How Alcoholism Breaks Trust (And What Partners Really Feel)

Today we're going to be reacting to a Reddit post titled Alcohol Ruined My Marriage. And let me tell you, this one hits hard. It's raw. It's emotional. It's a story that so many people can relate to, whether you're the one struggling with alcohol or someone you love is struggling with it. Now, this post is from a husband who finally found sobriety after years of drinking, but he's having to face the heartbreaking reality that his marriage might not survive the damage that's already been done. He's asking big questions. Can we rebuild trust? Can we save this marriage? And we're going to break this all down together. What went wrong, what he's doing right now, and what steps he can take moving forward. And if you've ever been in a relationship where addiction has taken its toll, this is a conversation you won't want to miss. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's talk about the impact of alcohol on relationships and more importantly, what recovery and healing look like. My wife and I, both in our upper 40s, have been together for 8 and a half years, married for 6. I came out of a marriage where my ex cheated on me multiple times. I have one daughter. I've always socially drank, but rarely at home. Early in our marriage, I was drinking moderately and then heavy, and then it got to the point where I was blacking out and not remembering the next day almost daily. She told me that most of our good days started out good and ended horrible. I was sober at the start and then end up too drunk to remember and start fights with her. She has videos of me drunk and fighting with her that are as bad as she told me. All right. So before we go any further, let's take a start just to analyze this framework of what's going on in this relationship. The first thing that comes to my mind is I'm wondering if the previous marriage, the one where he got cheated on multiple times, if any of that plays into what escalated the drinking, because it sounded like he wasn't always drinking too much. At some point during this marriage, it started to escalate. Now, I'm not one to say that trauma is always what causes addiction, but it Sure doesn't help. All right, back to the story. It not only affected our relationship, but my relationship with my daughter and my stepchildren who are adults now. There's never been any physical abuse, and the last big drunk fight was in April last year. I want to pause right here for a second and just look at this sentence. There's never been any physical abuse. It's not that I doubt that. I mean, I feel pretty certain that it's probably true, but when I read this, it just reminds me that I hear this all the time in my office, and I frequently hear this after someone, one of my clients who's usually the one struggling with addiction, has done something that they really regret. And a lot of times that involves a big fight with someone in their family, usually a partner or a spouse. And it's almost like a way of saying, well, it wasn't that bad, but it's almost sort of a way of minimizing the issue. As addiction progresses, we break more and more and more boundaries. And so we start moving our line in the sand as far as what is acceptable behavior. And that line in the sand tends to get further and further and further out. And so right here, when I read this or when I hear this in my office, I'm like, okay, so the line in the sand of appropriate spouse behavior, at least I haven't crossed This line, but emotional abuse is no joke either. All right, let's move on with our story. The last big drunk fight was in April last year. I woke up on the couch remembering arguing, but nothing else. Something I believe spiritual told me that I have to quit. I got up and poured $2,000 of alcohol down the sink, all that we had. I haven't drunk a drop since, and with the help of the medication I took for the last year, it ended in May. It put me in a numb, depressed feeling, but it worked. About a month after quitting the medicine, it's like I woke up with a fire, a newfound passion, love, and understanding of what my wife wants from me and how to love her how she wants to be loved. I'm really ready to do it. The problem is she told me that she's completely done. She says she is physically attracted to me and that I'm an attractive guy, but the damage is done emotionally. It's like I finally wake up raring to go, and at the same time, she shut me down. She asked for a divorce. I have sincerely apologized for everything, and I mean it. The question is, Can we be saved? Can the emotional connection ever come back? She thinks that when I honestly tell her I don't remember most of the fights, that it's just another excuse. Is it? How can I explain to her sincerely that the alcohol was the problem without downplaying the hurt that I caused her and not being there for her and without it sounding like just another excuse? All right. So there's a lot in that little part. So let's stop and analyze that a bit. So basically in this section, he's talking about the getting better process, right? He says he woke up and just knew deep down in his gut, I've got to stop. Now, and he describes it as a spiritual experience. Obviously, I don't know because I don't know this person in real life, but my guess is that that spiritual experience had been coming for a while, that he'd probably been thinking about it