Ask Polly: Should I Dump My Stupid, Lazy, Alcoholic Husband?
Hi Polly,
I have been married to my husband for two and a half years. He is a good guy, always doing favors for his family, trusts people implicitly, works hard at his job, loves me and our young kids (2 years and 3 months). Most of the time I enjoy his company, mainly because he has a good sense of humor and is very laid-back. Also, he’s one of the few people who can take my shit and not mind.
But (you knew this was coming), we are so different when it comes to a lot of important things. I have goals — I want to go to school to become an anthropologist. I want to start working out. I want to start saving money so we can move out of my parents’ extra room and get our own place again.
However, he seems to share none of these goals. I mean, he says he does, but I have a strong feeling that he only says that because I nag him so much. This belief is supported by the fact that he only makes steps (and tiny ones, at that) after I’ve bugged him about it for days. And after making a tiny bit of progress, he slumps back onto the couch, and I have to bitch at him for days again until he does something else.
Oh, and did I mention he doesn’t have his license or G.E.D., and he’s 30? WTF, right? Yes, I knew this going into the marriage, but I honestly thought he’d make an effort to attain them. He hasn’t. Not on his own, anyway. He works at a fast food restaurant and has the whole time I’ve known him. He seems so content with his level of mediocrity, and I’m so not. This is a huge factor in what I consider incompatibility.
In addition, we differ in many aspects of our personality. As I said before, I am trying to be healthier; he’s completely okay with being overweight. I don’t want to sound arrogant but I am much more intelligent than he is and it makes having a decent conversation difficult. I find his scatterbrained approach to everything very frustrating, causing me to lash out at him often, which in turn often leads to arguments.
He is also extremely irresponsible with money. I have created countless plans for our money, which always get tossed aside the second he has a craving for a cheeseburger. I try to remind him of the plan we made but if he doesn’t get his way he gets all sulky, and I hate when he acts childish so to avoid that I usually just give in. As a result we are constantly broke.
And, as I mentioned before, he is an alcoholic.
Granted, he’s been sober for about a month now, but he’s gone longer than that before without a drink and then gone and fucked it all up. He’s let me down and lied about drinking so many times that my trust (which I had issues with to begin with) is completely gone. He agrees that he’s an alcoholic, but I can’t be sure whether he means it or he just agrees with me to shut me up. He went to twelve-step meetings for a few weeks in the beginning of this year at my insistence, but after about five meetings he began coming up with excuses — he felt sick, he was worn out from work, etc., and eventually he stopped going. He said he felt he didn’t need them anymore. But about two months ago he drank again. He hasn’t since, but after so many relapses (and there have been many — forty, at least, since I’ve been with him) I find it impossible to believe him. Of course I hope he’s done for good, but I can’t bring myself to get invested in that hope.
So there’s all of that, plus the fact that I very frequently find myself daydreaming about being on my own. Not with other guys, really, just on my own with my kids and my own life, free of this dumb, idle alcoholic I call my husband.
But as I said, we have two young kids. I’d hate to rip their lives apart. Our finances are entangled, so that would be a bitch to figure out. I don’t want to disappoint my parents (who paid for our expensive wedding when I was 19) by getting a divorce this young. Also, at the moment I’m a stay-at-home mom, so if I left him I’d have no immediate source of income.
That’s a lot on the line, so that’s why I’m coming to you for advice. I am only 22 and I don’t want to be stuck in this idle place for my whole life, and it really seems that he can’t (or won’t) change (not for lack of trying on my part!). But at the same time, he’s a good guy at heart, who (when I’m not frustrated with his level of intelligence or bitching at him to get his damn license already) I enjoy spending my free time with and loves me and our kids.
What the fuck do I do?
Sincerely,
Stuck Between a Husband and a Life
Dear SBAHAAL,
First you need to tell your husband that you’ll kick him out if he drinks again. You will not spend the rest of your life with an alcoholic, because that is the path to misery, and you won’t do that to yourself. But you must be prepared to back up your words. Every time you give in, you seal your own fate.
