I Swore I Wouldn’t Put Up With a Man Who Drank Too Much

This is why we stay through addiction, affairs, and abuse

I am in college in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

It’s my sophomore year and I meet a guy at a party. I’m not interested in him. He doesn’t give up. He continues to ask my roommates about me. A month later, I see him at our college bar. He makes me laugh. I decide I’ll give him a chance and go on a date.

Three months later, I’m crazy about him.

I make a declaration.

“If you ever make anything about drinking it will be over for me,” I say.

“Okay,” he says.

“No,” I say. “I mean it. My head will overrule my heart and I will be outta here. It won’t be negotiable. My pragmatic side will replace my emotional side.”

To be clear, my boyfriend and I are both extroverts and overly social.

The good time Charlie and Charlene.

I am not talking about drinking. We both drink. We can keep up with the best of them. I am talking about abusing alcohol. The type of situation where unpredictability and chaos enter a home and make it no longer a safe refuge.

My father was an alcoholic and left when I was 5 years old.

He was a good man.

What I refer to as a lampshade alcoholic. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body but he couldn’t overcome his battle with alcohol. He didn’t support us emotionally, physically, or financially. Everything fell to my resilient, strong, and loving mother.

I had a sixth sense when it came to detecting people with potential alcohol issues.

My boyfriend displayed none of these characteristics.

We married and he continued to display none of these characteristics. Drinking was never a problem between us. I thought I had successfully avoided duplicating my Father’s past.

One day I told my husband it felt lonely being married to him.

And that I might leave him.

He spent two years trying to win me back.

Once he did, he suddenly began drinking too much. It wasn’t constant or even weekly or monthly. But some nights he drank so much I barely recognized his behavior.

I barely remembered a few college nights that extreme.

I finally discovered what was happening.

He was watching football games with some buddies and they were doing shots. The liquor I had seen him drink occasionally over the years, had nothing on these episodes.

I kicked him out after a particularly bad night.

He had frightened our children and me.

We entered marriage counseling with a psychologist. It was then my husband was diagnosed as lacking empathy with a narcissistic personality disorder.

Now I knew why I felt lonely.

The older we were getting even this good time Charlene was craving more than a husband who was fun socially. I wanted someone who really felt like they were sharing my life with me, not living a version of parallel play.

The psychologist and marriage counselor told us what I already knew.

My husband did not have a drinking problem.

He was abusing alcohol and our counselor said his anger was coming out while he was drinking. The distinction being my husband was not an alcoholic. But you don’t have to be an alcoholic to abuse alcohol at any time in your life.

Our marital problems initially made my husband want to win me back.

Once he had, it angered him that I had ever uttered those words.

But I didn’t realize that yet.

We hadn’t had enough counseling. I didn’t understand how a narcissist goes after your Achilles heel. A narcissist will weaken you by going after what they know will bring you down. It’s two-fold. It’s a form of punishment and control.

It strengthens the narcissist’s hold while it weakens their target.

In the next few years, I told my husband, “Either you stop drinking or you address whatever is bothering you or you leave.”

He walked out the door three times.

He would later say I kicked him out.

It was untrue.

I gave him a choice.

I was not only a woman intolerant of his behavior. I was a mother who would not allow him to continue to expose my children to this. Even if it was happening sporadically four to six times a year during that time.

I shocked even myself, that I took him back multiple times over those years.

He would leave for three months and promise he would return to counseling, and I would acquiesce. I would give him another chance.

I, the 19-year-old college girl who had boldly made a declaration.

Was now a 42-year-old woman who was tolerating the intolerable.

There’s a reason for this. I rationalized his behavior. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I believed he deserved it. I thought maybe he was having a mid-life crisis. How could I walk away from someone who didn’t have a long history of this behavior?

He did have a long history of making me cry.

Something else that would make sense after counseling and a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. Our marriage was complicated. I dated a handsome, charming, and funny guy for nearly six years. I married a completely different man.

One who brought tears to my eyes.

I left him after eight years of marriage.

He promised he would go to counseling if I would return.

After nearly eight months of marital therapy, I felt like I had my best friend back.

We had six good years. He didn’t display the same degree of coldness or cruelty. He temporarily caged it. Just as he had in order to win me over to get me to marry him. The narcissist still wanted me so he was on his best behavior.

To be fair, he was a covert narcissist so he did not present the way an overt narcissist does. As long as I didn’t interfere with his day or his world he was seemingly easygoing.

We had also moved.

I think during those good years he needed me.

Until he made enough friends to drink shots with during football games.

I stuck it out with him for five years after his bad drinking behavior began. Again, had it been constant I wouldn’t have taken him back those three times. But it still brought unpredictability to our home and I wasn’t willing to stay.

My husband made my worst fears come true.

Something I swore I would never tolerate. But that was before decades of marriage and before we became a family. I thought my children needed us to remain intact.

One day I was chatting with a woman whose husband had an affair.

She was a beautiful, strong, independent woman.

She had suffered immensely from the betrayal. But she had decided to stay with her husband. I didn’t know her well but I identified with her when she said the following.

“I told myself I would never stay with a man who cheated on me,” she said.

“I understand what you are saying,” I said. “When we are young we swear there are things we would never tolerate. But then over the years, we turn from a couple into a family, and the lines become blurred. We tolerate the intolerable because we base our decisions on years of history and a desire to keep our family together.”

I swore I wouldn’t put up with a man who drank like my father.

But I did.

And he was worse.