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Summary
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A parent describes repeated verbal cruelty and threats from a husband who drinks heavily, while hoping treatment might restore the marriage. They ask whether to begin therapy independently or wait for him to stop drinking.
The response argues that pleading alone cannot make a partner ready to address substance use and centers the harm to the reader and children.
Drawing on the author's clinical experience, it presents separation as a possible route toward relief and a different family life.
The answer strongly favors leaving but cannot predict this family's outcome or establish whether the husband will change.
Question
Reader · Identity withheldI’ve been with my husband for 9 years and we have been married for three and 1/2 years. We have three children together and, he helped me raise my 10 year old daughter since we started our relationship.
\nWe had a rocky relationship from the beginning and, sometimes, I feel like we started in the middle, worked our way to the beginning and our now at the end. I know he always loved me and he is a very affectionate person. However, he loves me in the only way he knows how to love someone and that is to hurt in order to comfort.
\nI am struggling with the thought that he is and always will be an unhappy person, that he is someone who always looks for the bad, the wrong and something to bitch about. That always leaves me on the chopping block.
\nBefore I go any further, I should tell you that my husband is an alcoholic and has struggled with one dependency after another, but, alcohol has always been a comfort in his life.
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Lately, he started to turn into a very mean-spirited person. He picks on anything and everything that crosses his path. He tells me how he is going to divorce me and leave me with nothing and that no one will ever want me after him. He makes really mean comments about my weight in a really mean way. say mean. It doesn’t stop there and I am just overwhelmed that “I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t”.
\nNo matter what I do, once he starts drinking, every little thing from the past surfaces. He bombards me with one thing after another until I feel like he has broken me down.
\nSometimes it takes a little longer before it does get to me. Then, I end up praying that it will just stop, not only for my sake but for our children, as well.
\nEven though I don’t believe the horrible things he tells me, I am I still hurt. I know that if my marriage dissolves I will be forever devastated but I am still an attractive and young woman and no, matter what he tells me, I know I am destined to be loved back by a man. I am just praying that my husband can be strong enough to get the help he needs and hopefully these wounds that he has afflicted on me can heal through time and therapy.
\nWhat I need to know is where to start and how to get there with him? Do I start therapy on my own or do I beg him to stop drinking and wait for him to be ready?
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Answer
Allan Schwartz, Ph.D.As with all addictions, whether its to alcohol or any other substance, the primary relationship is to the substance. Its the alcohol and drugs that he loves. You and your children come in a distant fourth or fifth, if at all. That means that all the begging in the world will not help. Your husband will not stop drinking and using drugs until if he is ready to and that day may never come.
\nIt is difficult to understand your loyalty to a man who is incredibly abusive. He seems to have no regard for you and demeans you in front of the children. Of course, alcohol drives this type of behavior. That means that, unless you are ready to give him up and protect yourself and you children, all of this will continue.
\nDuring the many years of my private practice, in which I worked with many patients in the same situation as yours, it was only separation and divorce that brought peace and the opportunity to build a new life.
\nI must tell you that many of my patients tried to stay with their spouse in the hope that they would get help and recover. In almost every case, these people had no other recourse than to leave the marriage. These people were motivated to give up on the relationship for many reasons, but, the three most powerful factors were that:\nShow moreShow less
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- The spouse would not change, even when there was some brief respite from the addiction that usually ended up with relapse. \n
- There was deep well of resentment over the abuse. \n
- The addict secretly spent so much of the family money that little or nothing remained. \n
You state that you will be “forever devastated” if your marriage dissolves. In my opinion, that will not happen, although you will go through a period of adjustment. I predict, in my opinion, that you will come to feel relief from ending this horrible way of living.
\nI agree with you when you say that you can find a man who can return the love that you give.
\nAs you say, you are young and attractive. You can build a new life for yourself and your chidren.
\nBest of Luck
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