How to Handle an Alcoholic Spouse

Susan Saper Galamba, a divorce and family law attorney, author of Don't Burn the Underwear, and a legal analyst for the Huffington Post, wrote in 2013 that alcoholism ranks as the leading cause of death in the United States. It also sits among the biggest reasons marriages fall apart. The disease is chronic, and it reaches people across every nationality, race, gender, age group, and income bracket. Over time it tends to worsen. You see it in heavy drinking, an inability to quit, continuing to drink even as the damage piles up, and a constant preoccupation with the next drink. There is physical dependence too, where a person needs more alcohol or something stronger to feel what smaller amounts once delivered, plus withdrawal symptoms whenever they try to cut down.

No single cause explains it. Social surroundings, biology, genetics, environment, and psychological makeup all seem to feed into how the condition takes hold and grows. When someone is caught in alcoholism, the fallout spreads to their kids, their parents, their partner, their coworkers, their friends. The drinker's own sense of worth and confidence erodes along the way. Work, school, family life, personality, the ability to cope with ordinary stress: all of it can come undone. If you think your husband or wife is struggling with an alcohol addiction, pushing them toward treatment matters more than almost anything else you can do. What follows are some practical ways to cope with a partner who is drinking.

Start by writing things down. Make a list of the specific ways your spouse's drinking has wounded you, your friends, their parents, and your children. Putting it on paper gives you somewhere to channel the worry and fear you carry for your spouse, for yourself, for the marriage, and for the family. The exercise can also point you toward what set the addiction in motion and what keeps it burning. Patterns tend to surface once you stop holding everything in your head.

Talk to your spouse. If you want any handle on their moods and behavior, communication is where it begins. Say what you are worried about plainly, and propose that the two of you work together to get help: for them, for you, for the marriage, for the whole family. Then let them speak, and actually listen. What they say may reveal what is really driving the drinking. Spend all your energy assigning blame and you will probably miss it. Plenty of people drink because they feel alone, with no one willing to listen or stand beside them. So pay attention, but stop short of making excuses, and do not enable the habit by buying alcohol or looking past the problems it causes. If your spouse shuts down and refuses to talk, or refuses to change or seek help at all, a separation may be your only option until they decide to heal.

Voicing your concerns deserves its own emphasis. Wait for a moment when your spouse is sober, or close to it, and ask to sit down together. Do not shrink from the subject or soften it to spare their temper. Be truthful about how you feel and about what the drinking is doing to the family. Keep your voice steady. Let them know you love them and that you will stay by their side if they get treatment. Lectures, insults, judgment, and criticism tend to backfire, pushing the person into defensiveness and anger, which undermines the whole conversation. If you made the list earlier, walk through what you wrote, but the moment things turn hostile, step away and try again later. You cannot force anyone to talk, and you cannot force anyone into recovery. When a spouse flatly refuses to change, your choices narrow to tolerating the drinking or removing yourself from it, for a time or for good.

Support counts for a great deal. Your spouse will lean on you as they confront what is wrong and try to rebuild. Remember through the hard stretches that this is a disease. Nobody sets out to become an alcoholic. Nobody wants a life organized around the next drink. So let your love and your hope for their recovery show. Go with them to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, sit in on counseling sessions, and keep the house free of alcohol.

Clearing out the alcohol is a concrete step worth taking: at home, in the car, at the office. Do not drink in front of your spouse, and steer clear of places built around a bar. Try to loosen the ties to their drinking companions, too. Suggest other things to do with an evening, a movie at home, dinner somewhere without a bar, the gym, church, bowling, mini golf, or just staying in and watching television together. Activities with no alcohol attached give your spouse something else to lean into and lower the odds of a relapse.

If you have tried everything and still cannot manage, counseling may be the next move, for you, the marriage, your spouse, or the family together. Should your spouse refuse to come, go on your own. A counselor can teach you healthier ways to cope so you can carry this load without being crushed by it. The stress of living alongside someone's addiction runs high, and your own care cannot wait. A good counselor will also help you weigh whether the marriage is worth saving. Expect questions about your willingness to stay and work at it. If the answer is yes, they can help you learn to communicate better. If the answer is no, they can help you leave in a way that does the least harm.

Separating may be the hardest thing you ever do, and strangely it may be what rescues the marriage. When your spouse is not ready to seek treatment, stepping away for a while, until they are ready, might be the only choice left. If there are children, their needs come before yours, so if leaving is what serves them best, that is the path. You can still love and support your spouse from a distance. Give them room to feel the weight of what they have lost, and there is a chance they will reach for help. If they do not, divorce may be what remains. You cannot help a person who refuses help, and you cannot keep living inside an unhealthy relationship with someone who will not change.