for a while. Maybe he had had a few attempts to stop in the past. Maybe they were half-hearted. Maybe they worked for a while, but then failed. But he finally woke up, and for whatever reason that morning, he was like, that's it. I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. And he finally had that shift of heart, and he must have took action. He mentions taking a medicine. Now, I kind of have an idea in my head what I think that medicine was, but I don't want to say on here what I think just because I don't really know for sure. But he did say that the medicine worked for the alcohol cravings, kind of numb and disconnected. And there is a medicine out there that people pretty regularly take to fight alcohol cravings that can cause this side effect. I've been sober for, well, I know it's been longer than a year because he said he stopped the medicine after a year and it was like he finally woke up. The issue here is when you think about it in context of relationship is not only was all the years of drinking doing damage to the relationship. But even the first year of being sober, which you think during that year the couple would be working on reconnection and rebuilding and all that kind of stuff, it sounds like even though he was sober, he was pretty disconnected and distant and probably not very engaged. And I'm just guessing all that based on what he's written here. So now it's years of drinking and fighting, and then another year of being sober, but still not rekindling the connection, working on the relationship. And then he comes off the medicine and he finally starts to feel better. He starts to come back to himself. He starts to have motivation. Motivation and energy and to really see what's going on in the relationship and want to change it. When I read this, it sounds pretty sincere and authentic to me. Like, I believe him. My heart breaks for him. But then when I think about it from the other point of view, after years and years of damage and just exhaustion, and then another year of better but not great, I can see where this spouse would be over it, be tired. I see this a lot of times in our office. It's like sometimes when the person finally gets sober, there's so much damage in the relationship that the relationship just doesn't survive it, even after the person gets sober, which is Pretty heartbreaking, honestly. But the part that I really want to focus in here, and this is a big reason why I actually picked this Reddit post, was this part where he says, when I tell her I don't remember these fights, she takes it as an excuse. And then he's saying, is it an excuse? Well, I don't think it's an excuse in that he's trying to get himself off the hook. I think he's genuinely saying, I don't remember it, but it doesn't feel very validating to the spouse to hear this. In fact, it might come across as trying to dismiss it or trying to like get yourself off the hook or make you somehow less responsible. You know, like, you guys know I watch a lot of true crime. Like, a lot of times people, when they commit a crime and they finally confess, they'll be like, well, I was in a blackout and I don't remember it, as a way to distance themselves from what happened. I don't think that this person in this post is purposefully doing that, but I could definitely see where it could come across that way. So the question here is, how can I explain to her sincerely that the alcohol was the problem without downplaying the hurt that I caused her for not being there for her when, without it sounding like another excuse? Again, here, when he says it was just the alcohol, my guess is that's coming across to her As a way of distancing himself from what happened. And to be honest, he probably does feel pretty distant from what happened. And that has to do with the nature of alcoholism. In fact, I always say that alcoholic denial is very different than other drug addiction denial. Like in other addictions, people may be in denial, maybe being like, well, it's not that big of a problem, or they might deny it to other people, but they remember what happened. So they have the little pieces of evidence. But with alcoholism, because it causes these blackouts, they literally don't remember. And because they don't have that They really don't know exactly how bad it was. Now they can hear about it, but hearing about something and experiencing something is 2 different things. And so a lot of times people struggling with alcohol use disorder, they feel like, why is everyone overreacting? It's not that big a deal. People overdrink sometimes. And a lot of that's because you don't remember it, how it played out, what that scene was like, or what it was like to experience that situation with you. And it's usually not just one situation, it's a bunch of them. So while I do believe that it's true that this person doesn't remember it, and that I also believe that it is true that it probably never would have happened had it not been for the alcohol. I think there might be a better way to verbalize some of these things to your partner. And since this is what this person is asking, then I want to give a little explanation on it. These are some of the things that we teach in our Rapid Relationship Repair course, which is for these exact situations, is instead of saying, I don't remember it, maybe you could say, I feel horrible that I don't remember it. Tell me what that was like