Author: Gary Jackson

The Effects of Living With an Alcoholic Spouse

Supporting your loved one with AUD can be extremely beneficial to their recovery. This may involve keeping them safe while they’re drinking or offering to help find a treatment that suits them. However, taking care of yourself should be of utmost importance, and it’s OK to take a step back at times and redirect attention to your own self-care. There may be very little you can do to help someone with AUD until they are ready to get help, but you can stop letting someone’s drinking problem dominate your thoughts and your life. It’s OK to make choices that are good for your own physical and mental health.

However, until the individual makes the decision to deal with their drinking, the disease of AUD remains unabated. People who abuse alcohol may have an easier quitting than alcoholics, who develop a dependency on alcohol. When determining if the person you live with has a drinking problem, consider the big picture. If you know they drink a lot and/or drink frequently and they have at least a few of these symptoms, chances are there is a problem with alcohol. A relationship with someone with an alcohol addiction is rarely fulfilling. It’s important to remember to prioritize taking care of yourself.

Treatment for alcohol use disorder

More than 60% of wives also reported feeling mentally disturbed often. Despite such emotional problems, almost half of them never displaced their frustration on children and three-fourth of them never ignored their children. It was seen that only 7% of the wives reported that they often ignored their own physical health while 10% of them also reported sleep disturbances. There were 13% of wives who reported that their social visits get reduced often owing to their husband’s drinking and half of them reported feeling ashamed in society.

Alateen is similar to Al-Anon but it’s for children of alcoholics. It gives kids an opportunity to spend time with their peers and discuss their alcoholic parent with people their own age who understand and can relate to the situation. There are many treatment options available for people misusing alcohol. Medication and psychological treatments are shown to be effective, according to 2019 research.

Impacts of Living with an Alcoholic Spouse

Spouses of alcoholics are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, may suffer emotional harm, may neglect their own health, and may become socially withdrawn. Many relationships affected by alcohol end in separation and lasting effects like physical injuries, emotional trauma, additional addictive disorders, financial problems, and broken relationships. To avoid or minimize these effects it is important to directly address the issue of drinking, to try to help the alcoholic, and to leave the relationship if necessary.

Other people have several of these symptoms but do not have a problem with alcohol. BetterHelp can connect you to an addiction and mental health counselor. It also makes it challenging to feel happiness in future relationships.

Financial support and sponsorship

When someone with alcohol dependency promises they will never drink again but a short time later are back to drinking as much as always, it is easy to take the broken promises and lies personally. You may think, “If they really love me, they wouldn’t lie to me.” If your loved one is truly dependent on alcohol, they are going to drink no matter what you do or say. People who drink too much often cause harm to those they love. Making excuses or avoiding the problem doesn’t help and in fact will lead to more harm for everyone involved. It is important to address the issue, to take steps to help the individual who struggles with drinking, and to know when to leave for self-protection if necessary.

• This could be in a one-on-one conversation or an intervention with others who are concerned about the person.
• However, what you can do is make sure you’re taking good care of yourself.
• The data were collected by conducting the individual interview of each study subject using above-mentioned questionnaires.
• Moreover, longitudinal assessment of coping styles as well their outcomes can be employed.

You can offer support and encouragement, and set boundaries, but ultimately it is their decision if they want to recover. For many, this means there is a point at which they must walk away from someone with an alcohol problem, no matter how painful it is for everyone. It’s also important to keep in mind that you cannot control what your loved one does or manage their alcohol consumption. Living with an alcoholic is traumatic, especially if there is serious abuse. 12-step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) help individuals by providing recovery support and encouraging peer connection. However, some 12-step groups are spiritually based while others are not, so they may not appeal to or work for everyone.

The Challenges of Living With an Alcoholic Partner

What’s more, the mere presence of the addiction completely removes your ability to communicate honestly. And, the people you love have the power to hurt you more than anyone else in your life. While your role as your wife’s partner is to support her (and her role is to support you), enabling her poor behavior or financially feeding her alcoholism doesn’t help either of you.

• Table 3 depicts the mean scores, range, and mean percent scores on domains of problems faced by the wives of alcoholics.
• However, when someone is an alcoholic, the choice to drink is no longer within their control, at least to some extent.
• At The Recovery Village, we know how challenging it can be to cope with having an alcoholic spouse.
• In reality, an alcoholic spouse will likely not get better on their own, so doing nothing is not a wise option.
• Almost one-fourth of the study wives reported using avoidance as coping strategy while another 23% reported that they tried getting on their own things as their coping mechanism.