Ep. 81 - How to Quit Drinking When Your Husband Still Drinks

Ep. 81: How to Quit Drinking When Your Husband Still Drinks

Welcome to Feel Good Alcohol Free. I'm Lindsay Hennekey, an alcohol-free coach. I've been alcohol-free for six years, and for the last several years, I've helped successful women change their relationship with alcohol when their lives look pretty good on paper, but drinking has become the one thing that they can't seem to figure out. I've coached over 300 women to date, and I have to say, this has been the most elevating work in my entire life. And I'm so grateful and honored that I get to do it every single day.

So around here on the podcast, we talk about what actually happens when you stop drinking. Not just how to get through day one, but what happens to your routines, your relationships, your Friday nights, your identity, and the way you trust yourself. And today's episode actually came directly from you.

Does Your Husband's Drinking Make It Harder to Quit?

A while back I asked women in my Instagram community whether having a husband who still drinks makes it harder for them to quit. And 90% of you said yes. 90%. So clearly we need to talk about this. Because if you keep telling yourself it would be so much easier to quit drinking if your husband would just quit too, I want to start by telling you something. You might be right. It probably would be easier. But easier and necessary are not the same thing.

And today I want to talk about how you change your relationship with alcohol when the person that you live with is still drinking. Because this is about so much more than having alcohol in the house or sitting down to dinner while your husband is drinking a glass of wine or a beer, or it's Friday night and watching him open a bottle of something or other, you know?

It's about going out to dinner and watching him order the drink that you used to order together. It's sitting on the porch and feeling like something is missing. It's watching him have two drinks and then stop without thinking about it and wondering why the F that seems so easy for him. It's thinking, why does he get to drink? Why am I the one who has to do this? Why can't he just stop too?

And sometimes it's secretly wishing he would stop, because then you wouldn't have to figure out how to do this while he still drinks. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

"I Wish He Wouldn't Drink" vs. "I Can't Do This If He Drinks"

And I want to start with something that I think is really important. You are allowed to wish your husband didn't drink. You are allowed to think this would be easier if there weren't bottles of wine sitting in your kitchen. You are allowed to feel annoyed when you've spent the entire afternoon trying not to think about drinking, and he walks through the door and casually pours himself one. You can wish he would make a different decision.

But we have to separate these two thoughts. I wish he wouldn't drink, and I can't do this if he drinks. Those are not the same thing. And when we start treating them like they are, we give somebody else a whole lot of power over a decision that actually belongs to us.

Why Your Husband's Drinking Feels So Hard

So let's talk about why his drinking can feel so hard in the first place. Because once you understand what is actually difficult about it, you can start figuring out what you need.

Drinking Was a Ritual You Shared

So it's not just the alcohol here. The first thing that I want you to think about is this: alcohol probably hasn't just been something your husband drinks. It may have been something that you do together. Friday night comes around and you open a bottle of wine. You go out to dinner and you order drinks. You go on vacation and you're having cocktails by the pool. You sit outside on a beautiful summer night or a beautiful fall night with a glass of wine. You celebrate with champagne. Maybe you have a drink while you're making dinner together. Maybe your husband is the one who always pours the wine. Maybe you don't even ask for it.

It's just what happens. And these little rituals become part of a relationship. So when you decide that you don't want to drink anymore, you're not only changing what's in your glass, you're changing something very familiar. And familiar feels comfortable, even when the thing itself isn't working for you anymore. And I think this is something that we can really underestimate when we start changing our relationship with alcohol, because we think, why does this feel like such a big deal?

Like I used to say on repeat, why is this my thing? I would literally cry. Like, why does this have to be my thing? And you also want to simplify it to, I'm just not drinking wine. Like, why is this such a big deal? But sometimes you're changing something that you and your partner have done together for 10, 15, 20 plus years. And so of course that's going to feel weird, and of course it's gonna feel scary, because you don't know what your relationship is going to be like without alcohol.

It means that Friday night might feel a little different. It means that you might sit at dinner and think, this doesn't feel the same. Or, how are we going to connect if I'm not drinking, or if we're not doing it this way anymore? This does not mean that dinner without wine is worse. It just means that it's different. And different takes practice.

Will Quitting Drinking Change My Marriage?

And I also want you to be careful about the story that you tell yourself about what you're losing. Because this is really common. Your brain can get really dramatic here. We're never going to have fun again. Vacation isn't gonna be the same. How am I gonna do this when everybody else is drinking? My Friday nights are gonna be so boring, or we're not gonna connect anymore. He's gonna think I'm boring. I'm going to think he's annoying.

So I actually received a message from one of the women on Instagram about this story. And she said, I don't think my husband would have married me if I didn't drink. And this just ached in my heart so much, because this woman is actually about two and a half years alcohol free now. And it hurt so much because I know that feeling.

