On Being a Partner to an Alcoholic
trying to rid myself of the burden and guilt of being a party to it
I knew when I met him that he was a recovering alcoholic. He had been sober several years at that point, and had his life together. We fell in love, he moved to Long Island from California to be with me, and we settled into our life together.
There were six good, sober years. He rose the ranks in his job, starting out as tech support and moving up to product manager in a few short years. He was making good money, we were happy, things were better than they’d ever been in my life. I was living a dream.
The thing about being a recovering alcoholic is it’s always there with you, that desire to have a drink. At least it was for him. It’s something he fought with often, but always came out on top. Until he didn’t. Work was stressful, and the pressure to drink on work trips was ever present. He often traveled to China and South Korea, and his fellow workers and clients often encouraged him to drink. He always said no thanks. Until he didn’t.
He started drinking again in the fall of 2012 on a trip to Florida. He called me, drunk, from the hotel pool. And nothing was the same ever again. He eventually lost his job and I was determined that he wouldn’t lose me, too, that we would work through this together, get him back into AA, he’d get another job, stay sober, we’d write off this chapter of our lives as a brief step aside.
I made a lot of mistakes during his drinking days. He would ask me to stop on my way home from work and pick up beer for him and I complied. I would drink with him, too, and I think this was my way of still being part of his life even though he was drifting further and further from me each day. I felt helpless and sunk into despair, which didn’t help matters any.
He wasn’t a bad drunk. He didn’t yell or get mean or even drive while he was drunk. Mostly he stayed on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep, watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, drinking beer after beer. Sometimes there would be vodka. It all made me so sad. I’d think about the life we were living before he started drinking and I’d start to feel angry at what we were losing, then I’d feel guilty about being angry. I knew he had a disease, I knew he wasn’t sabotaging our lives on purpose. I buried my anger, hid my sadness, and carried on with taking care of him.
Being a partner to an alcoholic is a burden of sorts. I carried his alcoholism around with me 24 hours a day. I’d go to work and spend my eight hours there thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he was drunk, if he was applying for jobs like he said he would, if he was feeling despondent. I was nervous, anxious, depressed, and it showed in my work. I’d call in sick often just to be home with him, to keep watch over him.
I didn’t know how to deal with him. I was new to all this and had no one to talk to about it. I thought about joining a group for partners of alcoholics, but I didn’t want to offend him. He didn’t think he was an alcoholic, as much as a heavy drinker. But he was drunk more often than he was not and it was killing me. I went from an extremely happy person to an absolute wreck. I tried talking to him about it often, but he didn’t want to discuss it, he’d only say that he’d try to stop and then there would be ten more beer cans on the coffee table that night.
I covered for him with my family. Where he once was an integral part of our family gatherings, he was a no show more often than not. I’d make all kinds of excuses for him. This normally gregarious, funny, charming man was now hunkering down in our house, and when he did show up for a family dinner, he was quiet and in a rush to get home. It was tiresome and nerve-wracking to have to lie for him all the time, but I wasn’t yet ready to say to my family, he’s an alcoholic.
I should have been more vocal to him about the strain it was all putting on me, but I didn’t think I needed to add to his already cumbersome burden. I didn’t want him to know I was despaired, I didn’t want him to know I was an anxious mess. I just didn’t want to put that all on him, and I kept it to myself.
There were bouts with sobriety, mostly when he had job interviews coming and he would quit cold turkey beforehand. They all ended up with him having withdrawal seizures and ending up in the hospital. I’d take time off work to be with him, I’d sit by his side, watching him detox, holding his hands, listening to him swear that he’d never drink again. For the most part, those promises never stuck. One time he had a seizure in an airport in North Carolina. Another time in Florida. I was helpless and beside myself with worry.
There were times I was so overcome with anxiety that I couldn’t drive because my hands and legs were shaking so much. I would cry at random times, just all of a sudden break out in wracking sobs. I’d hide in the bathroom, and occasionally I’d throw up from the stress while I was in there. But never once did I think of giving him an ultimatum. Never once did I think of leaving him. I thought we could get through this together. I thought he needed me by his side. I’d been living like this for four full years, what’s a little more, I thought.
One day in August of 2016 he started having heart palpitations. He thought he was having a heart attack. I drove him to the nearest hospital - he did not want an ambulance and the hospital was five minutes away - and they admitted him. As he was lying in his hospital bed with wires and IVs sticking out of him, I told him “You can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”
I was tired of the anxiety. I was exhausted by the hospital stays, the seizures, the constant feeling that he was on death’s doorstep. I was tired of keeping up pretenses, of acting like things were normal with everyone else, of being a nervous wreck all the time. I wanted him alive and well. I wanted to go back to our pre-alcoholism lives. I cried to him then, begged him to stop drinking. He detoxed in the hospital - a slow and painful process that is almost as dangerous as drinking yourself to death - and when he came out he vowed that he would never drink again. He found an AA group in town and started going to meetings every day. He got healthier, mentally and physically. We resumed our previous lives, with caution. I let go of some of my anxiety.
AA took over his life, and I took a back seat to meetings. This was ok, I thought. He’s doing what he has to do in order to stay sober. Who am I to ask him for some of that time he spent at meetings? He quickly charmed everyone in AA and established himself as a speaker. He joined committees, he met with his sponsor, he went out to dinner with his newfound friends. I was lonely and feeling neglected, but once I again, I let his alcoholism - even in recovery - dictate my actions and needs.
I wish I could say we had a happy ending, but it was not to be. His sobriety gave him clarity, and in that clarity he saw that he wanted out. I stuck with him through four and half years of beer and vodka, of anxiety, loneliness, and worry, only to have him take off when he was sober long enough to feel empowered by it. That previous life we lived where we were incredibly happy was not coming back to me.
I spent years as an afterthought, being put on the back burner, playing second fiddle to alcohol. Being a partner to an addict is a burden, and most of that burden comes from feeling guilty; what could I have done to help him, what could I have done different, what did I do to cause him to drink. I’m trying to unlearn all of that now, to teach myself that it wasn’t my fault he started drinking again, or kept doing it for years at great harm to his own health and our relationship.
I know he has some residual guilt, he’s told me that. And I can’t stop myself from thinking that’s ok. He should own that guilt, and relieve me of mine. I’m glad for him that he’s sober. It will be six years for him this August and I wish him nothing but the best.