I Told My Wife to Go to Rehab, and People Are Telling Me I'm Part of the Problem

Today we're looking at 2 Reddit stories about 2 husbands who tried to approach their wives about their drinking. And despite the fact that they tried to be as gentle as they possibly could, it blew up in their faces in both, both of these stories. So let's dissect what happened so you don't end up making the very same mistake. Because it's an easy one to make. So the first story comes from Reddit, from the subreddit, uh, Am I the A-Hole? And the title of this story, in case you want to go look it up yourself, is, would I be the a-hole for telling my wife to go to rehab so she doesn't affect our baby's life? Now here's the situation. He's 26. She's 23. They just had a baby, a daughter, about 6 weeks ago. He knew when he met her that she liked to drink pretty much every night, 3 or 4 beers or cocktails after work, and even more than that on the weekends. But she, she did, but she didn't think it was a problem because she didn't drink during the day. She had a— now her background was she had a rough background. Her dad had left. Her mom was mentally ill and treated her badly growing up. She talked a lot about wanting to break the cycle. And he noticed that when her flashbacks got worse— this is the husband— when her flashbacks got worse, she'd drink even more. When she got pregnant, she was able to stop drinking. Now she struggled a little bit at first, but she did it. And one week, it wasn't but one week after the baby was born, his family brought wine over to celebrate. And that is when it all started up again, as you could just imagine. Now she's back to 2 or 3 drinks a night. Started, started a few times a week at first, but now it's back to pretty much nightly. So he sits her down and he tells her, That she can't, that she can't slip back to old habits like she's doing. She says she's not slipping. She's just relaxing. She's not getting hammered. So what's the big deal? And then she brings up his occasional party favor usage, uh, a few times a year at parties. And by party favor, I mean cocaine. So he's bringing up her drinking and she brings that up and says, oh yeah, well, you do this. This is a genius deflection. It's going to get the conversation immediately off of her drinking and on to whether or not he has any moral authority to say anything at all. So he tells her to look into rehab after all that. She says she can't, the baby needs her. Now, if you've ever been on Reddit, you know that the commenters on Reddit will tear you to shreds. I mean, they don't hold back at all and they let this guy have it. One person—I'm going to tell you some of these comments—one person wrote, "You're parents now. It's time for both of you to leave all this nonsense behind. She's an alcoholic, and you're a coke, and you're coke party favors. Both of you need to get your head straight." And then another one of the comments said, "You have a functioning alcoholic girlfriend, and that." And an OP that likes to do blow. When you say OP in Reddit land, it stands for original poster. So that's talking about the guy who wrote this. When you're in that thought process, does mixing— does mixing in a baby, how does that come into it? Does that seem like a great idea? Now these are really pretty harsh comments because they're jumping on board with, hey, you knew she was like that when you married her, why'd you marry her? You're doing problems too. What are y'all doing having a baby? Essentially. And from just that little part that I read you of his post, you could kind of get why that was. Now, there was a lot more comments on this. Like I said, they ripped them to shreds. But here's one comment that was actually somewhat helpful. It might be worth looking at in a helpful way. This commenter said, you know, there are quite a few stops between doing nothing and going to rehab, right? You came in really strong, especially because it's like a touchy subject. That commenter is onto something here, right? Like he's saying, you're going from 0 to 100. And that's what I want to dig in with you today. Is he wrong for being worried? Absolutely not. But let's look at what's actually happening in that conversation. He thought he was saying, you're a great woman and I love you so much, but I'm worried about your drinking too. And then that's not what she heard though. What she heard was, "You you're a drunk and a bad mother." Now, as you can imagine, when she hears something like that, even though he thinks he's saying something different, that's what she hears. It's like a sledgehammer to every defense that she has. Now, you got to remember she has that rough history. She's worked she worked hard to stay sober through her pregnancy. She talks about breaking the cycle. That's sort of like it's her identity, and now someone's telling her that she's failing at it. Most people aren't going to sit down and accept something like that. They're gonna find an emergency exit, basically, and she found a really good one, which was his past use of cocaine or MDA. There was some confusion about it in the Reddit post. Either way. Now he's on the defensive and now we're not talking about her drinking anymore. His intentions were good, but his approach, it just, his approach just wasn't strategic. He didn't think it through very well. She doesn't even, like, for example, she doesn't even think she has a drinking problem. And then he's telling her to look into rehab and he skipped a lot of steps in between, right? If someone doesn't think they have a problem and you're going to the most possible solution when we don't really even need someone to understand something. When we want someone to understand something important, we think we need to make it sound really urgent or