for you and allow this person to express to you what they experienced and most of all, what it was like for them to Now, this is hard and painful, and this is not going to be easy to listen to. And I'm not suggesting that a couple have this conversation like over and over again, which sometimes that happens. But in order to help your partner or your spouse feel heard, then you have to actually hear them in a way that doesn't downplay it on your end. What they want is to feel heard and understood most of all. So I would maybe just do some listening, ask some questions about what that was like, and practice those really good reflective listening skills. That will go a long way. Now, another thing we teach in our Rapid Relationship Repair courses, we talk about making amends, like saying you're sorry. I feel certain that this person has already said they're sorry a lot of times, but when bad things have happened over and over and over again, sorry kind of loses its meaning. So what you want to do is you want to take that up a notch. And I think it's good to do this in writing because this is very emotional. It can be emotional for you to get out. It can be emotional for the other person to hear it. And I think when you do this in writing, it gives you the time to really think through your words and to erase it and start again. Say specific Specifically, I feel terrible about, and fill in the blank. Instead of, I feel terrible about everything that happened, say, I know that one time, and then name the situation. And then this is really important here. You want to say, I know that must have affected you, fill in the blank. And you might be wrong about your guess on how that affected them. You're probably not. But when you say that, it's going to give them an opportunity to add to that or to clarify that if it doesn't quite hit the mark. And that is going to help them feel heard and understood because you're not just saying, I know I did this bad thing. You're saying, I know I did this And it affected you in the following ways. And that's what a person wants to hear. They want to know that you get it. This is a better, more effective way at communicating that. And go further than just telling one incidence. You know, you can say, and I know a lot of times I denied it when you saw the evidence. You know, just say specifically, you want to let this person know that you're owning it, that you get it, and you want to let this person know what you're going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. And that you're willing to hear their side of things, even if that's really emotionally difficult for you. Let's see how this post ends. I have suggested marriage counseling, hoping she'll go with me again. She says no. I'm going to go anyway and work on myself. Can we be saved? I absolutely love my wife and don't want her to leave me, but I would understand it eventually. Any advice will be appreciated. Now, the way that this person is saying marriage counseling, and then they put the word in there again, makes me think that they've already done some marriage counseling in the past and For whatever reasons, the partner here doesn't feel like it was very helpful. And it is quite possible that this situation is really beyond repair. Maybe not that the 2 people can't move forward and get over it, but maybe the relationship just can't go back to the way that it was. That's absolutely possible. Sometimes there really is too much water under the bridge. But if you're in a situation like this and you're going to make a go of it and you're going to do some counseling, look for some couples counseling that is specific to this issue, or look for some counseling that deals with betrayal trauma. Now, a lot of times when we think about betrayal trauma, we think about someone having an affair, but betrayal trauma can be more than that. It has to do with dishonesty and deceit. And almost anytime there's an addiction, there's dishonesty and deceit, and that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and happens over a long period of time. And like in the name trauma, it truly does cause trauma to the affected partner. And they have a lot of complex trauma symptoms, very much like PTSD. And even when they know you're better, and even when they're trying to get better, And they forgive you logically and maybe even emotionally, they're going to have triggers and waves of emotion that are going to come over them that even when they're trying to keep calm, they may lose it. They may break down crying. They may yell. They may scream. They may get upset. And once you understand that they're really having like a post-traumatic stress kind of reaction, then you realize you need some very specific particular kind of help in order to move past it. So if you are going to try couples counseling, which I think is a great idea once someone's in recovery, not so much so before a person gets in recovery, If you want to know why, I have some videos on this channel talking about how couples counseling can be detrimental when there's an addiction going on. So check those out. But if you are going to do it, look to do it with someone who understands this, who knows how to help get couples past these big betrayal hurdles. So those are my thoughts on this post. I'm wondering what you guys think. Have you ever been on either side of this equation? And what's your advice for this person?