But then after I quit drinking and I was really looking at my behavior as a drinker, my marriage just became so much better. We became so much more connected. My husband trusted me so much more. He wasn't always worried about, Lindsay said she was gonna be the designated driver, but she's over there pouring a glass of wine. So I'm sure any moment she's gonna tell me we're taking an Uber home.

Those things don't feel like big deals, but when they happen all the time, it can be frustrating. And my husband felt that frustration a lot when I was drinking. And so when I received this message from this woman that said, I don't think my husband would have married me if I didn't drink back then, all I could think of was, sometimes I can't believe my husband asked me to marry him, because my behavior was often so ridiculous when I was still drinking.

And so there's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of shame that alcohol brings to our relationships. And I want you to know that, yes, things are going to change, but you don't actually know yet what your relationship looks like without alcohol playing the same role in it. You haven't practiced it yet. You're standing at the beginning of something different and asking yourself to already know exactly what it's going to feel like. So I want you to give yourself a little room to find out.

And remember, you already know what it's like to drink with your husband. You also know the bad parts of it. You already know what it's like to have date night and drink with your husband, and then a few glasses in, all of a sudden your mood changes and you get snippy and you actually say something mean and ruin the night. I did that so many times. You already know what it's like to go on vacation and drink the whole time with your husband and not feel your best.

And maybe you disappoint him because there was something that he really wanted to do, but you didn't feel your best. And either you dragged yourself through it or you bailed on it completely. We already know what it's like to do life with alcohol. And so I want you to give yourself a little space to just start to find out what it could be like if you didn't drink.

His Drinking Can Wake Up Your Drinking Brain

So, okay. His drinking can wake up your drinking brain. So the second reason that this can be difficult is probably a lot more obvious. Watching somebody else drink can wake up all of your own thoughts about drinking, especially early on. Imagine it's Friday, you've had a long week, you've already had the conversation with yourself a couple of times today, you're not drinking tonight, you feel pretty good about it, and then your husband gets home.

He opens the refrigerator, maybe he grabs a beer, or he opens a bottle of wine, and suddenly your brain is like, well, maybe I could have one. It is Friday, after all. I've been really good this week. One glass isn't going to hurt anything. Maybe I'll just drink tonight and start again tomorrow. And within about 30 seconds, you have built yourself a very convincing case for why drinking tonight is an excellent idea. So it feels like my husband drinking is making me want to drink.

But I want you to get really curious about that, because his glass is activating something that is already there. The belief that Friday night means alcohol, the belief that you deserve wine after a hard week, the belief that if someone else gets to have it, you're missing out. The belief that not drinking means deprivation. And all of those thoughts matter, they're very important. Because if we decide the solution is simply that your husband can never drink around you, we never actually get to work on what his drinking is bringing up for you.

It's Okay to Ask for Support While You Practice

Now that doesn't mean you have to make this as difficult as possible for yourself. If you're in your first week without alcohol and your husband says, hey, do you mind if I open a bottle of your favorite Sauvignon Blanc and leave it sitting there, like three feet away from you all night? You're allowed to say, actually, I do mind. Can we not do that tonight? That is not a big failure on your side. That is you knowing what you need.

There's a difference between creating some support around yourself while you practice something new and believing that everyone around you has to change before you can. And figuring out that difference is really important.

Why Does He Get to Drink When I Can't?

So, okay, why does he get to drink? Now this is one of my favorite thoughts. And I promise you over time this is going to change, but maybe not until you're a year or two out. Because then there's the thought that I think so many of us have, but we don't necessarily want to say it out loud. Why does he get to drink? He can have two glasses and stop. He doesn't wake up at three o'clock in the morning beating himself up over it.

He doesn't spend the next morning promising himself he's never going to drink again. He doesn't start thinking about whether he's going to drink at three o'clock in the afternoon. He just drinks and then stops. And that can feel incredibly unfair. I know this thought so well, because there were absolutely times when I looked at my husband's relationship with alcohol and I thought, why can't I just do that? Why does this have to be my thing? Again with that. I used to dwell on, why does this have to be my thing?

Self-Trust Starts With What Happens When You Drink

But here's the problem with that question. It keeps your attention on his experience instead of your own. The question is not, why can he drink differently than I do? The question is, what do I know about what happens when I drink? Now that is the very important information here. Maybe your husband can have two drinks and forget about alcohol until next weekend. Okay.

But what happens when you drink? Do you spend the next day thinking about whether you're going to drink again? Does one become three or four? Do you sleep like crap? Do you wake up disappointed? Does alcohol take up way more mental space than you want it to? This is your information. His experience with alcohol does not change yours.