that we need to say it louder or that we need to say it more frequently and finally it'll make it click. But we need to go from trying— but what we actually need to do is go from trying to drill it into them. And figure out how to make the truth more palatable so that they can actually, there's a chance that they'll receive the information. Because people in denial are already in protective mode. You don't want to corner them because a cornered person doesn't suddenly like see the light. They come out swinging. So let's look at the second story because it's similar, but there's a little different. This is a husband, also a husband trying to get through to his wife about her drinking. But in this one, this whole drinking thing has been going on quite a bit longer. And the denial, it's not just about protecting her image as a mother. It's protecting her, protecting something that she has spent her whole entire life building. This one is also from the Am I the A-Hole subreddit, and the guy is pointing out his wife's drinking problem. His wife is a nurse. They've been together for 7 years, married for 5, and when they first started dating, she told him all about her dad's drinking, all about what it did to the family, and she promised him and herself, obviously, that she would never end up like him. But since, since around January 2020, her drinking is getting worse and worse. They work opposite schedules, the husband and the wife, and she does 3 or 4 shifts a week. He works days at UPS, and they don't, they don't see each other much. They kind of cross, or like, what do they call it, crossing shifts. When he comes home though, he finds beers out. Wine glasses, alcohol. And when he brings it up, naturally she does what most people do and they deflect. And then she says something like, other nurses drink more than me, or I'm not as bad as my dad. Now, for a while, he gave her a little extra grace on the drinking because she was a nurse during COVID And for goodness sake, uh, extra stress and drinking a little bit more during that time when she was working crazy hard. I mean, he felt like it was pretty understandable. Her own— but her own sister who had been living with them for a few months pulled, pulled him aside and said she was worried too, but didn't say anything directly to the sister. She just said it to the husband, not to the sister. Fast forward until one morning in July, and she— this is the wife— texts him that she's going to stop for drinks and food with a coworker. Oh my gosh. After she gets off shift. And he's like, fine, you know, doesn't think a lot about it. It's sort of the typical. But in this situation, hours go by. It's 2:30 in the afternoon. And then she gets another text that says, at a coworker's house. So he just picks up the phone and calls her this time. And she's sloppy drunk. Says that she doesn't need him to come pick her up, that she'll sober up and drive home later. Now you gotta remember, she's like a 30-minute drive away from where he is. So she came off the night shift. She's planning to drive home drunk in the middle of the afternoon, and he calls their neighbor, explains the situation, and they drive together to get her and bring her back. Um, drive the coworker home also, who was also too drunk to drive. They get home, she showers, passes out until about 10:00 PM at night. When she wakes up, he tries to talk to her because he's upset about everything that's just happened, right? About her being gone for hours and hours. She's so drunk. She was planning to drive home. And she basically, when he confronts her about it, tells him that he's being overly dramatic by having the neighbor come and get her, that she was fine. And now she's embarrassed about the situation to the neighbor because she feels like it made her look bad. And honestly, it probably did make her look bad. In fact, she was pretty furious about the fact that the neighbor saw her. So he's sitting there thinking, you're missing the point here, right? Like there's a big problem here and you're worried about the neighbor. So he lays out, he lays it all out on the table. She drives 30 minutes to the hospital for work. A DUI means no license for a year and probably no job. And she's been at that hospital for like 14 years. She's moved. She's not, she's not moved. She has this good record at the hospital. And he's like, why would you risk all that? So he starts bringing up AA. And what do you think she says? She says, I don't have a problem. There it is again. I'm not as bad as my dad. Other nurses drink more than me. Now, a little context here because it's important for this situation. She watched She watched what that did to her family and her dad. She had all that childhood experience. Her younger sister lived through the worst of it, and she had made a promise to herself the way a lot of kids do that are in alcoholic families, that she would never end up like him. So in her mind, as long as she's not as bad as her dad, her father, she doesn't have a problem. Now that detail about the father is super important here because she didn't just make a casual promise to herself. This promise came from a deep place in her heart, like something major. It's tied to her whole identity, her whole self-image. She's been telling herself this for years and years. So when the husband points out the drinking, When he names the pattern and especially when he suggests AA, she doesn't hear, you drink too much. What she hears, this is like her worst fear being called out loud. She hears, you're just like your father. And as you could imagine, that doesn't go over well because she spent her whole life building an identity as a nurse, as a hard worker. She'd really worked her way up in the hospital. And it's all around not being like