Dear Jason,
I’ve been married for ten years and this is my second marriage. I have two girls from my first marriage and they live with me and my current husband. My husband owns a real estate company and has a good size staff. He works very hard and provides us with a more than comfortable lifestyle. That being said, for the past few years, he’s been coming home from the office most night inebriated. He says he’s only been drinking after work because he’s either entertaining clients or he’s going out with his staff. Yet this doesn’t explain why he drinks when he’s not working.
Lately we’ve been fighting non-stop. He’s not the fun loving passionate man I married and I know it’s because of the drinking. When I bring up his drinking he goes crazy. He tells me he works hard and all I do is spend his money. He tells me I’m the one with the problem. Two months ago we got into a huge fight and he threw his beer through the TV. I was so scared. I’d never seen him look so out of control. I suddenly realized that I had to think of my girls. So I took them to a hotel. Over the next few days my husband called me and left me a lot of messages begging my forgiveness. He told me he would stop drinking if I would come home. He said that it wouldn’t be the same and he’d try hard. So I said I would give him one more chance to stop drinking.
At first he kept his promise, but after a few days he began to drink again. It was only a couple of weeks before things were back to the way they were before I went to the hotel. I love my husband so much and I don’t want to go through another divorce. Please help me. What should I do?
ANSWER
The safety of your children is the most important thing here. When your husband threw his beer through the TV you had a wake up call. In that moment it became very clear that you and your children were in an extremely volatile situation. This fear gave you the strength and clarity to remove yourself and your children from this dangerous environment. Yet when your husband begged you to come back with promises of sobriety, you lost all resolve and returned to him out of fear of going through another divorce. You actually fooled yourself into thinking things would get better.
Your girls are in danger and you need to think of them FIRST and your marriage second. Your husband has a disease and it is called alcoholism. When you fight with him you’re actually fighting his disease. There is no promise your husband can make now that you can trust. He has absolutely no control over his disease and he will never stop drinking until he gets real help from professionals. You need someone who can guide you to making the right decisions for you, your girls and your husband. You cannot do this alone.
Here is the number (800) 784-6776. and link to the National Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Information Center. Do not think this over. Pick up the phone and make the call now! Do it for your children…
