The Real Story

My husband is an alcoholic.

It's been getting worse. Since his business changed and provided him with more free time, his drinking has increased and his tolerance lowered. When he's home, I watch him watch the clock, waiting for noon when he can pop the cap on his first beer.

He doesn't stop until most if not all of it is gone. He buys beer by the case.

He tried, on his own, to stop, not too long ago. He had a talk with a friend who quit drinking. It took my husband three months to work up the resolve to go a day without beer. He didn't tell me what he was doing, and I didn't say anything. Five days passed, Then on Friday he came home with a full case. He told me he was going to stop drinking during the week, that he was drinking too much lately. He'd only drink on the weekends. I told him I was proud of him and his decision. I told him I thought it had been getting out of control too. I would do what I could to help him.

He's always loved beer. He's always been able to drink on a regular basis without any major personality changes. That changed after he started his plan. He binged on the weekends, sometimes drinking 18-24 bottles in a day. So now it brings out the worst in him. His cynicism, his paranoia, his insecurities, his need to control things, his temper. And he won't see it.

Sometimes it makes him remorseful. He starts apologizing to me; for the house, for spending years working 7 days a week, for 'making' me move out here away from all my friends and family and my one shot at my 'dream job'. He tells me I got the shitty end of the stick. He makes promises – we'll get you back home for a visit, we'll get those repairs done to the house, we'll get you a housekeeper. We've got the money for it. We've got all this money now. Don't you worry.

I hate this more than when he's yelling in my face.

But not as much as I hate it when he's yelling in our children's faces.

He expects them to understand things. How busy he is, how he doesn't have time to watch them or play with them because he's on the computer trying to make money, don't they understand how he has to make money so we can afford their toys, their food, the roof over their heads?

They aren't in elementary school yet.

He quit smoking on Mother's Day. It was my job to keep the kids away from him, since he was 'going to be cranky'. I kept them busy as best I could. We did stuff in the yard. We painted. We planted seeds. It still didn't work. They still bothered him. Then I bothered him when I asked if instead of me making dinner we could order a pizza or something. It's too expensive, he said, downing his 12^th imported beer of the day. Then when I started cooking, he got mad. Said I was pouting. Shoved money at me and told me to go get something.

That was my Mother's Day. I've had worse. There was the year we were in another city for his family reunion, when my babies were 8 months old, and I had to find a drugstore on foot to buy him some Pepto for his hangover at five in the morning. I'd been up most of the night taking care of the babies who were cranky, and wondering when he'd get back from drinking with his cousins. The next day his sister thrust her new diamond ring in my face and asked me what I'd gotten. This was before church with the family, my husband staying in the rental car during the service, puking out the window onto the parking lot. Back out at the car, he admitted with a laugh to his mother and to me that he hadn't had a chance to get either of us anything. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. My MIL didn't care, since she'd gotten something nice from her daughter and her husband.

He still hasn't found the time to get anything. But gifts aren't really the point here.

I digress. I want to focus on what is happening now, I have to get things down and look at them, and decide what to do.

The more I write, the angrier I get. It's a bad, cold anger, sitting in the pit of my stomach.

He's smoking again. So Mother's Day was a wasted effort. I think, actually, quitting smoking was an excuse to start drinking all week again, because he is. And his tolerance is still lowered.

I'm doing what I can to fix things. I'm back in school, hopefully headed for a degree that will allow me to bring in some pretty good money. I tell him it will benefit all of us. We can get things done to the house. We won't have to worry. And I'll be setting down even more roots here.

He is supportive of this. To a point. There is an old pattern here too. Long before the kids, I was interviewing for my boss's newly-vacant, much better-paying position. I was in the shower, going over what I'd say in the interview, when he came in an asked me if I was planning to leave him once the job was mine. This was out of nowhere. We were getting along great. This was his insecurity rearing its ugly head. I reassured him I was going nowhere, how could he think this? It was the old argument; he'd 'forced' me to leave my home.

I hate this argument. It leaves no room for love. It leaves no room for faith. It leaves no room for free-will, for making a choice and not looking back. I think it's fair to say it belittles me.