her father was. And so when he says this, he doesn't just hit the wall, he slams into it and crumbles to pieces. This is so tied into her identity, it's just never going to go anywhere. The blackout, the neighbors, the DUI risk, the 14 years at the job, every piece of that just makes the wall of denial bigger and bigger and bigger. Because the real issue here is that the more she denies it, if she even lets a tiny drop of this in, the whole story that she's been telling herself, her whole identity that she's got built, it all comes apart. It'll be, you know, I don't have a problem with my drinking. No negotiation whatsoever. Now, When this conversation is going on between this man and this woman, the guy knows he's losing the argument, right? He knows that this isn't going anywhere. In fact, it's turning on him. He just doesn't know why it's going sideways. The fury about the neighbor, what's that about? All the deflections, the comparisons to her dad. Her reaction could have been predicted though, actually, if you think about it. If you knew this whole history with the dad, You might know that she's going to really reject that idea because in her mind, someone with alcohol problem looks like her dad and she doesn't see herself like this. So when you're in this situation as a family member, you feel like you're going crazy because you're trying to talk to a person about what seems so clear to you, but completely denied by the other person. Now, if you look at both of the stories, both the Reddit stories I told you, both of these husbands, Thought to themselves, if I could just get her to see how bad this is getting, she'll have to do something about it. And I think that's a pretty natural assumption that we all have, right? The problem is, it's the way they did it. The way they did it, they sort of smacked directly into something. But both of these women were protecting, and that is. Their identity. Now, I don't want to nerd out too much on you here, but there's actually a psychological term for this. For some of you people that get into all the nerdy psychology like I do, that explains the whole concept. It's called identity verification. And it's all about the fact that people will consciously and subconsciously do almost anything to protect their identity and the way that they view themselves. So anytime you're trying to come at someone with denial, If they see themselves as a good father and you're trying to say something like, you're being a bad influence on the kids or you're traumatizing the kids, it's going to have a lot less likely of an impact to come in. And now you might be thinking, well, I know they care about being a father. So if they knew that this is the impact they were having, they would stop. But it's not actually how it works because psychologically, not only is the person going to be resistant to the idea they have an alcohol problem because that means they have to give up the alcohol. So you got all that going on. But they're also going to be resistant even more than the alcohol part. They're going to be resistant to the idea of looking at themselves differently. So when you are trying to approach someone in denial, you want to be very, very careful not to run into this, what I call the identity button of denial. Now, there are a couple of other buttons. We actually talk about this in our Denial Breakthrough series that we do every few weeks. We talk about the 3 sort of, I call them columns because it's like the 3 columns hold up the pyramid of denial. There's shame, right? And there's identity. And when you hit either one of those things, it's not going to work because what actually happens, not only is it not going to work, but the person goes into saying things just like these 2 women did. Like, I don't have a problem, or you have a problem bigger than me, or I'm not like that, or I go to work every day. They just start deflecting in all these different ways. And as they're saying that, They're convincing themselves even further that it's not a problem. So it's making their denial actually worse. If you want to, if you have a loved one in this situation that's still somewhat functional, but definitely has a drinking problem or a substance abuse problem of any kind, and you can't seem to get through to them, you might want to check out our Denial Breakthrough series. It's 4 days of live coaching with me. And so I think the next one, we do it every 6 or 8 weeks or so. The next one starts at the very beginning, 1st of June. I'll put the link in the description for you so you can sign up if you want to. And, uh, in just a second, we're going to be taking some comments and questions from those of you who are watching live. And as we get those comments and questions up, I want to know from you, can you relate to these stories? Is there one of the stories that you relate to more than the other? From either side, either from the husband's point of view or from the wife's point of view, because maybe you've been on that side where someone's trying to confront you like that. When these women are thinking, I go to work every day, I take care of the kid, I cook the dinners, whatever it is in their mind, they're immediately thinking about how it's not that big of a problem. They're going to start justifying why that they're being unfairly criticized or unfairly attacked. And that's a natural human response. It's not just something that people with alcohol problems do. It's something that we all do. So you got to stop and think before you try to go in and get someone's attention by making the problem seem more giant, more Urgent, that's actually the worst way to get someone to see something because they're in a defense mechanism denial. And that means they're trying to defend against