Expert: Joseph Lee O. - 2/12/2009

Question
My Husband and I have been married for about 3 years.  This is a second marriage for the both of us.  My husband has not had an easy life.  His mother left when he was little and he has struggled to keep a relationship with her.  He married and had kids very young and 7 years into his marriage his wife left him for another man.
 I always knew my husband drank but I realized shortly after we married just how much my husband drinks.  As with any marriage we have problems but the drinking is really harming our relationship.  We began marriage counseling and obviously the drinking was an issues that has been addressed.  (I've also learned over the past few years that drinking was an issue in his previous marriage)  He admits he is an alcoholic but doesn't see a problem with drinking to relax at night because he gets up and goes to work and provides for our family.  I cant argue with this at all because he does, but I want him involved at home as well.  I finally asked him to please seek help.  I told him I love him and I want our marriage to work but I don't see this happening if the drinking continues.  My husband left.  He left with the shirt on his back.  He wont answer my calls and wont come here to get his things.  He told our neighbor who is a close friend that he bought some new things and he is staying at a hotel.  He turns his phone off at night and has completely isolated himself from me.  He emailed me yesterday and told me he was confused and he loved me.  He then emailed me today and said he has to "fight back tears all day" and he needed "time to figure how to get his life straight and he loved me".  I don't know what to think.  I don't know whether he is really "soul searching" or if he just wants to drink without having to deal with me. I want to be a support for him but I'm not sure if I do more harm and if he really needs to be alone.  I want to encourage him but somehow I feel like he see's my encouragement as nagging.  I love him and I want him to be happy.  He says he'd be happy if I just left him alone when it comes to him drinking.  I don't believe it, I think he drinks to drown the things in his life he doesn't want to address.  Any advice would be great.

Answer
Greetings to you, Michelle.

You are likely at least partly correct when you say your husband “drinks to drown the things in his life he doesn't want to address”, yet my own past experience also suggests the presence of an even greater factor there:
Personally, I used to drink to drown the things in my life I did not know *how* to address.  In other words: Alcohol offers the alcoholic a sense of ease and comfort he or she otherwise finds largely missing and completely elusive.

You have written:

>> ... we have problems but the drinking is really harming our relationship.

Things might appear that way at first glance, but removing the drinking would not stop the seeming harm ... and no, I am not saying there is no actual harm or that the drinking is a good thing.  Rather, I mean to be drawing attention to the plight of the alcoholic: Alcohol is not the underlying cause of his or her drinking and the accompanying suffering and pain all around.  Drunk or sober, the alcoholic is just as ill-prepared for life as any other human being might ever be.

>> We began marriage counseling and obviously the drinking was an issue that has been addressed.

Your husband was likely told his life and yours together would improve and be better if he did not drink, and he likely already knows the real problem is something far greater ... but he does not know what that greater problem actually is.

>> He admits he is an alcoholic ...

By whose definition?  What your husband is “admitting”, as such, and probably under duress, is that he might sometimes drink a bit too much and/or too often in comparison to some kind of ambiguous “norm” – his own drinking is actually quite normal for him – but your husband has likely not admitted something he might only merely suspect at the moment: Alcoholism is an illness guaranteeing permanent insanity (similar to the late stages of terminal syphilis) unless superceded by liver or heart failure (during delirium tremens (DTs)) and death.

>> ... but doesn't see a problem with drinking to relax at night ...

That proves he does not truly realize alcohol is presently killing him ...

>> ... because he gets up and goes to work and provides for our family.

... and that is how he justifies the selfishness and self-centeredness of his drinking.

>>  I cant argue with this at all because he does ...

It is now time to look past all of that and to begin seeing your husband as a dying man in desperate need of a very careful touch from someone who has first come to understand his terminal dilemma and how it might yet be reversed.

>> I finally asked him to please seek help ...
>> My husband left.

Sure, and he did that for two reasons:
1) He does not want to cause trouble or pain in your own life;
2) He does not yet have any reason to believe anyone even knows his problem, let alone how to ever actually be of any real help to him.

>> He emailed me yesterday and told me he was confused and he loved me.

He spoke honestly.

>> He then emailed me today and said he has to "fight back tears all day" and he needed "time to figure how to get his life straight and he loved me".

He might be thinking about trying to figure out a way to drink and yet remain married, but I would also guess he is truly confused and crying in desperation.

>> I don't know whether he is really "soul searching" or if he just wants to drink without having to deal with me.

Again: It could be a little of each, yet the fact remains that he does not have a clue as to how to deal with either.

>> I want to be a support for him but I'm not sure if I do more harm and if he really needs to be alone.

About the best you can do at the moment is to quietly just let him do whatever he does ... and to begin reading at least the chapter “To Wives” in “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book.  You can find that book available just about anywhere, or you can read it online here:
http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm

>> I want to encourage him but somehow I feel like he sees my encouragement as nagging.

Rather than actual “nagging”, as such, he likely feels your “encouragement” as some kind of reminder of his present inability to be any different than he is.

>> I love him and I want him to be happy.

I believe you.

>> He says he'd be happy if I just left him alone when it comes to him drinking.

There are times when he actually knows better, but that is something he would like to believe since he does not know how else he could possibly live anyway.

Understanding alcoholism is not very difficult: Alcoholism amounts to a mental obsession for an emotional effect achieved by taking a few drinks, and that obsession is coupled with an abnormal physical factor making controlled drinking virtually impossible.  For the alcoholic, one drink is too many and a thousand would not be enough, and the only permanent solution for the obsession is a spiritual one (thereby making the physical factor situationally irrelevant).

Understanding the alcoholic can be very difficult for most people, but even that can be simple enough after it is understood that alcohol is not the alcoholic’s problem.  The alcoholic’s root problem is actually no different than anyone else’s:

“Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, page 61)
“If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago.  But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried.  We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there.  Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.
“Lack of power, that was our dilemma.  We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.” (pages 44-45)

Please know you are always welcomed to write.

Joseph Lee O.
leejosepho@hotmail.com