Then you need to go to Al-Anon, look into affordable day care, find a job so you can help support your family and save some money, find a used double-jogging stroller online and push those kids around the neighborhood for an hour a day, insist on cooking healthy meals and lead by example on that front, look into a local marriage and family therapist or social worker that offers very cheap sessions for you and your husband, and write down your accomplishments in a journal every night.
In other words, first you need to make it very clear that you won’t be with a drunk. Then you need to get off your ass and change your life, and you need to stop blaming him for everything that you yourself refuse to do. I’m sure there are lots of reasons why you landed here, as a nagging, helpless woman who doesn’t take charge of her own life. Your parents paid for an expensive wedding when you were 19, so it’s not hard to see how you landed here. I understand that it feels like it’s been a long, lonely road. But you’re the only person who’s going to change this picture dramatically. It’s up to you. Right now you’re just sitting in one place — in your parents’ house, no less! — and complaining about what your husband isn’t doing right. You’re making things worse for him, not better, by giving in about money, giving in about drinking and taking him back, giving in about everything, and then screaming at him about all of it. That’s exactly the kind of behavior you’d expect from the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic. If you’d gotten off your ass and gone to a single Al-Anon meeting, you’d already know that.
I know you’re in a tough spot. But you can’t expect him to change a thing if you’re sitting back and doing nothing yourself, whining about money but not making any, and waiting for him to get his act together yet never quite insisting on it. Yes, I know you have your hands full with the kids. It’s impossibly difficult, having a toddler and a baby. Under your current situation, though, you have to suck it up, find some daycare, and get a job. It’ll make you feel better, and the time that you spend with your kids and your husband will improve dramatically. Right now you’re idle and depressed and powerless, and you have to change that in order to be happier.
Instead of yelling at your husband and blaming him for everything that’s wrong with your life, write down the things you expect from yourself and from him over the next year. Tell him you both need to stop acting like pathetic babies. Tell him you can’t see the relationship working if you both don’t grow up. For you, that means taking on some of the financial burden of the family you created, pursuing your dreams either by going back to school part-time or by trying to find work in a field that excites you, living healthily, working out, and trying to be a better friend and partner to your husband, particularly when he’s sober. For him, that means staying sober, learning to drive, and trying to advance himself for the greater good of the family.
You can’t accurately judge your relationship until you’re going after your own dreams without making excuses for yourself. Right now, deep down inside, you hate yourself. You can’t figure out if your husband is bad or good if you truly believe that you are bad. You aren’t seeing anything clearly. Good, loyal, kind, lovable guys are not a dime a dozen, and having a great friendship with your husband, despite all your issues, is also pretty rare. If you get your shit together, you might just inspire your husband to turn his own life around. Or, you might see more clearly that he will never, ever change one iota. Either way, though, you have to get your shit together. You have to become a superhero, and cover all your bases. You have to reward your husband for saving money instead of nagging him for not saving. You have to be kind to him during this important sober first year, you have to believe in him, but you also have to make it crystal clear that you won’t stay with a drunk, no matter what. Explain that this isn’t about words; there won’t be any discussion. He will be out, that’s all. Again: Therapy, Al-Anon, exercise, day care, job, school, dreams. You need to go from doing nothing to doing everything if you’re going to crawl out of this hole.
It’s a lot. But you know what? That’s the way life is when you’re an adult. You juggle, you grit your teeth, you work your ass off, and you take a minute, every now and then, to look at how far you’ve come. Don’t you want to feel proud of yourself, for once in your life? Nothing is better for your kids, your husband, and you, than you feeling proud of yourself for once. That alone could change everything.
Polly
Hi Polly,
I have been dating a man for a little over 6 months and things have been wonderful from day one. We have a ton in common, love being around each other and have great chemistry. He has a tremendous moral core, is the funniest person I know and loves me (and shows it) more than anyone I have ever been with. I love him tremendously and the possibility that this could move toward marriage is strong, although its still too early to say. (BTW, I’m in my mid-20s and he’s in his early 30s.)