something, right? So you're not going to get someone to put down their defenses by making it seem more scary. You actually want to make it seem less scary, which I know is kind of counter your instincts. So again, the Denial Breakthrough Challenge, I'll put the link down there for you. And it is time for comments and questions. I'm going to have to change my screen here so I can see. Your comments. All right, Bree, I'm ready if you're ready. If you want to pop them up there. All right, here, listen. All right, this first one says, my wife in her— she's in her 10th. Does that say 10th? Oh my gosh, 10th rehab. This time it will be at least 6 months of inpatient and then another 6 months in a step-down sober living. She's been there about 6 weeks now and I'm tired and exhausted. I'm guessing there's more to that one, Bree, right? Here's the rest of it. I'm communicating with her through letters. What questions would be good to ask at this early stage? So she's in the rehab. She's been in 10 rehabs before, and you're pretty much exhausted. And one thing I'll say to you though, is the fact that she's going to be in 6 months of inpatient and then 6 months of step-down, that's a year of treatment. That's pretty hardcore. So I don't know how she got there, if she got there voluntarily, involuntarily, but the fact that she's going to stick out that, that much time says something about her willingness, I think, and seriousness. And even if she, got put in there involuntarily. By the time you're sober that long, your own brain, your own personality kicks in, right? And then you start to think straighter. So I feel like it's a good setup. It's as good a setup as you could possibly have. I think a year of treatment, you hardly ever hear that. So to your question, as far as what questions you want to ask her, I don't know if so much it's about questions. What I would do is reinforce because she could even be thinking something similar to your thinking, which is something along the lines of like, I've done this 10 times before, it's never going to work. What you want to say, you don't want to ask a question like, what's different this time? You want to say something more like, you seem different this time. You want to really encourage and positively reinforce more than Questions necessarily. Because if you ask a lot of questions, even though you're trying to be curious, when it's a sensitive topic, people can be more protective. And I'm guessing this has been going on a long time between you guys. And so I'm guessing anything around the topic is super sensitive. So I might avoid questions and look more at either mirroring statements that will get someone to tell you more, but it's without asking a question. Or the positive reinforcement statements, or even just empathy statements. Kelly says, when someone denies everything and it's all in your head, do you, how do you prove they need help? This is a really good question, Kelly. I'm glad you're asking this. So they're telling you, I'm guessing they're telling you they don't have a problem. It's all in your head. Here's what People in your situation, or I don't know if you're putting this comment here because this is your situation or someone else's, but people in this situation, what they try to do is they try to go around and collect all this evidence to put in front of the person to prove to this person that they have a problem. And that is the exact wrong thing that you want to do. So the question you're asking is, how do you prove that they need help? You don't try to prove they need help because think of it like this. If you're presenting them with all the evidence and you're telling them, what about this time you did this and that? And what about all these bottles I found or whatever it is. The more you do that, the more they're going to defend it, deflect, denial, gaslight, manipulate. I mean, there's a million tactics, right? And they're just going to use them all. Not because they're evil or malicious, just because it's like a reflexive defensive posture that they're taking. So I wouldn't try to prove it. The formula that works to get someone out of denial is this. You want to let the world be the bad guy. So let the natural consequences fall. And as much as possible, it's not 100% possible, but as much as possible, you be the good guy. Not the good guy as in that you're fixing all the problems, but the good guy as in that you're an empathetic listener or someone that they can talk to and trust. That formula gets someone out of denial, right? Because it's like they're starting to have all these problems related to the addiction that they can't pin on you. It's not your fault. These are things that are happening naturally out in the world. And if they trust you, they might open up to you. Now, it's not going to be like, I think I'm an addict, I'm going to stop. At first, it's going to be small things like, I think I need to cut it back, or I'm really mad at myself for what I did. And what you want to do when you get comments like that is you want to— I call it hold your steady, no pouncing, right? Because those are like beginning little change talk statements. And if you pounce, they're going to go away. So Kelly, there's a lot of videos on this channel about denial that'll go a lot more in depth about it, but that's the formula, right? Let the world be the bad guy and you be the empathetic listener. Let the world show them that they have a problem, right? And then you will be there at the right moment and the right time to encourage them and support them to make the right decision. You don't try to prove it. Next question is, How long should you give it once your person admits they're an alcoholic and promises every day to change, but they don't before you leave? The