It's not your fault. It's easier to blame others and circumstances than see that the problem is in ourselves. IF ONLY this and IF ONLY that... I wouldn't drink. It's bull shit.

Go to Al-Anon. You'll find a lot of support and good suggestions there and probably make a ton of friends as a little icing on the cake.

agree as usual call alanon family groups from the yellow pages..or online at yp.com look them up and start going to understand what you need to know about how you figure into this....

Helloboto4022,

You are dealing with a difficult situation here and you need help and support. As the others have suggested, check out Al-Anon and draw on the experience of other people who have been in the same place. It is important for you to put your own health and well-being first and to look after yourself.

Your husband suffers from a unique illness because it is the only illness that tells the victim that he has not got it. He is in denial about his condition and he will probably get worse before there is any chance of improvement. He will blame you and the world around him for his drinking but you are not to blame; if you were not there he would find some other excuse. He may well believe his own excuses because years of alcohol abuse leads to wrong thinking. He may also believe that there is nothing that he can do about his drinking and that there is no hope for him. The good news is that there is hope and indeed he can recover from alcoholism. The problem is that he needs to want sobriety for himself.

For many people the answer to the alcohol problem comes from going to AA meetings. The problem that you have is getting your husband to an AA room and taking the wrong approach here may do more harm than good. That is where Al-Anon can help you.

Also, get yourself a copy of the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) and learn about alcoholism. There is a chapter in the book entitled To Wives and it will tell you a little about the right and wrong ways to deal with an alcoholic partner.

empower yourself and get to alanon, or he will take you down with him. Take care.

i am very surprised the therapist didn't give you any info on alanon, not a very good therapist if you ask me. The only good therapists i have found are the recovering alcoholic type of therapist, that has been there.

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/

Thank you for your responses. I have actually gone to Alanon in the past but I didn't stick with it. I thought the people were great. I think I wanted people to tell me what to do and they won't do that in Alanon. I was frustrated and felt I was not making any progress (I mean my husband wasn't making progress) and I just stopped going. I had tried to get him to come with me because they have an AA meeting in the same location at the same time as the Alanon meeting to no avail. It is weird because he says he knows he has a problem but yet he won't go to AA or his doctor or any type of outpatient treatment. I told him it feels like he has a mistress and that she (alcohol) is more important than me and more important than our relationship. Can anyone tell me why he has become more obsessed with sex as well? I refuse to be intimate with him when he drinks so we aren't intimate that often anymore. Now he has pictures of naked women all over his workshop in the garage. It really makes me feel uncomfortable and I don't even like going in there because it makes me feel like I am not good enough for him. He never did anything like that until about a year ago but there used to be just one photo now there are tons of them. I am in my early 40s and he will turn 50 this year. I struggle with staying and going. I am not sure how long I can live like this. He also tells me he doesn't like the guy I don't like (the drunk guy) but if he knows this why won't he get help. I really have hard time with that. Thanks again for your knowledge!

Yes it's okay to ask questions here. :} Sounds like his mancave has become his prized comfort zone. I'd encourage you to go back to Alanon and also to read up about Alcoholism. boto, until he wants to stop drinking and puts in the effort and commit to change, he won't. Might mean some tough decisions ahead for you. Take care of yourself.

As whos2say said -- It is not your fault. And as long as he wants to drink he will continue to blame you and everyone else.

I don't have any good advice other than to say take care of yourself. You might want to check out this group as well:

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/wives-of-alcoholics

I am also on the wives of alcoholics site. I just thought maybe folks that are alcoholics/recovering alcoholics on this site could give me some insight as to what he is going through or if there is any way to talk to him about getting help that will work or is everyone different. I am at my wits end. It is generally good during the week but the weekends this other person is there and it is just so hard to understand. My brain is getting fried from the constant change!

Just joined the group and read your post. I married an alcoholic 20 months ago. He didn't seem like a man that would have this problem. When we first met he only drank with a meal, or a couple on the weekends when he took me to a jazz session at one of the local nightclubs. However, it didn't take lone before he began drinking immediately after he came home from work. At first, he blamed it on the stress of helping out his family. then, he began to balme me. That's when I knew he had a big problem. I am not a drinker, am very health conscious and flood him with compliments, support, and all the nice things any good wife would do. Finally, I just let him sink so low that he ended up in the emergency room twice. They told him the same thing I did. A nurse at the emergency room gave me some GREAT advice. Take care of yourself, and be a good example. I pray and ask God to teach him a living lesson daily. At the end of the day, hee has to make the decision, but I have to go on living.

Helloboto4022,

Your husband is either in denial about his condition or else he does not see any way out. I was in that position a few years ago, minus the depression. I generally did not blame my wife when things went wrong and for the most part I could function reasonably well while drinking alcoholically. The biggest problem was that the drinking got steadily worse and a full-blown crisis was not far away.