And now the problem. He was sexually abused as child from the age of 4 up until around 8. He has problems having sex on a semi-regular but occasional basis due to pretty severe flashbacks and almost never sleeps well because of nightmares. When they’re really bad he can be in a pretty dark mood for a couple days, I believe suffering from bouts of depression, inadequacy and shame. He also has a very hard time talking about what he experienced (or is experiencing when having a flashback) but has made huge efforts to do so when I ask and despite clearly wanting to shut down. However I have never asked specifics about the abuse. Not only because it would be terrible for him to talk about but also because the details seem irrelevant.
All that being said, he is one of the highest functioning people I know. He takes good care of himself, great care of the people he loves, plans for the future, has a good career and is a very social and well-rounded person, with a strong support system of friends and family (who have no idea what he went through). He has no violent or abusive traits and, from what he has told me, conquered the worst of the depression (bordering on feelings of suicide) that he felt in his teens.
When we first met he said he would go into therapy because he did not want his issues to prevent us from being together, aka prevent us from having sex. However, after a 4–6 weeks of taking things slow and building up trust we got over the hump. I suggested different methods of therapy after doing some of my own research and found therapists in the area that might be a good fit. At a certain point I expressed to him that for us to get very serious (move in together or get married) he would need to go to therapy and begin addressing the abuse and then left it at that. I don’t expect this to be something he will leap into immediately but he has also told me that he doesn’t think therapy would help. I think my request made him feel like he’s being punished given how far he has come all on his own, by pushing through all the shitty and horrible feelings.
My question is this: Is asking him to go to therapy when he functions so well in the world an exaggeration or asking too much? Is this a reasonable request if there don’t seem to be any outstanding issues that effect the core of the relationship outside of very occasional bad moods or inability to have sex? Or am I simply expressing a reasonable degree of concern over an issue that could take on more negative proportions as he gets older, loses some of the strong emotions of early love, has children, etc.? I am perfectly happy to let things unfold as they will for the time being but I do want to know what reasonable expectations are under these circumstances (with a timeline if you’re into that kind of thing).
All this being said, I also have my own problems of expecting the worst and am semi-obsessed with trying to avoid making bad choices, especially when it comes to men. Maybe I’m trying to control the uncontrollable, like another human being’s future behavior, or trying avoid the unavoidable: the inevitable downsides and pitfalls of any relationship.
Lots of Love and Some Concern
Dear LOLASC,
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for you to ask him to go to therapy. He said he’d go when he first met you, and you’re haunted by what the ramifications of this abuse could be, even if he isn’t. You can’t really commit to someone who’s committed to not knowing himself, that’s all. It’s absolutely understandable that he’d be afraid — deathly afraid — of relaying his abuse to anyone. But you love him, and you need to trust him as much as he needs to trust you. There’s a giant, frightening thing in his past that he can only hope doesn’t come up later, either in emotional problems or health problems. You don’t want to have a pretty okay sex life, you want to have a great sex life. You don’t want him to sleep well occasionally, you want him to sleep well consistently.
It’s not wrong to want those things. You should talk to him about it, and lay out all of your reasons for wanting this to happen. You two are really great together, and he’s done an amazing job without therapy up until now. You want to aim even higher. I don’t think that’s controlling. I think that’s you daring to be happy.
Maybe this will take time, and he’ll resist. Maybe you’ll need to talk to a few experts on abuse and get their input on how to proceed. Obviously, you should be kind and patient about the whole thing, and you should hear him out and be respectful of how scary this prospect is to him. It might feel like asking him to face down death. So you have to be cautious.
Still, this is a reasonable request. Maybe he’ll resist for a while, but you have to make your desires very clear. Paint a clear picture of what you think you’ll both gain, and offer to go into couples’ therapy with him as well. It’s not wrong to make your position clear, and to push for something that most victims of abuse credit with their ability to live normal, happy lives.
Polly
Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.Drunk bunny photo by Stuart Conner; scary nightmare photo by Meighan O’Toole.