My Husband is an Alcoholic

The writer of this piece wishes to remain anonymous

My husband is an alcoholic. Well, we would disagree with that one – he doesn’t talk about alcohol with me. In fact, it’s almost as if alcohol doesn’t exist in our household. Apart from when it bludgeons me, renders me speechless, incoherent with rage.

I know when my husband has been drinking because he texts me in stupid, unfunny gifs and emojis. I know when he’s been drinking because he snores and farts in the bed next to me. I’m always on edge – I can hear it in the change of his voice instantly. If I ask him if he’s been drinking he’s immediately angry. Why do I have to ask? Does it matter? Yes it does. Because I get scared and more despondent by the day. When I find the bottle of vodka hidden by the side of the sofa, the empty bottle of wine hidden deep in the rubbish. How can someone who is an alcoholic go for days without drinking? Go to work? I’m wrong. I’m obviously wrong – I just don’t understand that he needs to destress. That I’m nagging. The sigh when I ask if he’s been drinking when I come home. When he gives me a tightly pursed kiss goodnight, when he knows I’m trying to smell his breath.

It started in 2013. My father-in-law passed away. A larger than life figure, full of fun and love, someone irrepressible and irreplaceable. My husband sank into depression (‘don’t be stupid, that’s only for women’) and was lost, so lost. How did he cope? By diving headfirst into the bottle.

He drank – a lot. For a while it was endless bottles of wine. I got angry, tried to get him to go to counselling, which he refused. That was another thing that was for women apparently. Bereavement counselling? What’s the point – it won’t bring him back? He became nasty when he drank, ended up at a party next door flirting with the neighbour one night, out walking the streets in a rage another. Me driving, fruitlessly searching. He was made redundant from work. Who was there for him? Miss Rioja, Miss Cabernet and Miss Barolo. Not me. Not the Mrs.

He got angry when confronted. Told me to fuck off. Told me I didn’t understand – like I wasn’t grieving too, for someone who I considered my second father. Who had been there for me when my own father had left us for someone else. Either he sat sullenly, not listening, or he shouted. Told me I was shouting, that I was aggressive. Not aware of his own strength. Pushed me so hard, the second time that had happened, so that something in my ear went pop, and then filled with agonising pain. In A&E I felt broken, lying about getting pushed by a drunk in the street, vague about the details. Declining to give my name. When I came home, he didn’t remember, denied that anything had happened. It was my fault for being angry in the first place.

I took to hiding the alcohol. The bottle of Marsala I used for cooking I was going to hide when I realised it was empty. The bottles of blueberry and lime infused vodka I’d made as Christmas presents, empty, blueberries rolling around in a muddle of citrus peel forlornly at the bottom. I wouldn’t cook a risotto because I didn’t dare deglaze the pan with white wine.

My husband became reclusive. Sat indoors on web forums where he spoke to other angry men who bemoaned women. Men who were interested in engines and sprockets. He stopped going out. He did come out for my birthday about three years ago as a special favour to me. For forty-five minutes, and then he went home. 

He would sit slouched, watching inane television. Stupid things he didn’t remember the next day. Not speaking to me. Not seeing me. Not wanting me. The sex became more perfunctory, I had to try harder to excite him. Make-up, lingerie, role play. I felt dirty and used. Like I wasn’t enough, I had to act the role of mistress, of sex-worker. Then he stopped altogether. He couldn’t function, got angry and upset the softer he got. The touching stopped. The tenderness. Gone. I asked, I begged. Go get your testosterone checked. Go and speak to the GP. Nope. Then he was unemployed for a year, and he receded further and further away from me.

It all came to a head (I’d laugh at the pun if it was funny) when he overheard me talking to a friend. I’d accidentally dialled his number when putting my phone in my bag. He heard a friend ask me if I wanted to have an affair. I’d been crying about being lonely, about aching for the touch of fingers. Of flirting with strangers just to feel seen. I replied that I didn’t want to, I was married, I just wanted my husband back. Drunk, all he heard was ‘did I want to unmarry?’ I came home to ice and frost. And vodka. An opened bottle of vodka, half drunk.

I managed to explain, to convince him that he hadn’t heard me right. I’d never say anything so ungrammatical. I’d say ‘divorce’. There it was. The ‘d’ word and not the one I wanted. I said he needed to do certain things – that I’d had enough of asking, now I was telling. Go see the GP. Spend time with me. Do things I wanted to do. Simple things – have fun together. 

We went to the seaside the next day and he stormed and sulked next to me, refused to paddle in the sea. Refused to wave at me. I retreated inwards.

It all came to a head in February last year. He’d been drinking. Quietly. Solitary. Alone downstairs with his rage and his thoughts. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a daily thing, sometimes not even a weekly thing. That’s why he can’t be an alcoholic he says, he doesn’t do it every day, he keeps down a job. This was the time I knew the problem could no longer be ignored, no longer be just an argument to be had. I heard the garage door open, found him getting out the motorbike. I came down, begged him not to go. Begged him to reconsider – that I would go and get the booze for him. Anything. He refused. Shut the front door in my face. I went to bed, crying. Heard a loud bang – ran out. Saw nothing.

4am I get a text from A&E. He hadn’t called me, because I would have been pissed off and said ‘I told him so’. 6 ribs and a dislocated shoulder. A week in hospital. Thank god they didn’t breathalyze him – that would have been the end of his job, one it had taken months to get.  Something in me broke that day, let alone his ribs. That he cared so little for the safety of others, that he cared so little for me – that he cared so little for himself.

A year on, and I don’t know what to do. Some say leave him, some say he’s okay most of the time, just put up with it. That’s why you get married – in sickness and in health. I can’t face the horror of making him sad, of making him unhappy. Of leaving. What would he do to himself? What else would happen? So I stay. But what would I tell someone else in my position?

I know the answer.

Anonymous

The families and friends of alcoholics can find support, friendship and sympathy from Al-Anon. You are not alone.

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