longest you've ever seen it take for someone to get sober. I don't know if I can answer the question longest I've ever seen it take to get someone to get sober because the thing of it is, is most people, it takes several, I call it rounds or tries at it. So we're running starts. There's a lot of false starts in it. There may be multiple treatment episodes. So I call those, those are usually in what I call the bargaining years. And you can't make someone skip bargaining. They're going to go through all this. And bargaining just means little different ways that they're trying to cut it back or control it without stopping. You can't make someone not do that. But what you can do is speed it up by using that formula that I just told the last commenter. About the let the world be the bad guy and you be the good guy. That's the best way to speed it up. So when they say things to you like, well, I think I can just have a couple of drinks when it's a special occasion, right? What you're going to have to do is you're going to have to say something like, okay, yeah, I think that would be a lot better. Look, let's make that the plan. And then you're going to have to let them see for themselves that that doesn't work. That's how you get past a bargain. You have to try it. It's like a checklist that they have to go through and check it off. I can't tell you how long it's going to take. I can tell you though, that if you do it my way, it'll take a lot less time because what makes it go on so long is the arguing with another person and defending it. It's kind of like if you've got a teen who's got a bad boyfriend, right? The longer you harp on the boyfriend, the longer they're going to cling to it. It's exactly like that. Right? And so they get caught up in hiding, lying, defending. And they end up hiding, lying, and defending something they don't even like anymore, but they're so caught in this power struggle, they'll go on that power struggle with you for years and years and years. You have to get out of the power struggle if you want to speed the process along. So my husband's parents' brother were abusive alcoholics. So he thinks he doesn't have a problem because he's not as bad as them. How do I get around that landmine? Uh, any hint of him being like them, even in a joking way and not related to alcohol, causes defensiveness. So your story is like perfectly aligned with these 2 Reddit stories that we just had. What you do is you validate that they're not like their dad. So instead of trying to get someone to see, hey, you're headed down that same path, you go at it more like, Oh no, you're never going to let it get as far as your dad. I know how much you hated that. I know you're not going to let it get there. I'm not even worried because I know how important that is to you. You want to validate that they're not like their person. So you lean into the identity instead of against it, especially if it's true. Like in the 2 Reddit stories that we just read, my guess is that yes, these 2 women had alcohol problem, but they probably weren't to the level that their family was. And so in their mind, that's like the Measure for alcoholism. So what you want to do is you want to say, yeah, you're right. And you're going to make sure you get control of this before you get that point. That's a better way than trying to tell someone that they're headed down that path. Next comment says, my husband quit weed, but says he never had a problem with it and will probably go back in the future. I just nod and listen when he talks this way. Seems like dry drunk thoughts to me though. Okay. So some of you may have never heard the term dry drunk. It's like an old recovery terminology that means someone that's not using or drinking or whatever it is, but they're also not in recovery, meaning they're not working on themselves. This is super common. This is part of the bargaining phases. So this is, I'm going to quit for a period of time to reset my system. It's same as a dry January or sober October, right? And in his mind, it's like, yeah, I'm going to quit for a while, but I don't really have a problem with it. So I'm probably going to go back. And what's going to happen is they're going to quit for a while and they are going to go back. And when they go back, it's going to be a problem again, very quickly, probably within a matter of a week or so. Like they're going to be back to doing it the way they did it before. And the only way to get past that bargain is to let the bargain play out. So what you don't want to do is try to argue with them and tell them, That they're in the bargaining phase and that if they go back, it's going to go out of control. What you can say though, is you can say something like, okay, but if you do go back to smoking and it does seem to slide back, can we reassess this? Can we come back to it? And then they'll usually say yes, or can we come up with a plan B or something like that? So you can set the stage, but you don't want to argue with the fact, because if the person has it in their mind, they are not going to get past that thought until they check that bargain off the list. So it is I hate to tell you this, but it is coming at some point. So go ahead and get yourself prepped for how you're going to handle it because it's coming. All right. Bree says that we are to the end of our time. Thank you everyone who showed up live. And I know we had some technical issues there at the beginning, but you guys made your way over. I appreciate your dedication and you guys asked some really good questions. Again, there's, I'm going to put additional links for you in the description, Denial Breakthrough Challenge and other resources. In case you want to check those out, and I'll see you guys next week. Bye everybody!