Confronting the Battle Within: Living with an Alcoholic Spouse

You meet someone, you fall in love, you dedicate your whole life to them. You build a home together. But then you slowly come to realize that the person you married is an alcoholic. And you're mad, frustrated, resentful, angry, because you're thinking, I didn't sign up for this. And that is a totally valid feeling. But at this point, you've built a life and a family together, and there's no easy solution here. Now, a lot of what we talk about on this channel is how to get an addicted loved one out of denial and taking steps toward recovery, which is definitely the best possible scenario. When the person you love most has developed an addiction, there will come a day where your spouse looks at you and says, I know this is a problem, and I need to change. And when that happens, I want you to know exactly what to do. So don't worry, I'm actually going to give you the exact words to say. But in the meantime, you have got to focus on surviving. How do you get through this period where they're figuring it out and survive with your sanity intact? There are actually three big components to surviving an alcoholic marriage. The first one and most important one is you have to get back in the driver's seat seat of your own life. And what I mean by that is you have to get back in control of your own emotions. Because by the time it gets to the point that you're watching this video, the problem has gotten so bad that it consumes your every waking thought. You find yourself constantly living in fear, checking up, trying to figure out if you're being lied to or manipulated. And there are points along the way where you're questioning your own sanity. So the first thing you got to do is pull back. I'm not saying pull out of the relationship. I'm saying emotionally pull it together. You have to stop obsessing about fixing their problem. Now, I know that's easier said than done. It's basically like your house is on fire. And I'm saying ignore it. But I would never advise you to ignore your house being on fire. What I am saying is you've got to make calm, cool, collected decisions. And in order to do that, you have to rein in the obsessiveness, which means you have to stop checking, snooping, asking questions, trying to get other people to see the problem, because you're doing all those things to try to prove that you're not crazy, that this is really happening. But you know what? I can go ahead and clear that up for you if it's gotten to the point that you're watching this video, it's probably definitely happening. I'm guessing you didn't get here by accident. Now these next two tips are actually going to help you achieve the first one, which like I said, is the most important one. So tip number two is put as many protections in place as you possibly can. Now a lot of these protections are actually going to be financial. We got to get really honest with ourselves here and understand that there is a possibility that this might not have a good ending. And if that were to happen, you need to be able to take care of yourself financially, which means if you need to leave, you need to be able to leave. You need to have a place to go, you need to have a way to support yourself. I don't want to scare you, I don't want to make you think it is going to end badly. But if you feel prepared and you have those protections in place, your anxiety is going to go way down because you're going to know if it comes to it, you're going to be okay. So if you're in a situation where you are completely financially dependent on the person that has the alcohol problem, you're going to need to do something about it. You may need to get a side hustle, you may need to talk to some friends or have a plan in case you needed to exit really fast. Having a plan will make you feel more safe and secure which will help get you out of that desperation fearful place. Now tip number three is don't stop living your life. That's what I should say is start back living your life. You know, those hobbies and interests and friends and like conversations that you used to have that didn't have anything to do with this. I want you to bring those back into your life. You've got to take care of yourself. And I don't mean it in that chees counselory, self care kind of way. I mean it in a very practical way. Because if you're not getting any of your needs met, you're going to stay much more desperate and frantic, which is going to take you out of the driver's seat again. The most important part about surviving an alcoholic marriage is to get yourself back together. Doing this is not only going to help you, but it's going to increase the chances that they will actually see the problem and take steps to get better themselves. Now you'll probably have several moments along the way where your spouse actually seems to have like a wake up call, like they get it and they verbalize to You. I'm really sorry. I know I need to cut back. I'm not going to do that anymore. That's what I call change talk. When you get that change talk, it's very important to know what to do. Most of the time your instinct is going to tell you to say to the person, will you get treatment? And you want to push the treatment onto them. Well, there's a couple of problems with this one. Mostly it makes them get scared and it makes them kind of panic and then they want to like take back all that change talk really quick. And also, even if they do agree to get some help, it still doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is going to stop and it doesn't necessarily make you feel better immediately. So what I want you to ask your spouse to do is I want you to ask them to agree to some sort of accountability because that's actually the fastest way for them to start getting better and it's the fastest way for you to start getting better and for the relationship to heal. Now, there are different ways to create accountability in a situation like this, but my favorite tool by far in these situations is soberling. You may have heard me talk about about soberlink in other videos because they're a sponsor of this channel, but mostly because I am a huge fan. I've been using soberlink with my clients for years and years and years and I can't tell you how many people have actually been able to get sober using soberlink and stay sober without ever having to go to treatment. And I'm talking about situations where otherwise they would have had to go to treatment. It can actually be a great tool to allow somebody to recover and still keep going with their life. Go to school, go to work, help with the kids, which is very good for you because it sure would be nice to have them checked back in and being your teammate, wouldn't it? But the other really big reason why Sober Link is so great is because it is going to help you feel better, like almost immediately. I can't think of anything else that's going to make you feel this much better this quickly because it's going to give you that sense of like feeling like they really mean it because somebody who doesn't really mean it isn't going to agree to being monitored. If you don't know much about what soberlink is, it's like a high tech fancy alcohol breathalyzing device. Yes, it's alcohol monitoring device, but it's more fan than the ones like you can order off Amazon. This Thing has facial recognition in it, which means it is really hard to cheat. Soberlink, when used properly, is all about prevention. It works on cellular data, like your cell phone, so it can go anywhere. And then we set up a schedule for that person where they're going to get tested every day. Research shows three times a day is optimal, but you can actually do it as often as needed. What's good about this is it's like an automated process. You come up with a schedule. They get the text message that says, hey, you're supposed to take a test. And here's the other beauty about it. If they miss or they're positive or they're late, then you can set up soberlink to send messages to whatever accountability partner you want it to be. For my clients, their test results go to me, but it could go to a sponsor, to their counselor, and if they wanted to, those messages could even go directly to you. I'm telling you, this is what is going to give you the peace of mind to feel like, okay, we're making some progress here, and allow yourself to actually let your guard down enough to start the healing process. If you want to know more about soberlink, I have put a link in the description. Now, in the event that you get one of these moments of clarity and the window seems open and you ask your loved one to take some sort of step towards recovery, but they say no, then what I want you to do next is say, okay, will you at least watch this video? And then I want you to send them this video right here. I'm gonna link it up here for you. It's called how to stop drinking on your own. And there are some really good tips in that video about how to actually, really, truly get sober on your own. Lastly, if you're not already subscribed to this channel and you relate to the situation I described, you should totally be subscribed to this channel because we're here to make sure you do survive this with your sanity and your family intact.