marriage

[jaijai]

We have only been married 15mos. I am 44 he 55 and needless to say not our first. However, I need some very strong advice on living with a man that will tell you he is perfect. Unlike he, I am not!! My husband is self-employed and works terribly hard to provide the best of things for us. My two biggest issues are 1) he spends every afternoon in a bar drinking to the point of when he is home in the evenings he is asleep on the couch before 8 leaving no special time for us. 2) He is controlled by money and material things. I have expressed time and time again I would rather have less things and more of his touch, kindness and love. Those I am seeing are not important. He can be very cruel with his words punishing me by ignoring me, staying out drinking etc. when I have done something, said something that angers him. When he is not drinking, he is a wonderful man. I have expressed my feeling about the drinking to the point of believing he is an alcoholic. I love this man with all of my being but am at a loss as to how to learn to live with things rather than with the man I adore. I ask for help!

[Tony T]

Was his drinking this bad before you married him? If it was, you have to own a good chunk of your problems now. If it wasn't, your husband is guilty of fraud for not disclosing a side of himself that you needed to know about in order to make your decision to marry him.

 

At any rate, it sounds like he is an alcoholic. You will have a great amount of difficulty dealing with this problem unless he recognizes his problem and gets outside help for recovery. Recovery could take several years and he will always be an alcoholic regardless of whether he stops drinking or not.

 

YOU WRITE: "My two biggest issues are 1) he spends every afternoon in a bar drinking to the point of when he is home in the evenings he is asleep on the couch before 8 leaving no special time for us. 2) He is controlled by money and material things."

 

These are two whopping issues. First, if he spends his afternoons in bars and comes home useless to you and others, he's not making much of a partner or companion for you. So, basically you aren't really married. You are a codependent at best and you can only pray that he doesn't kill himself or someone else on the way home from the bar one afternoon.

 

Second, if he puts money and material things before you he is not abiding by the traditional vows of marriage and certainly has his priorities very screwed up. Workaholism, his preoccupation with working and making money, is akin to alcoholism and is listed among the symptoms of people who are in codependent relationships and who come from highly dysfunctional families. They use work just the same as they use alcohol....to help drown out the pain they suffered in the past....to avoid confronting issues vital to their development as true human beings.

 

Perfectionism, or the attempt to be perfect or see oneself as perfect in everything...as you describe he is...is another one of those symptoms. This guy is a classic!

 

I'm assuming you've discussed all this with him. Surely you have...and he hasn't responded. He's not going to change without some very traumatic event driving him to seek help.

 

That traumatic event will probably be the day you pack up and leave him. Before you do that, call Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in your area and explain the situation to them and ask for recommendations on how you might be able to help him. They have a lot of experience in your situation and may be able to assist you with their wisdom and somehow save things. AA has a website which may give you locations of programs and counsellors in your area.

 

Also, prior to leaving him, see a counsellor or physician. Make sure all your options are identified so that you will never have any qualms about having done all you could to save what might become a marriage someday. The physician will explain alcoholism to you in detail.

 

Additionally, you can read multitudes about alcoholism on the web simply by entering the term in a good search engine like http://www.google.com .

 

My guess is that he has a lot of control issues as well, which is why he prefers to work for himself rather than work for someone else and have a boss. This is why he may be very reluctant to cave in and admit to someone else that he has serious problems.

 

It's very likely your husband has screwed up many other relationships prior to this with his excessive drinking and obsessing about money, etc. Likely, the root causes go way back to his childhood, perhaps a lot of abandonment and emotional and/or physical abuse. That's why it's so hard to treat and it will take a firm committment on his part to begin the journey to healing and recovery.

 

I hope you can work this out somehow but it won't be an overnight thing. I don't recommend you remain in this situation and suffer for years to come. You don't have that kind of time to waste.

[jaijai]

Thanks Tony for your reply. Yes he did drink prior to our marriage. I had left him for approx. a month before we were married. During this time he would call me, email me begging for me to come back making many, many promises of change. Top one of not going to this bar everyday. At the beginnng he held true to his word. Needless to say ALL the promises have flown out the window. I knew he was a different cup of tea before marrying him but perhaps I closed my emotions to the negative and focused on the good we shared. When he is good to me, he is very,very good. When he is bad - well you get the picture. I guess at this point knowing he will probably never change his feathers, I need to learn how to live with things rather than the man. The things are constant, he is not! We both have been through relationships. Myself, I have taken a piece from each and made promise to not make the same mistakes and to hold in my heart one special point from each.