A 2024 YouTube talk by counselor Amber Hollingsworth about strategies for spouses married to functional alcoholics. Hollingsworth explains the distorted perspectives that make alcohol appear as a ‘friend’ and the spouse appear as the ‘bad guy,’ why functional alcoholics continue drinking despite being able to stop, and practical steps spouses can take (shifting out of the ‘bad guy’ role, highlighting positives, and using an indirect/intervention-style approach) to outsmart the addiction and restore the marriage.
Chapters
If you're married to a functional alcoholic, then you very likely feel like that they continuously choose the alcohol over you, that they put the alcohol before your relationship, and you feel that way because it's pretty much true. In this video, I want to help you understand why they keep choosing the alcohol instead of the relationship, their wife, their family and their kids. Because once you understand what's really going on here, you can get very strategic and you can out smack their addiction. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I've been counseling people with addictions for more than 20 years now. And year after year, day after day, I talk to people who are struggling with alcoholism and addiction about what's going on in their life. And the biggest part of what people talk to me about is their family situation. So I've got a pretty good idea about what someone who's a functional alcoholic thinks about their spouse, and more importantly, what to do about it. Now, some of you might be wondering, what do I mean when I say functional alcoholic? I actually have a lot of videos on this channel about functional alcoholism that I go in depth into that topic about, so you can check those out. But for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to make it really simple by saying that they could stop drinking, but they won't stop drinking. So, I mean, they are not to the point where they are really so bad off that they couldn't make a different decision. Once someone gets to that point, then they're choosing the alcohol for a whole different reason. But if your husband's in a position where he could choose to let go of the alcohol and choose his family, but he's not, there's probably a reason why, and that's what I want to explain to you. The whole thing is about a pretty messed up point of view, about how they're viewing the alcohol and how they're viewing you. Essentially, they see the alcohol as their friend, as something that makes them feel good about themselves, as something that helps them manage their stress, as something that's fun. It's like the alcohol protects them from all of the life's difficulties that they don't want to deal with. So you can see they view alcohol with this sort of rose colored glasses over here, and they see all the great things that alcohol does for them. On the other hand, once you get to the point where your husband has been struggling with alcoholism for a while, you get really frustrated, you get to your wit's end, and that causes you to back away emotionally to be upset with them. You know, it creates this whole bad dynamic between you and them. And so over time, they view you as the opposite of all those things. They view you as critical of them, as trying to control them. You make them feel bad about themselves. I'm not telling you that to make you feel bad about you. I'm telling you that because this is the way they see it in their head and they see it this way because they have to see it this way in order to continue to justify the drinking. They probably feel like you throw them under the bus because you're maybe you're talking to other people and you're trying to get other people to talk to them about their drinking or whatever. So they sort of see alcohol over here as the hero with the rose colored glasses. And they see you over here with, I don't know, like black, dark colored glasses, I would say. But the truth of it is, is none of that is an accurate viewpoint. It's completely distorted. Sort of like a filter, like an Instagram filter. You can put a filter on something and it looks completely different from what it's really there or the original version. That's what's happening. It's like that alcohol is putting this Instagram filter on the top. That's messing up the whole point of view. Key to getting on the other side of this situation is to actually flip flop those points of view. The first thing you got to do is you gotta get out of that bad guy roll. I talk about it on this channel so much. If you're really interested in that, make sure you are subscribed with the bell notifications on because we talk about that almost every week. But what we want is we want them to see you for the truth. The fact that you love them, the fact that you're the one that's there to support them and care about them, that you're the one that's there to take up the SL and make sure the family continues to run. And the truth of it is, yeah, you probably have some negative thoughts about them because of what's been going on. But I know you also have some very, very positive thoughts about them. Otherwise you wouldn't be sticking around through this whole hot mess of alcoholism. But the alcoholism, it's kind of like the little devil sitting on your shoulder telling you stuff. That little alcoholism devil wants your husband to think all of these negative, terrible things about you, because as long as he continues to think those things about you, he doesn't have to be honest with himself. And deal with what he's and what's really going on. And the drinking, it's like a distraction method. The alcoholism points the finger to you, saying you're the bad guy. And a lot of times, because of everything that's going on, you do kind of turn into the bad guy. As hard as it is and as unfair as it is, if you can take a different stance toward your husband, start to see you different, one of the quickest things you can do is find their positive qualities and start to point those out. Find little ways to make your husband feel good about the relationship. The truth is that little devil wants you to go away. Because when you go away, there'll be nothing there to hold the dam back anymore. And the drinking will be like 24 7. We'll be out of functional alcoholic land. We'll be in all the way alcoholic land. And it needs you to go bye bye in order for that to happen. So that either means it needs to push you out to get you to divorce, or at least to shut up and go to your end of the house and your corner and stay in your own lane. Leave them alone. If you want to outsmart this thing, you got to understand the way that it's not only sort of manipulating and controlling your husband, but the ways that it's manipulating and controlling you. And you got to get yourself back in the driver's seat of this situation. Because the thing is that alcohol actually makes them feel horrible all the time. It makes their anxiety terrible, it makes their sleep awful. It makes them feel embarrassed, humiliated, shameful, regretful, makes their self confidence down, their work performance down, their intimacy performance down all the things it's making them feel bad about them. But the little alcoholism monster is just distracting your husband from seeing that truth by pointing a finger over there to you saying, that's the bad guy over there. So we're not gonna let that happen anymore. Because while your husband is distracted, this alcoholism is not only taking everything from your husband, but also messing up your life. And if you have children, messing up their lives too. We don't want to let alcoholism take anything else from us. You can beat it. The key is to outsmart it. And you may be thinking, well, why is that on me? Why isn't it their issue? Why are you not telling them to address the problem, Telling it you? Because you are the saner one of the two in the situation currently. The chances that you can start to change right now are actually better than the chances that they're going to make those changes right now. And once you start making some changes, they actually start making some changes. So as unfair as it is, if this is what you want, if you want to restore the marriage, if you want to drive the alcoholism away, then you got to reverse this point of view. You've got to get out of the bad guy role. Now. If you want to learn more about that, check out the videos on this channel. I talk about it all the time. If you want the step by step approach for how to do that, check out my invisible intervention program, where I have it laid out for you step by step by step, walking you all the way from in denial to in recovery.
