How We Navigated My Drinking Problem as a Couple

Before I got sober, I hit some pretty dark rock bottoms. I did things I wasn't proud of and behaved in ways that were contrary to my own values.

For a long time, it was easier to explain my drinking by looking at what was happening around me.

When my alcohol use really started getting bad, I was in a marriage that wasn't a good fit for me, so it was easy to tell myself that the relationship was the reason I was drinking.

Then I got divorced, eventually entered a healthy relationship with my current partner, and discovered something I really didn't want to discover:

The alcohol problem came with me.

I couldn't blame the relationship anymore.

I'm a marriage therapist, and I know what unhealthy relationships look like. I could look at my current relationship and recognize that it wasn't abusive or manipulative.

We were a good fit.

We had a healthy sexual relationship.

There were a lot of genuinely good things between us.

And yet, I still had a drinking problem. I had to face the reality that I was addicted to alcohol, and that sucked.

Knowing I Needed to Quit Wasn't the Same as Being Able to Quit

By 2020, it was very clear to me that I needed to stop drinking. I eventually set a goal that I wanted to quit by the time I turned 40.

But wanting to quit an addiction and actually quitting an addiction are two very different things.

My last drink was in May 2023. That means there were roughly three years between the point when I clearly recognized, "I have to stop doing this," and the point when I actually stopped for good.

I think that's important to talk about because we sometimes tell stories about sobriety as though someone realizes they have a problem, decides to quit, and then quits.

My experience didn't look anything like that.

Alcohol had become one of my primary management systems for life. I used it for:

• social anxiety,

• sleep,

• boredom,

• depression,

• uncomfortable emotions,

• overstimulation,

• procrastination,

• motivation,

• and sometimes simply not wanting to feel whatever I was feeling.

I later learned that I also had ADHD, which is now diagnosed and treated. At the time, though, I didn't understand my brain particularly well, and alcohol had become one of the ways I was poorly managing some of those symptoms, too.

I wasn't physically dependent in the sense that stopping alcohol caused dangerous withdrawal symptoms, but that's an important distinction.

Severe alcohol withdrawal can be medically dangerous and even life-threatening, so someone experiencing symptoms such as significant shaking, seizures, confusion, or other serious withdrawal symptoms needs medical care rather than attempting to detox alone.

For me, the dependency was wrapped around almost every other part of my life.

If I was going to remove alcohol, I had to figure out what the hell was going to replace everything alcohol had been doing for me.

I Had to Build New Ways to Manage My Life

Getting sober didn't happen overnight.

I had to slowly develop healthier systems for all of those things. I used SMART Recovery, read books, watched videos from people who had gotten sober, and experimented with different tools until I started finding things that worked for me.

But one of the most important parts of the process wasn't something I did alone.

My husband and I had to figure out how to talk about my drinking without allowing those conversations to become another source of shame.

We eventually developed a pretty simple system:

We talked about it once a week.

He told me that he wasn't going to judge me. He would listen curiously, offer his ear, and support the work I was doing, but he also wanted me to be honest with him about what was happening.

That honesty was much harder than it sounds.

Shame Makes You Want to Hide

There were times when I drank and didn't want to tell him. Sometimes I tried to hide it, although he became pretty good at recognizing when I had been drinking.

Addiction and dishonesty can become intertwined because shame makes us want to hide. When we're deeply ashamed of something we're doing, our instinct can be to make ourselves small, avoid the conversation, cover up the behavior, and desperately hope nobody notices.

One of the things my husband did that helped was not trying to have the conversation while I was drinking. If he realized I had been drinking, he might simply acknowledge what he noticed and then go do his own thing.

He wasn't going to stay there and argue with me.

He wasn't going to shame me, bash me, lecture me, or try to force me into sobriety in that moment.

He set a boundary for himself and went on with his life.

We had actually talked about this beforehand. We both knew that confronting me while I was drinking wasn't going to magically make me sober, and adding another layer of shame when I already felt terrible about myself wasn't likely to help either.

But that didn't mean we ignored what happened.

We Talked About It When I Was Sober

A day or two later, we could talk about it.

Then, during our weekly conversations, we would talk more broadly about how recovery was going, where I was struggling, and what progress I was making.

I also needed to hear from him. Part of our conversations involved asking how he was doing and what was happening with trust on his side of the relationship.

Because while I was trying to recover from addiction, we were also rebuilding trust as a couple.

Those weren't always easy conversations, and some of them were really hard.

Accountability Without Shame

I think this is one of the most important things we eventually figured out:

Removing shame didn't mean removing accountability.

My husband could have boundaries around my drinking without humiliating me for struggling with it.

I could take responsibility for what I was doing without deciding that my behavior meant I was a terrible person.

And I had a responsibility to tell the truth.

There were moments when telling him, "Hey, I drank," took a heck of a lot of courage.

I wasn't proud of what I had done, and every part of me wanted to hide it. But if I wanted my behavior to change, I had to practice being honest about the behavior I wanted to change.

That became part of recovery, too.

The goal wasn't for him to police me into sobriety.

He couldn't make me quit drinking, and I don't think making one partner responsible for controlling the other person's addiction is particularly healthy for either person.

Instead, we were trying to create conditions where I could be accountable without being destroyed by shame, while he could protect himself and be honest about how my behavior was affecting him.

Quitting Drinking Was a Process

It did get better over time, but I don't want to pretend that happened overnight. I knew by 2020 that my drinking had become a serious problem, and my last drink was in May 2023.

It took me about three years to get from “I know I need to quit” to actually quitting.

My husband was going through a process, too.

Looking back, I think three things were particularly helpful for us:

• He created boundaries for himself instead of trying to control me.

• I challenged myself to be honest even when honesty was incredibly uncomfortable.

• And we had regular conversations about how recovery was going for both of us.

Underneath all three was something even more important:

We tried to remove shame without removing directness.

If you're a couple navigating addiction or early sobriety, I think that's worth thinking about. You need a way to talk about what is actually happening, because pretending it isn't happening doesn't help anyone.

But you also need to remember that shame and accountability are not the same thing.

You can say: "This behavior is hurting us. This has to change. I need boundaries around this. We need to rebuild trust."

And you can also say: "I love you. I'm listening. Tell me the truth. Let's figure out what happens next."

For us, learning how to hold both of those things at the same time became an important part of getting me sober.

It wasn't perfect.

It wasn't quick.

It was a process.

But eventually, that process got me to May 2023.

And I haven't had a drink since.