6 Tips To Cope With Living With An Alcoholic Spouse
Living with an alcoholic spouse is frustrating and full of drama and disappointments. Many people do not want to leave their alcoholic spouse, but want things to go back to the way their marriage was before alcohol took their partner away from them. They are left feeling helpless. Do you want some practical tips on how to improve your situation?
Here are 6 tips to cope with living with an alcoholic husband or alcoholic wife:
1) Assess if your alocholic husband or alcoholic wife really has a drinking problem. Roughly, anything over 7 drinks a week for women and 14 drinks a week for men is considered excessive drinking.
2) Talk to your alcoholic spouse when they sober and let them know the impact of their drinking on you and the family. Talk about your feelings in a calm and serious manner. Yelling and acusing your spouse is not productive.
2) Stop rescuing your alcoholic spouse from the consequences of their drinking. Do not lie to your children, their boss, relatives, or friends to cover up why your spouse isn’t showing up at family functions or their job. Don’t clean up their mess!
3) Resist the incredible temptation to fight with them when they have been drinking and are likely to be verbally and emotionally abusive. Walk away and let your alcoholic spouse know that you are happy to talk with them at a different time and that you are not interested in fighting.
4) Take better charge of your own life. It should be obvious you can’t control your alcohol spouse’s excessive drinking. However, you can take charge of you. Get a job you like, start a new hobby, spend time with friends that are affirming to be around. This will help break codependent patterns.
5) Do not blame yourself for their disease. Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive disease. At the same time, do not excuse your alcoholic spouse. Your spouse is responsible for getting help. Codependent bahavior is when you concentrate on fixing your spouse instead of addressing your own issues.
5. Reach out. Contact old friends. Go To Al-Anon. Confide in someone you trust what is going on at home. Consider therapy. You can even seek out help through on line support groups. Learn about codependendent patterns that you have fallen into.
If you want additional help turning your marriage around click here to register for my free report on, “ 5 Proven Methods For a Healthier Marriage With Your Alcoholic Spouse”. It may save your family’s life. The information in this report gives you very simple strategies that could very well save your marriage.
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