Hey, Sars. Love the site.

I read yesterday’s Vine about drinking problems, and it got me to thinking about my husband. We’ve been married for about two months, and I still think he has a drinking problem.

I knew he drank when we met, but I didn’t know how much he drank until I moved in with him six months later. He usually drank a six-pack a night for about three to four nights a week, depending on how stressed out he was. We began to argue about this because I saw it as a possible problem. I don’t drink very often, but I never used to have a problem with other people drinking. It was his/her own business and not my problem. My husband’s drinking is not my problem either, but I worry about him. I’m not sure if I should be worried or not, but it raises all the alarm bells I have. He’s admitted that he had a drinking problem before, and that it’s also been an issue with other family members. He swears he has it under control now.

I found out recently that he used to have around twelve beers a night a few times a week. He still has a DWI on his record and also smashed up his car on a separate drinking binge. After that he resolved to never drink and drive again, and he has never deviated from that. He doesn’t get violent or angry when he drinks. I can’t even tell he’s drinking unless I see him do it or smell it on his breath. He says he just likes the taste of beer, and that it relaxes him. I worry about why he drinks. I worry that he can’t seem to completely relax without the help of alcohol. He doesn’t see this as a problem. I’m concerned that he must have at least six beers when he does drink. He has to get to his own personal relaxation stage, and he’s not stopping until he does.

He only drinks now on Friday night, mostly because we’ve fought about this so much. The alcohol really has been like another person in our relationship. I’m also concerned because there’s no “take it or leave it” with him. He always has to take it. I think beer is more important to him than he’ll ever admit, even to himself. I feel he brushes me off when I express concern. I also think he’s so stubborn that he can’t admit that I might have a point. I know he’s cut way back. He says I don’t appreciate this, but I do. I really do. I just still feel like there’s a problem. He can’t stand to feel that I may be bossing him around, and at any hint that I may be telling him what to do, he instantly shuts me down.

I’m being as honest as I can here, and I don’t feel like I tell him what to do — just that I’m worried about him, and I think he may still have a problem with alcohol. If it were him telling me that he was worried, I would seriously stop and think about what he said. But I also know that I can only take responsibility for myself. He can only change if he wants to. And he has changed, but I still worry. He also gets upset whenever I bring the drinking up. In his mind, it’s a complete non-issue until I bring it up. I feel like I’m not allowed to talk about it anymore, and that the only way to avoid an argument is to keep my mouth shut. So I usually get very quiet Friday evening. He’ll always ask me what’s wrong (he know what’s wrong), but I always tell him it’s nothing. It’s been fun.

I need an impartial opinion here. Maybe you’ll see something that I’m missing. Should I be worried, or am I just another nagging wife? Because I sure feel like one sometimes. I just want my husband healthy and around for as long as possible. I also worry what six beers downed in one night every week is doing to his liver and the rest of his body. Probably nothing. Please tell me what you think, and I hope what I wrote made sense.

Really Hope I’m Worrying Over Nothing

He’s an alcoholic. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t drink and drive (anymore); it doesn’t matter that he limits his consumption (now). It’s not the quantity of alcohol consumed, or the variety of possibly destructive behavior, that makes a person an alcoholic. It’s that he thinks he needs booze to be who he is.

Reread my response from yesterday; you really can’t get into a situation where you bargain with him about how much he “gets to” drink, because first of all, that puts you in the position of enforcing it and taking the nagging/disapproving role all the time, and second of all, it doesn’t address the central issue — which is that he relies on that Friday six-pack. He needs it. That’s what’s wrong. It’s not that he drinks. It’s that he needs to.

And you can’t make it a negotiation, you really can’t. You can tell him that you don’t like having to discuss it all the damn time, and that you worry about the effects on his health, and that you think he’s dependent on it, but you can’t make him react to that the way you want him to. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s able to tell himself he isn’t because he “only” drinks one night a week and he doesn’t drive drunk anymore, and he’s…not going to stop, probably.

Another reader who’s in recovery suggested that Time To Act Grown-Up check out an Al-Anon meeting, and I think you would get a lot out of it, because the hardest thing to do in this situation is to keep in mind that it’s not your problem. I mean, it is; you live with him, you love him, you fight about it, it’s not like it’s totally divorced from your reality. But it’s not up to you to “fix” it, or him — and when he makes you feel like a nag, or crazy for bringing it up, that’s not you either. Al-Anon gives you a place to go with this stuff and a way to benefit from the experiences of others.

It’s really hard, trying to untangle a situation like this, so for now, just…stop trying. Take a break. Look up an Al-Anon meeting near you and go and listen, or talk if you want to. Understand that you can’t “manage” your husband’s drinking, you can only manage your own response to it, and give yourself permission to do that.