I resented anyone interfering with my business where drinking was concerned and your husband is probably the same. For me, this was probably in order to allow for the deception and the cover-up to continue and especially in order to keep my wife in the dark about how much I was drinking. I did not have any understanding of alcoholism and for most of the time I probably did not think that there was much wrong with my drinking. The approach that my wife took was to suggest that maybe I had a problem with alcohol and did I not think that I should do something about it. She was as much in the dark about alcoholism as I was but her approach was good. If she had nagged about my drinking or demanded that I should go to AA, that would have been a perfect excuse to drink more. How could I not drink with the whole world against me sort of thinking? What she did was to plant the seed and although it took another couple of years and a glimpse of what the future held before I stopped drinking, I did eventually go to an AA meeting. This approach may work with your husband, if you are prepared to hang around long enough. However, it may well be that you will need to do something more drastic and that is why Al-Anon would be your best bet.

One thing that you may consider is getting an AA member who is a recovered alcoholic to talk to your husband. In AA, this is called Twelfth Step work and what these people do is to talk to an alcoholic without judging or lecturing. They talk about themselves and how they have recovered from alcoholism and suggest that the alcoholic could do the same with the help of AA. An alcoholic will be more likely to identify with such people because he will see that they understand his trouble in a way that other people cannot. Talking to such a person would at least let your husband see that there is a solution to his problem and he may decide to go to AA meetings. If you call AA in your area they should be able to arrange for a couple of members to visit your husband, providing that he agrees to see them of course.

Prayer is also a powerful tool and it should not be ignored in cases like this. At the end of the day, your first responsibility is to look after your own health.

Thanks again. I really appreciate your responses and advice. They really to give me some food for thought. @PJ54 - I did learn from Alanon not to say anything especially while drinking about his problem and I saw that I did nag and badger him for a long time about it and that is when I got blamed for it constantly. After I learned not to "nag" him about it, the blaming stopped. Now I discuss my concerns when he is sober but he still says if only I would appreciate what he does more, if only I would get skinnier (I am only 118 lbs), if only his job wasn't so stressful, etc. I advise him that he is still making the choice to buy the alcohol and drink it. He has a new one now that due to his depression I can't argue with him. Sometime I get so frustrated that I do raise my voice because I feel he isn't hearing me and doesn't understand what I go through and how his drinking affects me. But I guess that is part of the selfish part of alcoholism. I am just kind of rambling now but I do really appreciate all of your comments! Thank you!

He is blaming you for his drinking? What solution does HE have in mind?

Some people get pissed about this, but my opinion is that you either need to accept his drinking or not allow it in your relationship. That is the choice. If I were you and couldn't find that acceptance, I'd separate from him. Anything else and you are condoning it on some level - he is being "allowed" to continue despite the negative effect it is having on you. If that is okay with you so be it.

I am not a relationship counselor, nor do I think I know how best to handle your situation. I know that if I didn't want to stop drinking, NO ONE was going to make me, and I wasn't going to make anyone else's life around me better so long as I continued. Take it or leave it. My opinion is that if a person "allows" drinking and stays around for it, then they are enabling the drinking to continue.

You probably should try some Al-Anon meetings.

I have a lot of compassion for people who love an active alcoholic. There must be nothing worse than watching a loved one drown themselves and be subjected to mistreatment and/or neglect at the same time. I hope you can stay/get healthy yourself and learn to set the emotional boundaries necessary to live your own life well.

Good luck.

@Taradactyl - I love your "in your face" advice. I am so close to leaving but have fears about what will happen to our dogs if they are left alone with him. Thank goodness we never had children but those dogs are my babies (they are 13 and 9). I can move in with my sister and her husband but I cannot take my dogs because they wouldn't get along with her dogs very well. I wish I could make him leave but I know that isn't how separation works in our state. I have struggled with leaving for many years now. It is no easy decision but I know my sanity is waning. I am starting to feel anxiety when it is time to go home after work especially on Fridays because I know the weekends are the worst part of the week when he has the most time to drink. He also started frequenting strip clubs with his work buddies and he tries to hide it but it is rather apparent when he comes home and is groping me and I know he has been drinking as well. He has just become someone I don't know anymore. I really believe part of his brain has been damaged because he just isn't very logical anymore. It is extremely difficult to see an intelligent, talented, creative, loving man become a stranger who I don't get at all.

@BIGBEARS - I am not an alcoholic and have never been close to being one. I used to drink socially but we don't really go to many social gatherings anymore because he generally gets drunks before it is time to go so I go by myself (weddings, birthday parties, etc). I may have one or two drinks a year. I don't drink in hopes that it will show him you can live life and be happy without the influence of alcohol. He tells me alcohol makes him happy. He feels he deserves to get drunk after a hard week at work. I don't feel I deserve to deal with him when he is drunk. He isn't thinking clearly, he suffers from depression and uses alcohol as his cure. I am very happy in my life, I love my jobs, my friends and my family. I love my sober husband and dislike my drunk husband. It is very difficult to deal with the "change" every weekend and sometimes during the week. In the morning we have a great conversation and we both go about our day and then by the afternoon/evening he is so wasted that I have a totally different person on my hands. We can't spend any quality time together. We can't go anywhere together. It just sucks. For the last 10 years he has thought he can stop by himself, but he clearly can't. The frustrating part is he knows its a problem and he knows it is the main problem in our marriage (we discuss this when he is sober on a monthly basis) but yet he continues to do it. It's tough to see someone you love go down this path.