you" in any way, shape or form.

(I know this may read harshly, and it's not my intent to be unkind, but I am moved to be very direct with you.) 

I am sorry, R.S., but you say "you know your sobriety is your own responsibility" but you are not acting like it.  Which means that you're giving lip service to this idea.  You say it but I'm afraid you don't believe it.  For me, the best way to get an idea from my head and transform it into a belief in my gut is both through prayer and 'acting as if.'  As has been said many times by folk wiser than I am, "You can't think your way into right acting, but you can act your way into right thinking."  In my experience I can "act my way into better feeling" too.

Also, I want to say I have never been married (not that I know of, I am, after all, a blackout drinker), nor have I had a relationship that lasted anywhere as long as yours has -- wait, that's not entirely true.  I've had some very long term relationships -- in my mind -- but alas, they don't count.  All of which is to acknowledge that there are murky currents and dynamics in a long term marriage I have no experience of... but, with all disclaimers in place, I fear I see a bit of a disconnect happening.  While I don't think you should be asking your spouse not to drink, even for a couple of days out of the week, I must point out that for someone who's supposedly "very supportive" that's not a particularly supportive position to take.  If I had a partner who I cared about who was on a diet, or diabetic, out of consideration I like to think I would not eat ice cream right in front of them.  Every day.  If I did that would be... let's use the word "insensitive" in lieu of a few others that are equally apt but perhaps inflamatory.

But again, that's a whole other issue, and I only bring it up to nudge you towards maybe exploring some places which might help you look at your marriage and your relationship with fresh eyes.  Alanon, a marriage and family counselor... just someone you can lay some thing out to who might be able to say "Hmmm, have you considered looking at that this way?"

You're right, there's no quick magic for these kinds of things -- relationships are hard.  Sobriety can be hard.  Being a sober drunk around active drinkers is hard.  I applaud you, I cheer you on, I keep you in my thoughts and prayers.  None of the issues you are dealing with on a daily basis are simple or easy ones.

Except one:

With the help of a Higher Power and hopefully some folks from the fellowship of AA, all you have to do each day is not pick up the first drink.  That's it.  No matter what your head says, how angry, bored, sad, entitled or indignant you feel; no matter what your spouse says or does, all you have to do is not pick up the first drink.  Period.

And spouses and futures and all the other stuff will get sorted eventually.

If some of that wasn't easy to read, I apologize -- but I am sincere in wishing you the best, and hoping that some of it might have been helpful to you.  Please write me again and let me know how you're doing.

 

All the best,

Mr. SponsorPants

p.s.  And what do we do with resentments?  Anyone?  "We set them on paper."  Write it out, R.S., and you may be surprised at what you find.

p.p.s. Ugh. Sorry, that was smarmy and superior-sounding.  But inventories have helped me enormously over the years, and if you take some time to put your thoughts and resentments on paper in a four column inventory I am certain it will be helpful to you, too.

 

 

Comments

[bonzo]

mr sponsorpants, this was really, really helpful to me today. thank you.

[kelly]

My first thought was Al-Anon.

[recovering jezebel]

Yeah, I have to chime in that letter pretty much screams "I am in desperate need of Al-Anon." It's all very well to suggest that the writer should can it with the eyerolls, heavy signs, pauses freighted with meaning, etc.--but the only thing I ever found that would HELP me stop doing all that? I found in Al-Anon meetings. It took 90 meetings in 90 days before I could smile warmly at my domestic partner even as he acted out repeatedly with gambling and sexual behavior. And before I was calm enough to make healthy decisions for me.

So dear letter writer, please haste thee to an Al-Anon meeting. You probably don't want to go, but I promise you will feel better if you do, maybe right away, but definitely with time. Please. "Without such spiritual help, living with an alcoholic was too much for most of us," as the preamble says. And this is true when we have trouble with someone's drinking, whether that person is ready/able/willing to diagnose themselves as an alcoholic or not. Good luck to you—

[Nic]

Ditto on all the stuff about Al-Anon.