I think anyone should be able to fit sobriety into their marriage if it means enough to the both of you and that's what you want to work towards.

I think you should be able to drink in front of him. When I quit last time for half a year, in the beginning my fiance / family asked about drinking in front of me and at first I didn't want them to but I got to a point where it was okay and didn't bother me at all.

I think that if your husband works toward sobriety and grows himself spiritually to fix whatever is inside of him that makes him drink, he will get to a point where he can be around it and it will be fine. If he can't get to that point, I don't think he has fixed the problem at all and it is still very much alive.

I might not drink in front of him temporarily if he is having trouble, but at some point he should be comfortable with it. You shouldn't have to not drink forever just because he has a problem.

Great post Rummi
And great reply Jayus, my wife is a social drinker as well. When we go out she can get a glass of wine, she will usually ask if it bothers me and for me it does not. She did not make me hide beer and sneak drinks when no one was looking, that is all on me. I think it will need to be something you need to figure out with your husband as Jayus suggested.

I love my wife dearly and do not want to deny her happiness just because I couldnt say no to drinking, I just need to remember that I CANT drink, not her.

Good luck,
S

IMHO it would be rude to drink in front of someone who is trying to stay sober. It could very well trigger him and that would throw his sobriety out the window.

If you can't sacrifice one drink per day to improve the quality of the marriage then maybe the love bonds are not strong enough to survive.
It sounds like you are choosing the alcohol over your husband and this is just an observation from what you wrote and what little I know about you. I may be completely wrong.

At the time I quit, my wife was very much against alcohol. She was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which is the precurser to sirosis. Since her dad died from it, she worked very hard to improve her health and get it under control so, in retrospect, she never touched alcohol because it would have been a death sentence to her.

Good Luck!

Hello rummi,

Every situation is different and what may be appropriate for one person may be all wrong for another. When I told my wife that I am an alcoholic her first reaction was: Is that the end of my glass of wine with dinner then? I told her that as I was the alcoholic, she was free to drink if she wished. Since that time she has continued to drink in the house as have other family members but unlike I did, they all drink in moderation.

I can only recount my own experience and others may well have a different opinion. What I have found is that I had to first of all fully accept that I cannot drink safely and to then find some way of removing the urge to drink. What other people do is irrelevant as long as I do what I need to do.

Where your husband is concerned it may help in the short term if he is not close to people who are drinking. However, he may also need to do something to change his thinking and his attitude to alcohol. On the question of resenting a spouse because they can still drink, that is an example of the thinking that needs to change. As I see it, your husband can honestly decide that he wants sobriety and then do whatever it takes in order to get there. In the short term it may help if you do not drink in front of him but longer term his attitude to alcohol should change so that other peoples drinking no longer bothers him. This change does not come about automatically and it often requires help.

I like to think of it as a deadly peanut allergy... If your kid has one, would you have peanut butter in the house?

Why so loving the drink? You can have a limeade or some virgin sangria.

If drinking was disturbing your family harmony, then I'd want the entire family to forsake drinking. What a great thing to do together.

i was fine with my husband drinking in front of me after I quit. But your husband might not like you drinking in front of him, especially if you asked him to quit. Why not ask him?

It doesn't really bother me that my wife drinks in front of me. I am jealous but she's not alcoholic.

What really gets me is hearing the tinkle of ice in the glass, and the clink of the stemware. Just gets under my skin.

Oh well. Thing is if you have to hide it then something is not right

1is2many

I don't know how comfortable I would have been in the beginning with a spouse drinking in front of me while I was trying to find a new way to life. In early sobriety, I think he needs all the support he can get.

I'm married to a normal drinker. We've been married 15 years, the last 4 I've been sober. Huge changes for us.
In short he keeps his beer and some wine in the house. I'm totally fine with that.
In early sobriety I asked him if he'd stay sober on a first night or two out with friends...it helped me to have his support.
But other than that....he drinks when he feels like it and I'm ok with that.
We go out for meals regularly with friends and they drink, I dont.
If it bothered me, I wouldn't do it. It doesn't.
I'm sober regardless of who drinks or doesn't around me.

Thank you all for your replies. I am not a big drinker but I do social drink. Its not that I cannot put it down for a month or two, its more the idea of never being able to share a drink again. Nevertheless, my husband is very important to me and I will do whatever it takes to support his sobriety. He has been 10 days sober now and we are doing great. I am doing all i can to encourage him but I am thinking long term. I guess I need to stop thinking so ahead and concentrate on whats going on now which is his well being. As for his opinion on the subject, he says that its my choice whether I choose to drink or not and that its not his place to tell me not to. Even though he says that I have common sense that tells me that if it was me in his shoes I most likely would appreciate someone to support me . Nevertheless my husband and I are like night and day so who knows. Today is our first day of marriage counseling. I am nervous about attending because things are going so well right now that I would hate to impose any stress on him that could send him back to the bottle. I guess we must wait and see. I will keep you guys posted .Thanks guys!

Each person is different- my husband has been through the wringer because of my drinking. I came pretty close to dying.

For that reason, and because drinking isn't that big of a deal to him, he doesn't drink now. But, he wasn't anything but an occasional drinker to begin with.

Personally, I don't care if others around me drink. This is my issue, not theirs. Have you asked him?

rummi, the best thing you could do to support your husband would be to go to Al-Anon. This is not just his problem. You've got a problem related to alcohol too. It's a family disease.

Don't you find yourself to be too focused on him?

If your husband is serious about his not driking, it doesn't matter who drinks in front of him or when...he won't be tempted.

I quit for 8 years and attended many drinking functions and had drinkers in my house. If he uses it for an excuse than he just isn't ready.

And counseling, too? That's great! But you sound nervous about that, too.

You sound upset that you won't be able to "share a drink" with him? How about a dinner? Movie? Walk? Sex?

May I suggest that you sound very anxious about his changes. I hope you're not sabotaging him...