And I think this is such an important part of self-trust, because self-trust isn't looking around the room to see what everybody else is doing and then deciding what you should do. It's learning how to pay attention to your own experience and make decisions based on what you know about yourself and what you need.

Waiting for Your Husband to Quit Drinking Too

So this is the part that can be a little bit more difficult for us to admit. Now, there's another layer to this. Sometimes we want our husbands to stop drinking because it would make our decision easier. And I don't mean that critically. It probably would make it easier. If there's no wine in the house, you don't have to look at it. If he isn't drinking on Friday night, you don't have to sit beside him while he drinks. If you both stop, you don't have to figure out what date night looks like when one person orders wine and the other one doesn't. But sometimes underneath "if he would just stop too" is, then I wouldn't have to learn how to make this decision when someone else is making a different one.

And that is something that I really want you to notice here, because ultimately one of the skills that you are building when you change your relationship with alcohol is the ability to make a decision that works for you, even when somebody standing right beside you makes a different one. Your husband gets to decide what relationship he wants with alcohol. And so do you. And that can be really uncomfortable.

But it can also become incredibly empowering, because now your alcohol-free decision doesn't require perfect conditions anymore. It doesn't require everyone at dinner to order sparkling water. It doesn't require there to be no wine in the house forever. It doesn't require your husband to become alcohol-free. Your decision gets to belong just to you.

What Specifically About His Drinking Is Hard for You?

So if you were my client and you were sitting across from me in a coaching session and you said, Lindsay, I swear I could do this if my husband would just stop drinking too, I would not tell you to ignore him. And I definitely wouldn't tell you that his drinking shouldn't bother you. I would ask you, what specifically about his drinking is hard for you? Because that is where we need to start. Is it seeing the bottle in the refrigerator? Is it watching him pour a drink at five o'clock? Is it that he offers you one?

Is it that Friday night feels boring when he drinks and you don't? Or is it that you feel left out? Or maybe you're afraid that your relationship is going to change? Maybe you miss this ritual that you guys had together. Is it that once he's had a few drinks, you find him incredibly annoying? This happens a lot, by the way. Because listen, people get annoying when they drink too much. Or maybe watching him drink makes you start questioning your own decision.

Now these are all completely different problems and they require completely different practices. So if having your favorite wine sitting in the refrigerator is making your first few weeks incredibly difficult, maybe you have a conversation about not keeping that wine in the house right now.

Creating a New Friday Night Ritual Without Alcohol

If what you miss is your Friday night ritual, maybe we need to create a Friday night that still feels really special. Like I said, just because something was always done one way doesn't mean that's how it has to be. There's gonna be changes in how you operate and the things that you do. And I promise you, like I mentioned earlier, they do feel a little weird at first, but they start to feel so good.

We don't want some sad replacement for drinking. I mean genuinely asking yourself, what did I actually like about Friday nights? Was it the wine, or was it the fact that I got to exhale and breathe after a long week? Was it changing out of my work clothes? Or was it ordering takeout? Was it sitting outside with my husband? Was it knowing the work week was over? There's probably part of that ritual that you want to keep.

If what's difficult is going out to dinner and watching him order wine, that's a different practice. What happens in your head when he orders it? What do you make that mean? And what do you need in that moment? That's what's really important: how are you feeling, and what do you need in the moment to support how you feel? And if the real fear is, I'm afraid this is going to change my marriage, then that is the thing we need to talk about. Not the bottle of wine.

This is why getting specific matters so much. "My husband drinks and it makes it hard for me to quit" feels like one giant problem. But when we pull it apart, suddenly there are places that we can actually work. There's places that are pretty easy to fix, and then there's some that are a little trickier.

Identity, Practice and Self-Trust: Becoming a Woman Who Doesn't Need Alcohol

So this is what I mean by identity, practice and self-trust. This is also a really good example of what I teach. Because the identity that you are building is not, I'm a woman who can only be alcohol free if nobody around me drinks. You are becoming a woman who doesn't need alcohol to cope, relax, celebrate, or belong. So then we practice being her. We have to practice being her.

The fastest way to become the version of you who no longer drinks alcohol is to live as if you are already her. That means that you are practicing in real time. And not every single time goes perfectly. So if your husband pours wine on Friday night, what does she do? If he orders a drink at dinner, what does she do? What does this version of you who no longer drinks alcohol do? If she feels left out, what does she do? If she thinks, why does he get to have one? What does she do with that thought?

If she misses the ritual that they used to have together, how does she create connection now? Those are the reps. Those are the things that I help you develop and create inside coaching. And every time you have one of those experiences and you follow through on what you actually want, you get evidence. Evidence that says, I can go out to dinner while somebody else drinks. It was fun. I actually got home earlier and I washed my face when I got home.

