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I detect a faint whiff of denial
Dear Carolyn: My daughter-in-law is convinced my husband is an alcoholic!
A few years back, she and my grandchildren stopped visiting, and when I reached out to my son, he was vague and told me his wife didn’t like to be around alcohol because of her family’s issues. I wrote her a kind email, and she responded with a laundry list of times she claimed my husband was drinking inappropriately, sneaking extra drinks when others weren’t looking, being drunk around the grandchildren and so forth.
As you can imagine, we see the situation quite differently, and we suspect she might be biased because of her own family issues.
We apologized for the misunderstanding and agreed not to drink a lot around them. Things were better for a while, until a recent visit, when they left rather abruptly. My son told me later that when the grandchildren were playing hide-and-seek, they had found bottles of alcohol in closets and the guest room where they were staying. I don’t really drink much, and we don’t entertain a lot, so I don’t keep track of where my husband keeps what liquor, but apparently she interpreted this as “another red flag.”
Things are at another impasse, and she refuses to visit with our grandchildren again but has said we can visit them if there’s no alcohol. I do that sometimes, but my husband won’t join me anymore.
According to my son, she says he has clearly picked a relationship with alcohol over his grandchildren. I think his feelings are hurt by the insinuations. My son is also caught in the middle and not very happy, either.
How can I reset with my daughter-in-law and convince her my husband is not an alcoholic?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: I can’t tell for certain from here whether your husband has alcoholism.
But I can see plainly in your letter that:
· This entire issue is between your husband and your daughter-in-law, yet you are the one taking responsibility on your husband’s behalf.
· You say, “We see the situation quite differently,” but you have not said, “My husband barely drinks,” “He has never been drunk around the grandchildren” or, “Out of respect for our daughter-in-law’s concerns, we never have more than one drink when we’re with them.”
· You offered “not to drink a lot” around them, which implies at least one of you has drunk a lot around them, or else why would you offer not to? And you “don’t really drink much,” so he does.
· You did not offer to abstain from alcohol completely when you’re around the grandchildren.
· When they started insisting that you abstain, your husband stopped going.
· When your husband stopped going, you did not blame him for refusing to abstain; you blamed your daughter-in-law for hurting his feelings. You think.
· You neither drink much nor entertain, but you have liquor bottles stashed in your guest room and in various closets you don’t know about.
I would like you to look up four things: codependency, enabling, denial and an Al-Anon meeting that’s convenient to where you live.
If I’m wrong, then all you have to lose is an hour or so of your time. Though I urge you to make it two or three meetings before you declare they offer nothing you need to hear.
[wapo link]
A few years back, she and my grandchildren stopped visiting, and when I reached out to my son, he was vague and told me his wife didn’t like to be around alcohol because of her family’s issues. I wrote her a kind email, and she responded with a laundry list of times she claimed my husband was drinking inappropriately, sneaking extra drinks when others weren’t looking, being drunk around the grandchildren and so forth.
As you can imagine, we see the situation quite differently, and we suspect she might be biased because of her own family issues.
We apologized for the misunderstanding and agreed not to drink a lot around them. Things were better for a while, until a recent visit, when they left rather abruptly. My son told me later that when the grandchildren were playing hide-and-seek, they had found bottles of alcohol in closets and the guest room where they were staying. I don’t really drink much, and we don’t entertain a lot, so I don’t keep track of where my husband keeps what liquor, but apparently she interpreted this as “another red flag.”
Things are at another impasse, and she refuses to visit with our grandchildren again but has said we can visit them if there’s no alcohol. I do that sometimes, but my husband won’t join me anymore.
According to my son, she says he has clearly picked a relationship with alcohol over his grandchildren. I think his feelings are hurt by the insinuations. My son is also caught in the middle and not very happy, either.
How can I reset with my daughter-in-law and convince her my husband is not an alcoholic?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: I can’t tell for certain from here whether your husband has alcoholism.
But I can see plainly in your letter that:
· This entire issue is between your husband and your daughter-in-law, yet you are the one taking responsibility on your husband’s behalf.
· You say, “We see the situation quite differently,” but you have not said, “My husband barely drinks,” “He has never been drunk around the grandchildren” or, “Out of respect for our daughter-in-law’s concerns, we never have more than one drink when we’re with them.”
· You offered “not to drink a lot” around them, which implies at least one of you has drunk a lot around them, or else why would you offer not to? And you “don’t really drink much,” so he does.
· You did not offer to abstain from alcohol completely when you’re around the grandchildren.
· When they started insisting that you abstain, your husband stopped going.
· When your husband stopped going, you did not blame him for refusing to abstain; you blamed your daughter-in-law for hurting his feelings. You think.
