These tips I am offering can be applied to your relationship with your boyfriend as well as with others who seem to have a drinking problem. The rules are the same when living with any alcoholic.
The first thing that you must realize is that he has his own life and you have yours. Even though you are deeply in love with him, you need to let him live his life. If he chooses to do that by being an alcoholic, well then that is his choice.
The sooner you can let go of his drinking problem-the better off you will be. An alcoholic always has to hit bottom on their own. There’s no amount of persuasion that will cause them to stop consuming alcohol. I honestly do not know of any ways to make an alcoholic quit drinking.
I need you to realize something right now, you do not have any control over his alcoholism. As angry as you my get at me with this next statement, it is the truth.
An alcoholic will always choose a drink before you!
Looking to your alcoholic boyfriend to fulfill your need to be loved is a dangerous place to be. He will let you down, I can promise you that. You will always be second choice to his alcoholism.
If you don’t believe me, go attend a few AA meetings and see how many alcoholics destroyed relationships with others because of their poor choice to drink alcohol.
I heard it said once that going to a bank for a sandwich is the same as expecting to have your need for intimacy fulfilled by an alcoholic. They just don’t have it in them to give. You will not get a sandwich from your bank and an alcoholic boyfriend will not fulfill your need for intimacy
This is why I believe it is important for you to learn how to love yourself and discover the beauty of who you are on your own. If you base your self-worth on how your alcoholic boyfriend treats you-you are in for some huge disappointments.
The danger of having a relationship with anyone is becoming too effected by their opinions of us. Because alcoholics are not always in the right state of mind, they can often leave us emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually abandoned. If we remain strong in these areas regardless of how the alcoholic boyfriend we are living with treats us, we will be a happier person.
I am not saying in any way that you should allow them to treat you poorly. We have plenty of articles on this site about setting boundaries with an alcoholic.
So, when you are living with an alcoholic boyfriend, you can expect that you will not always be the first priority in their lives.
You are going to have to make sure that you have outstanding friendships outside your relationship with your boyfriend. I do highly suggest that they should be girlfriends. This will keep your integrity in check and help to guard against the possibility of jealousy entering into the relationship. If that happens, you will need to know how to handle an out of control alcoholic.
Never nag your boyfriend about his drinking problem. Don’t equate your happiness in any way to being related to his drinking problem. Happiness for you is an inside job. No one should ever be responsible for your happiness except you! Humans will always let us down, especially alcoholic boyfriends.
If you want someone to truly be happy to see you when you come home, who will not argue with you and very seldom disappoint you, trade your boyfriend in for a dog.
Men can be extremely difficult to get along with when they are not alcoholics. They are wired differently than you. When you are living with an alcoholic boyfriend, your relational problems are going to be at a very high level. It’s not his fault, it’s just the way things are when you choose to interact with any alcoholic.
Hello to all of you precious people!
Thank you for all of those encouraging words and testimonies! I am 30 years old and married for almost 13 years now! I am a mother of two beautiful children wich are adopted by us! Yay, yes we love them as our own! My husband has been back and forth witb his drinking at first i thought it was not an issue for him. After several years of it getting worse i still kept on encouraging myself that it wasnt so bad that it was just me and my way of thinking.In the year of 2013 we moved from the city to a country house and since i had bad a surgery a week prior to our moving day, i couldnt help. I wasnt strong enough and wasnt allowed to help or work at all. That day he got his liscence taken away .Yes that same day! So i was stuck with a home where everything needed to be done and he needed me to drive him to work every day, plus i was on meds and wasnt allowed to drive according to my doctor. So it was a painful situation. So i figured this would finally teach him a lesson. He than quit for a few weeks and than it started all over again and it got worse this time. He made me feel so not good enough and stuff that one day i met a friend who encouraged me to leave him. So i took the kids and left! He didnt hear from me for two weeks. I was heartbroken beyond repair. I was suicidal and could hardly walk.So he promised to quit his drinking and said he would give it evrything he’s got to fix this. So i came home and we went for counselling and he was sober for 6 months. After six months, one evening he asked me, like a little boy, “I really want to have one beer today with you honey just one. I promisse that i wont drink more than one!” The evening ended and he had 6 cans of beer. I begged him not to take that on but he did. So i saw how he just lost control within a week. its worse than before. He lost his business in construction,our finances started to get bad, and he had to find a job in trucking so he got a job in trucking now wich provides for our mortgage but doesnt cover our bills. At this moment he is just really holding his beer once he gets back home he will be on the phone the whole time with friends, drinking buddies, and i am alone most of my days and raising our beautiful children on my own most of the time. He loves them and cares about them but his addiction really has changed him into a different man. I cant count the nights that i went to Bed begging God to just put an end to this and to help me love him and to help me through this. God has given me friends that are amazing and understanding and we focus on all the awesome things that we see every day. I have finally started to just tell People all over the place about Jesus! I am so passionate about Jesus and it sets me on fire for more! I am a follower of Christ and i am soo blessed! He protects me from so much heart ache every day. Now that my husband isn’t home much i have so much peace and i know he can not drink in the truck so when he comes home he has his 24 or more but he misses me through out the week so much that he treats me mostly like the old days when we were still dating 😉 I wana encourage all of you, who struggle with a AH, never ever give up and specially not on God! He knows every person by name and he wants to help you through this. He wants to be your best friend ,and he doesnt gossip about anything lol. i am always looking forward to my husbands homecoming and also for his next trip;-) God knows what he is doing with my AH! Blessings and Peace to all of you! Hugs
My dear friends I see you are all talking about spouses that are alcoholics, just wondering if anyone on this site has a child that is an alcoholic. My son was a great young man this alcoholism changed him. He has over 100000.00 in college loans and cannot keep a job. My husband and I are signed on 50000.00 of those loans that we have to pay because we have a daughter who needs to go to college. Also the other kicker is that my husband lost his job in Oct 2015. Can someone give me some advice?
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