Dear Agatha,
I am a mother of four children and I have been married for 10 years. The major problem I am facing now is my husband, who has taken to drinking alcohol, a habit he never indulged in before now.
Dear
When a human being take to habits totally alien to everything he or she believed in then two things are obviously wrong.
The first could be peer influences or stressful situations either at home or in the office.
Is he out of job? Has he recently acquired strange friends whose lifestyles are entirely different from his? How close are the two of you and how well do you know him, his friends, challenges, thoughts and dreams?
Judging by the current standards in your home, can you in all honesty say he has achieved much as a man especially compared to his childhood friends and peers?
Having had four children together, you must have a fair knowledge of your husband to know that all is not well and that his recently acquired habit is a clarion call for help.
What first aid have you applied to it beyond voicing it out?
This is a very delicate matter, which requires wisdom, comprehensive analysis as well as absolute honesty to navigate.
There is no contesting the fact that your marriage is in danger of lack of direction; brought about by logistics, which you must unearth.
Can you remember the time it started and what happened at the time he took to drinking? It may not be something very fundamental but anything could be used as an excuse by anybody desirous of misbehaving.
Begin the searchlight from your end. As a spouse how would you rate yourself as well as describe your place in this man’s life?
Are you the loyal and dedicated type, the woman who is positive minded and not easily influenced by the evidences of what she sees? Most often than not, women unwittingly push their husbands into opposite ends of their normal behavioural patterns.
Your husband would not take to drinking without a real reason. Is his home conducive in terms of emotional peace? If he waited until you have had four children to become alcoholic, then something is very wrong somewhere. What changed about you to make him dread the idea of coming home? Nagging is one of the easiest ways to drive any person insane particularly a man who desires peace in his life and home.
Look back at the woman you were, the one he met and fell in love with, married and have children with to the one you are now? What has changed dramatically about the two women? Are you still as loving and supportive of him as you were before or one who is constantly reminding him of his failures as a man?
Taking to drink and not women shows he is not doing it for pleasure or that he is irresponsible. It is a clear indication that he is going through a severe and stressful situation. An irresponsible man would take to women without thinking twice about the effect his passion for the skirt would cause his family.
His attraction to alcohol is to give him the peace he obviously craves for. It is an escapist route meant to keep reality away. So, what reality is he escaping from? You can only help him by admitting to the truth concerning the quality of your marriage.
If you are the problem, don’t hesitate to retrace your steps because the deeper he gets into the habit the more difficult it becomes to wean him off it.
By making conscious effort to change would signal a corresponding desire on his part to do away with this habit because in the first place the dependency isn’t something he is enjoying at all. He is only doing it for the simple reason of escaping to an imaginary perfect world completely different from the situation he is experiencing at home.
You need an all-embracing attitude to do a good job of this and can only be accomplished if you think there is a lot to be salvaged remaining in the marriage.
There is no way you can be honest if you are also going through bouts of emotional pain, accompanied by disappointment at having made the wrong choice. Whether you admit to it or not, there must be something about your marriage that isn’t making you short-fussed. Don’t be afraid to bring it out of the inner part of the cupboard you have hidden all your fears because there may never be this kind of opportunity to openly and boldly address it.
If this is what you are going through, you have to take time out on your own to sort out your feelings. This means finding a way of getting through to him with the aim of talking things over, sharing your thoughts together and finding a loophole in your bitterness to exploit to the good of your marriage.
You may not know until this development that your marriage was going down the slope. Men unlike women are not talkative, they believe more in actions than talking and nagging.
To help you both recover from your individual disappointments, attempts must be made to focus on wrestling your marriage from the extra baggage challenges of marriage usually visit on a union between man and wife.
If you see it as what ever other couple is battling with, chances of both of you being able to get it behind both of you is very high but, if you think it is peculiar to your marriage, it might consume both of you.
Your solution is not the kind that must be rushed or forced. Get him to listen and dialogue with you. Use your body, food and all the good things he likes about you to get him to come home sober and willing to talk because he cannot be on alcohol throughout the day.
Once peace is assured at home dig deep into his official life. Is he happy with his work? What is his relationship with his bosses and co-workers? Is he getting job satisfaction from what he is doing? Is he involved in any deal that is putting him under undue pressure? A good wife should know what her husband thinks about his choice of career and his level of satisfaction. If he isn’t fulfilled, encourage him to quit and go solo. As his wife, your job is to ensure he has the peace of mind to execute his functions as the head of the home. Anything that would remove from his pride as the man of the house must be avoided by at all cost. A woman’s first job is to provide succour and coverage for her man at all times.
One of such ways is to be on her knees constantly praying her husband out of danger and into huge success. That your husband is finding succour in beer bottles might be an indication that you are weak spiritually hence cannot give him the spiritual help he needs to be happy and successful.
A lot would depend on how far you are ready to go for this man who stole your heart away several years ago.
There is also the need for you to check the new friends that have mingled with his old friends. Take time out to investigate them. Who among them is a very negative influence, pray that person out of his life before he does more damage to your home.
Don’t do the common thing of fighting that friend. Pretend you are not aware of the damage he is doing to your home. To physically engage the enemy in a fight for supremacy over your husband would not be in your interest because your husband is already too involved with them.
By also encouraging your husband to come home to drink if he must drink would make hanging out with the ‘boys’ unnecessary. In situation like this, you cannot afford to be too rigid at this point when the battle is fierce. Being uncompromising would only lose the battle for you. Allowing him to drink at home would enable you monitor him as well as put the habit under control.
You also have to beam your searchlight on external forces like his own extended family as well as his confidence. If his friends are all making it and he isn’t doing so well, your task is to give him all the encouragement to bring him out of his melancholy you have to give him every reason to want to challenge and defeat his situation.
What he needs now is a delicate handling until he is strong enough psychologically to face life stumbling.
Being alert spiritually would at the end of the day solve so many problems for you and your marriage.
Good luck.
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