I can have a great Friday night without wine. I woke up on Saturday morning rested and ready to go to my workout class, ready to go to soccer at eight o'clock in the morning with the kids, all of those things. My husband can pour a drink, and I don't have to make that mean anything about me. His journey's his, mine is mine. I can feel left out for a minute and let that feeling pass. I can ask for what I need. I can change.

I can still be me. I'm discovering new things about myself every single day. And all of that evidence is what builds trust within yourself. This is how you become a woman of inner integrity, a woman who trusts herself, who says what she means and means what she says. Not because every single situation becomes easy, but because you start knowing, I can handle myself when it's not easy. And that is a completely different kind of confidence than simply hoping that nobody around you drinks.

Your Husband May Need Some Practice Too

Now, there's one more piece of this that is super important, because you're not the only person adjusting to something new. Your husband may need some practice too. If the two of you have shared wine every single Friday night for 15 years, he may miss that ritual.

He may worry that things are changing. He may not know whether he should drink around you. He may feel weird ordering something at dinner. He may say something completely unhelpful because he doesn't know what the heck he's supposed to say. That doesn't mean that you have to manage his emotions for him, but it does mean that there can be room for both of you to figure this out.

And this connects so much to the episode I recently recorded about why your husband keeps offering you wine when you've told him you want to quit. That was last week's episode. Sometimes we assume our partners understand exactly what we're experiencing because we've told them that we're trying not to drink, but they don't live inside our heads.

One of the things that my husband said when I was about two and a half months alcohol free, and it was good times and bad during that, was, how do you think our lives are gonna change if you don't end up drinking again? And I said, I don't know, but I already know what happens when I do drink. And so I need to keep doing this for a longer period of time. I wasn't saying that I was gonna quit drinking forever.

I was over a year alcohol free before I said I was never gonna drink again. During that time, I would often say, I don't know the answer, but I know that I need to keep trying and I need to keep going, because so far I just feel so good.

How to Talk to Your Husband When He Still Drinks

So they don't live inside our heads. We have to communicate. And maybe for you that means saying, I don't need you to stop drinking, but right now it would really help me if you didn't offer it to me.

Or, I'm okay with you having wine at dinner, but I'm realizing that keeping an open bottle in the refrigerator is really hard for me right now. Can we figure something else out? Not get all the alcohol out of the house, but let's have a two-way conversation about how this could work differently. Or maybe it's something like, I know this is different for you too. I'm still figuring out what I need, so I might need to talk to you about it as I go. You're allowed to have needs, and he is allowed to make his own choices. Both can be true.

Would It Be Easier to Quit Drinking If Your Husband Quit Too?

So would it be easier? Let's go back to where we started here. Would it be easier to quit drinking if your husband quit too? Maybe. And for some of you, absolutely. But easier and necessary are not the same thing. And if you've been waiting for him to change before you believe that you can change, I want you to start here.

I want you to ask yourself, what specifically about his drinking feels hard for me? Not, why won't he stop? Not, why does he get to drink? Or, why can't he just support me? What is actually hard for you when he drinks? Because once you know that, you have something that you can work with.

You can ask for support. You can change your routine. You can practice sitting with an uncomfortable feeling. You can create a new ritual between the two of you. You can challenge the thought that you're missing out. You can learn how to make your decision without needing him to make the same one. He can make his decision about alcohol and you can make yours. Your decision does not become less valid because there is wine in his glass.

And every time that you let him make his decision while you follow through on yours, you are building a little more evidence that you can trust yourself.

Get Support Changing Your Relationship With Alcohol

So, okay, I know that this was a lot in this episode. And if you missed last week's episode, these two really go well together, so give that one a listen. And if you've been waiting for your husband to change his drinking before you feel like you can change yours, this is exactly the kind of thing that we work on inside my coaching. Because we don't pretend that the people around you don't matter. Of course they matter. Your relationships matter. Your routines matter. Friday nights matter. The bottle sitting in your refrigerator can absolutely matter.

But instead of treating all of that as evidence that you can't do this, we figure out exactly what makes these situations difficult for you. Then we figure out what you need to practice in those moments so that you can start following through on the decisions that you want to make. That's the work behind my Identity, Practice, Trust method. If you're a successful woman who is tired of spending so much time thinking about alcohol and you're ready for support actually changing it, you're going to find information about working with me in the show notes.

And if Feel Good Alcohol Free has been helping you, make sure you're following the show. I would love it if you would take a minute to leave a rating and a review. It helps more women who are having these exact same conversations with themselves find the podcast. And I love hearing what's resonating with you.

And if you were one of the 90 percent of women who immediately thought, yes, my husband drinking makes this so much harder, send this episode to a woman who gets it. I will see you next week, and please remember, you have better things to think about than drinking.