He's doing it again. We had a huge fight over the past weekend. He was drunk, he was picking on one of our children. I tried to break it up. It was a simple matter; let the kid go out into the yard first, get settled on the swing, then go out yourself and work on whatever project you accuse him of preventing you from finishing. I didn't say it this way, of course. I told him to stay inside for a minute and we could finish having our conversation. He said we weren't having a conversation, and I said, yes, we were, I had been talking about, of all things, coupons I'd just received, and how they related to an article he'd read to me the day before about the failing economy. He turned on me, he yelled, I tried to calm him down, and I realized then that he was drunk beyond reasoning with. Things spiraled. I was taking the kids' side, he said. He had things he needed to do in the yard, he said, and the kids and I were keeping him from it.

Then he accused me of always talking about a different part of the country, with the implication that I was going to run away there. Here's where I spoke up and refuted him. I'd visited this place once, to see some of our old friends, and it bothered him so much at the time that he stopped talking to them for a while, so after that I stopped talking about that place completely. (I stopped talking about ANY place. The last time I asked if I could go somewhere, he said, “You do and I'll fucking kill you.” So I don't talk about other places anymore.) He said I'd been talking about that place the week before. I told him to remind me of that incident, because I was making a point of not mentioning that place. He couldn't remember, but he was SURE I'd been talking about it.

Then he changed tactics. I've been complaining about school, about the inability to get into the program I need because of a ridiculously long waiting list, and how two of my other classmates who were moving were able to find placement in other programs before even finishing their pre-recs. He said I was always complaining about the weather, my school, the lack of summer programs for the kids, the house, everything about this place. He turned this into 'you hate this state, and by proxy hate me.' I tried to tell him how this made no sense, how he complained about the weather, the lack of programs, etc. right along with me, and louder. I reminded him that only a few years ago HE was talking about moving to another state, and bringing his entire extended family with us 'for their own safety'. But it was different for him, he said. Yeah.

Note to self: Things I shouldn't discuss in the negative but get to hear about in the negative ad nauseum:

School

The kids' school

The house

The suburbs

The weather

Things I am not to bring up at all:

Finishing old projects before new ones are started

Other parts of the country

Politics

My writing (He's tired of hearing about it, because he's had to 'live' with it)

He told me that he was doing the best he could. He told me that he'd done one good thing in his life and that was selling some property at the right time, that that was his one Home Run. So I could just take everything, the house and everything in it, the stocks, the bank accounts, and he would just move into the back of his store. He figured I was just going to leave anyway, he'd come home one day and I'd be gone, and he wasn't even sure if I'd take the kids with me. Then he threw in my face the time I was on some hormones for my health, and how I'd told him I was having intrusive thoughts about harming myself. We've been over this. When it started, I went off the meds, and I told him why. Now he was accusing me of being suicidal, and that he couldn't trust me.

So I spent the rest of the argument trying to reassure him, and telling him that I loved him, that I wasn't gong anywhere, I wasn't going to harm myself, nothing was his fault, he's done a fine job, etc.

And I didn't sleep that night. And the next day I emailed my 'forbidden friend.' And she called me back almost instantly. And we talked a bit. And I decided to write it all down. And debated sharing it with anyone else.

And decided I would. And here you are, I hope.

I've invited ladies only. I'm not looking for some white knight. And with one exception, I've only invited (for now) people who don't know him, because I've been in situations when a couple is fighting and I've had to look one of them in the eye and hide what I've heard. I don't want to do that to anybody else.

I don't even know if I'm looking for advice, if I'm looking for someone to say, 'stick with him' or 'dump him' or anything at all. I think I'm jut trying to get it out, and I want someone to see, because I'm in a lonely place here, where I never, ever thought I'd be.

I tell myself that MUST stay. I've made vows. I've got kids who need two parents. I've got nothing else. I still love him. Things are great when he's sober.

And if I leave (and I WOULD take the kids, thank you very much), he'll just say “I told you so.” I'll prove him right -- that I am not to be trusted. And for someone with trust issues herself, well, that's crushing.

I tell myself that I just need to be stronger. That I could be in a worse situation.

Thank you.