Amber Hollingsworth, an addiction clinician, explains why alcoholic partners blame their spouses: you're too critical, you don't have good boundaries, you're always negative. Brain chemistry, shame, and defensive thinking drive these accusations. Breaking the cycle means refusing the role they've assigned you.
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Now, obviously I can't speak for every alcoholic husband on the planet, but I have been treating people with addictions for almost 20 years now. And in the past five years or so, it's been mostly husbands. After all these years, I can almost predict what someone is going to tell me about their spouse if they have an alcohol problem. Now, I know that some of what I'm about to tell you is probably going to be difficult to hear. Just think about like this. I've probably never even met you or your husband. And if everything I'm about to say is pretty much true in your case, then you can rest assured that that has a lot more to do with the problem of alcohol than it does with you as an individual. Otherwise, how would I ever even be able to speak to this situation? After I tell you what your husband thinks about you, then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about why they think that. And lastly, I'm going to tell you what to do about it. So in almost every case of husbands that I talk to, they end up telling say the same things about their wives. They feel like you're too critical. They feel like that you don't have good boundaries. They feel like you worry all the time or you're always negative. They pretty much think that you're overreacting to the situation. And by the time someone's sitting in my office, they've built up a lot of resentments, which then leads to self pity, which then leads to more drinking. Because you see addiction and alcoholism need self pity. It's like the fuel that the addiction runs on. And so because addiction needs this fuel, it has an automatic internal mechanism for creating this fuel. And that's why I can sit on here and say these things. And it applies to most of you watching because it's just that predictable. Secretly, they wish you would just leave them alone because that addiction really wants you to go away. Because you are very likely the only barrier left between the addiction and that person. And if you were out of the way, it would have 100% control over your husband. You're the one that's holding the damn back. One of the biggest frustrations that I hear from husbands is that their wives only see their negative qualities and that they don't even pay attention or care about any of the good things that they do. I feel like you see them very one sided. Now, I know that there's some good reasons for that. Okay, I'm not invalidating that at all. And I'm not saying any of These things are true about you saying that this is probably what's going through your spouse's mind about you because they need to feel this way about you in order to continue to drink. Now, they'll make up lots of reasons and excuses to disregard your opinion or your advice on the situation. They'll tell me things like, oh, she just overreacts because her brother was alcoholic. She thinks everyone's an alcoholic. They'll say, oh my gosh, she's so negative. She always thinks the worst thing that's going to happen is going to happen. Doesn't matter what the situation is. They have all these little secret mind trick defense mechanism ways of disqualifying you and making it where your opinion doesn't matter. Now, I would love to know if you've ever heard your husband tell you any of these things just outright. If so, jump into the comments and let me know which of these things your husband has said to you. Or hey, if I didn't name one of them. And truly common, put that down there too. Maybe I'll add it to the list for next time. But let's get into for just a second why they think, what they think about the situation. First and foremost, I want you to know that their brain chemicals are all jacked up. They have a roller coaster of brain chemicals going on in there. And that inconsistency of neurotransmitters really does affect the way they filter in information. If you stop to think about it, they're probably kind of unhappy with everything in their life, right? So it's really not just you, although they probably point the majority of it at you. Because that's what people with addictions do. They take the majority of that frustration and point it towards the person in their life that they're closest to. It's usually their spouse or their parent, sometimes their boss. But if they're married, it's probably the spouse. Now the other big reason why they think this way about you is because it's basically like a psychological defense mechanism. Every time they see you and they talk to you, it reminds them of all the ways they're not doing so great. Basically, it's a mirror for them about the things in their life that they are most shameful about. And I know you may be thinking, well, they sure don't seem shameful. They act like they're all proud of it, which could be true. They could act like they're all proud of it, but secretly, deep down inside, they're embarrassed, they are humiliated, and they are making all these promises to themselves that it's going to stop. They likely won't let you see that vulnerable part of them because they feel like if they showed you that vulnerable part, you would like jump on top of it and start pushing them to change. And they're not ready. So they don't like to show you that part. But it's always in there. It's just below the resentment and then the self pity. And then there it is. It's the insight, it's the knowledge, it's the I don't like me, I really want to change part of them. Now there's one more reason why they think the way that they think about their spouses. And if you weren't mad at me already, you're probably going to be mad at me now. This last reason that they think what they think is because it's kind of true. I don't mean that to be mean to you. I don't mean that because I'm saying you caused your husband's alcoholism. But what I will say is that your husband's alcoholism will cause these qualities and traits to come out of you again. It is predictable. I don't even know you or your husband. And if I can guess these things, then you know that it's a symptom of the problem. When you see that your spouse is basically like headed for disaster. And not only are they headed for disaster, but they're like taking you down with them, which is what they're doing, you get scared. Naturally, you get freaked out. You're trying to help them, you're trying to make them stop. You're building resentments because you're probably taking up way more than your fair share of the responsibilities. You're sick of the promises, you're sick of the lies. And because you're going through what you're going through, it causes you to act in certain ways, like probably have bad boundaries. You know, you're always spying on them, you're probably mad at them, probably a little bossy, probably a little critical, like all those things that we said. There's likely a little truth in some of that, but it's kind of fair, isn't it? When you're dealing with an alcoholic spouse, it will bring out those traits in you. And the whole system just feeds itself. It's like their addiction needs to see you that way. And because it sees you that way, you become that way. And as long as that continues, it will continue to feed the addiction. The first and most important way to help your spouse overcome alcoholism is to get out of the bad guy roll. It's not until you get out of that bad guy roll that they're going to be able to accurately and honestly see the problem for what it is and eventually make the decision to change. Now, if you want to know more about that, there's a ton of videos on this channel about it. In fact, there's a whole playlist on this channel called Dealing with Denial. And if you want even more help than that, then hop over our website. The link's in the description. It's familyrecoveryacademy online. And there are a ton more resources there as well. Now, if you're not completely mad at me and you haven't shut this video off, I want you to watch this video next.