It’s going to be fine.

Hi Sars. I really like your site and the advice you give, so hopefully, you can help me out on this one. Of course, it involves a boy, and it is kind of a long story. Sorry about that. I don’t know if it is important, but everyone involved here is college educated and way too old to be acting like high-schoolers. I don’t know if I need a kick in the head or not!

So, I’ve known this guy for about a year, and I liked him a lot when I first met him…but he had a girlfriend at the time. So nothing happened, because once I found out about the girlfriend I didn’t pursue anything, because well, you just shouldn’t try to steal other girl’s boyfriends. I used to see him fairly regularly at the gym, so we’d talk and say hi but that was all. He broke up with the girlfriend, but I didn’t find out until months later because I had stopped going to the gym.

Eventually we end up at the same party (because he had my roommate call me and make me stop by the party so he could see me). So, to make a long story short, we hook up the party and kind of start this friends with benefits thing that goes on for, I guess, two months.

So apparently he started seeing some not-quite-divorced chick (who has a little baby, I just found out) and I started seeing this other guy, so we just kind of stopped talking around Thanksgiving. I liked gym guy way more than this new guy, but sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

Then this past weekend he calls me on Friday at 11 PM out of the blue. We talk for a while, and I don’t really know what he wanted but it was just a “how have you been” and “what are you up to” conversation. So, I call my roommate to see if she knows anything, but she’s just as clueless as me. But yesterday she gets the scoop from a girl who works at the gym…apparently last Monday not-quite-divorced chick decides spur of the moment to go out with gym guy’s friends while he watches her baby. He wasn’t happy with this but didn’t want to make a scene at work, so he calls her at 11 and tells her to come get the kid. She picks him up and drops him off at another friend’s house so she can go to a strip club with the guys! So gym guy and not-quite-divorced have a big fight and, as far as anyone knows, have broken up. A couple days before he called me, I guess.

So here’s the deal…before I knew all this, I called him yesterday and left a message that went something like this: “Hey, it’s me. Looks like the Steelers and Eagles both won, but the Eagles still suck. Maybe we could go have a beer sometime this week. Give me a call when you get a chance.”

So what should I do? I propably would have waited to call had I known there was so much drama involved. But, then again, that isn’t my problem. It feels so sixth grade, but I almost think I’ll have to get my roommate to ask him about me…but I don’t know if I should wait awhile or what. Or call and say I didn’t know about all the drama but that I like him and he should call when he gets his head on straight? Or am I wasting my time? I don’t know. Help me.

Thanks,
Go Steelers

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Dear Go Backbone,

Um…no. Just no. What on earth do you want with a guy who has to make your roommate call you to come to a party when he wants to see you, and who gets stuck babysitting for a woman who’s out with his own friends? The guy’s an invertebrate, and if you settle for him instead of finding a grown-up to date, so are you.

I’m positive you can do better than this weenie, and should, but if for some reason you decide to disregard my counsel, at the very least call him yourself, and ask him what his deal is yourself, instead of asking your roommate or a girl at the gym. Or…me. This isn’t the sixth grade, you’re right. Graduate already.

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Sars,

Do you ever wonder if the plethora of women who write for advice with “he cheats on me and treats me like shit, but it is true love. Right?” have ever read The Vine? What kind of advice column do they think you’ve got here. I’m not complaining. Hell, for entertainment value they’re almost better than Shoplifting Jack.

Thanks.

Easily Amused

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Dear Easily,

Yeah, sometimes I wonder that, but mostly, it’s that people want to think It’s Different In Their Situation, and because they’re in it, they can’t see that it just isn’t different. It’s the same reason they dump, like, fourteen paragraphs on me; they know on some level that it’s not going to work out, and that I’m going to tell them that, but if it doesn’t work out, that might mean that it’s their fault or they deserve it, which they don’t want to deal with, so they ramble on for a week and hope all the evidence they’ve provided will convince me. Or themselves.

Which is understandable, because facing the failure of a relationship is painful, and people tend to postpone those failures even when they sense that they shouldn’t, and I can empathize with letting an amour merde drag on too long and refusing to admit defeat…which is another reason why I get a lot of letters that might seem kind of…unaware. Because I do empathize with most of these women, because I have made these mistakes myself, and suffered for it. Not to the extremes I see in the letters sometimes, but Lord knows I understand the feeling.

And a lot of the letter-writers just want someone to be like, “This is a bad situation, and you need to get out of it, but you’re not a bad person.” I mean, sure, I guess I’m “expected to” put my foot up some asses, but I don’t think anyone would stand in line for that shit if I weren’t compassionate also, usually.

[8/11/05]

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Tags:   boys (and girls)   rando