· You neither drink much nor entertain, but you have liquor bottles stashed in your guest room and in various closets you don’t know about.
I would like you to look up four things: codependency, enabling, denial and an Al-Anon meeting that’s convenient to where you live.
If I’m wrong, then all you have to lose is an hour or so of your time. Though I urge you to make it two or three meetings before you declare they offer nothing you need to hear.
[wapo link]
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(I thought about inserting a list of some of the shit my own alcoholic family members have pulled in that square bracket set but you know what? I've drawn my own boundaries here, I'm safe, it doesn't need rehashing on my account...especially because some of you are not safe and don't need to hear it from where you are. Sigh. At least the advice columnist sure was not having any.)
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It's not even the stashed liquor that's the key.
It's the fact that he can't not drink for the length of the grandkids' visit. An hour? Two? Four? Even a single day without alcohol while in the presence of your grandkids is too much to ask?
He's an alcoholic. It doesn't matter how 'functional' he is or what a good man he is: if the needs the alcohol to be functional - if he refuses to prioritise relationships over the opportunity to drink, he's an alcoholic and needs help.
You might be merely an enabler, LW, or you might also be alcoholic. But you at least are seeing the clash of choices, even if you're blaming the outcome of you and your husband's crappy choices on your DIL (also: I note your DIL is unquestionably cast as the villain and not your son? Hmm...).
Make better choices. And good luck kicking that habit - at the least the codependent/enabling one, if not also your own pending alcoholism.
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Well, yes, that's how it always is. Weirdly, sons-in-law rarely get the same treatment.
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LW, your husband is an alcoholic, and you're an enabler, and if you'd like to chose his drinking over your grandkids you're welcome to do so.
I don’t really drink much, and we don’t entertain a lot, so I don’t keep track of where my husband keeps what liquor, but apparently she interpreted this as “another red flag.”
Normal people keep liquor in the kitchen. They don't feel the need to keep it in little caches around the house. Well, no - most people don't keep liquor in the house at all, because they buy it when they intend to drink it and most people just don't drink very much or very often. But if they do have alcohol in the house they keep it in the kitchen or in their basement bar or, anyway, not in the guest room and also in multiple closets.
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But I'm probably just being nitpicky on the last paragraph: this person's husband has a problem.
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It's also not that unusual for people, especially of older generations, to keep a few bottles of wine and all the hard liquor needed for basic cocktails around. It doesn't go bad and they were trained that being able to offer drinks is basic hospitality. And you might store it somewhere other than the kitchen, especially if there were kids around and you wanted to make sure they didn't get into it thinking it was like other food. (And if you normally kept it in, idk, a glass-fronted cabinet, because you like the sparkly glass, and your DIL was weird about her kids knowing you had liquor, maybe you *would* put it in the back of the linen closet during visits.)
The fact that none of these excuses even occurred to LW, that LW just thinks it's normal that her husband is constantly buying alcohol and stashing it without her knowing, tells me that's not what's going on. LW your husband is an alcoholic and that was a red flag.
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But if I were to find bottles randomly in other places in the house, especially if they were hidden? I would have cause to worry that someone was hiding their drinking habits.
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I'm starting to wonder if the letter is fake; it's too precisely "dropping clear hints that the LW is an enabler". Like the bit about drinking less (instead of not at all).
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3 out of 4 residents here are ADHD and I am rarely shocked to find things in weird places, but 95% of the time the answer is "ah yes that was the thing in my hand when I was doing X and I set it down", usually the thing is not alcohol because generally those are in the same few places and it's not one of the usual objects to be holding and forgetting about.
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but, a really crucial thing, there's no hidden alcohol in this house. It's all put away where it belongs. It's not in closets or other random locations. no one is sneaking it. it doesn't mysteriously vanish. it doesn't mysteriously appear. we both know what's there and how much of it there is and on about what kind of timeframe we can expect to need to replace it.
no wonder LW's daughter-in-law is seeing red flags: LW's husband is actively hiding his drinking! that's what is going on! It's so obvious! If I opened up the camping gear storage in the guest room closet and there was a bottle of booze in there I would worry, too!
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Maybe they figured that wine = sweeter/tastes like grapes
and spirits = more bitter/more astringent
so children were more likely to drink a medically dangerous quantity of wine
whereas spirits would make them go YUCK and spit it out?
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Oh, look! An icon!
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It's noticeable how thoroughly the LW has inserted herself into a situation that her husband created and only he can really fix. That suggests she is used to doing all the social smoothing over to manage his alcoholism / intransigent arseholeness.
She is trying hard to make the DIL join her in this project and perplexed and angry that she is refusing.