My(29f) boyfriend (33m) likes to drink, but I’m sober curious and I don’t know what to do.

14 comments

1. I think you need to hit the brakes on the children idea and consider whether or not you’re happy in this relationship *now*.

2. Why are you dating a drinker if you don’t want to date a drinker?

3. I think you should focus on your friendships and activities that make you feel happy and good. It really sounds like your bf has a problem and that you were functionally a spill-over alcoholic because there was no other way for the relationship to function. I can’t imagine this getting better unless bf acknowledges there is an issue and starts to address it. Therapy for you might be good to help you get recentered and readjusted and maybe give you a neutral party ti bounce things off.

4. Why are you sitting around watching him get drunk? Stop doing that for sure. Go out to a movie without him on Friday night instead of a bar, try to go hangout with your new sober friends on Saturday night etc. You don’t have to hangout with him while he’s drinking. If yall want to spend time together on weekends it should be planned as a date – go to dinner together or cook dinner together at home, get your quality time in, then go do your own things.

   He is (probabaly) not going to stop drinking. He told you that, so think long and hard if this lifestyle difference between you two is something you can live with forever and not end up resenting him…he’s not gonna stop if you had a kid, in fact he’s probably going to just be drunk around the kid for their whole lives. Which is what they’ll grow up seeing as normal.

5. I agree with the other comment currently here that you need to slow down on committing to having children or a future with your partner until you’ve established compatibility.

   That said, it’s not that unusual to have a relationship where one person drinks and the other doesn’t without resentment or problems. My partner and I were both foodies and cocktail lovers when we met in our 20s. l’m also a runner. As I’ve gotten older it’s harder for me to have even 1-2 drinks and still get up early and run 15 miles the next day (now in my mid-30s). So I’ve slowly given up drinking. My partner does not have the same issue as he’s not a runner. We still go out frequently, we just prioritize places where there is also great happy hour food, things to do in addition to drinking (like board games, pool, pinball, etc.). I have a mocktail blog that’s somewhat popular in my city and make a little side cash off ads reviewing bars that are friendly to people who are not drinking. We also occasionally get free drinks (with and without alcohol) at some of the bars I’ve posted about on social media and I’m friendly with the local bartender scene because of that blog. It also helps that I enjoy talking to him, don’t mind him being a little buzzed when I’m sober, and that he doesn’t get obliterated or anything close. I wouldn’t describe sitting and watching him drink at a bar as boring because usually we’re not just sitting and drinking, we’re talking about things and the drinks aren’t the main focal point. I also don’t always go with him (he sometimes hangs out with friends and I do my own thing with friends or by myself). We also also have an extensive home bar, fire pit, hot tub, and big backyard and I like hosting others. It’s also not unusual for him to have a couple beers while we’re watching a movie together, wine with dinner when I do not, etc. I also spend time with friends when they are drinking independent of my partner and it’s not uncomfortable for me. My friends, even the heavier drinkers, as supportive of me not drinking and will do things like arrange for a fancy bar to surprise me with a mocktail flight or suggest places that have good kombucha on tap. It’s never been that big of a deal. He still enjoys drinking. I’m still mostly sober. It’s really a non-issue. He gets a DD out of it, after all. And, again, I’m actively choosing this/ enjoy spending time with him and he’s considerate of me/ works to keep things interesting for me too. I never approached it as though he had to change his lifestyle because I was making a choice for myself. We both just adapted because being together and enjoying our time together is more important than what we actually do during that time.

   I share this lengthy summary of my experience to say that it’s possible for you to be sober and for you to be with someone who likes to drink, if you’re both in the place to be a healthy partner to the other person in that dynamic and supportive of each of your individual choices. It doesn’t sound like you have that partnership, however, and it does sound like the issue isn’t so much that your partner drinks but that how he likes to drink is problematic for you and may well be indicative of a drinking problem. You say in other comments that he throws up routinely, slurs his words, etc. The volume you’re describing is a lot. Is your partner someone who enjoys drinking on occasion, or is he an addict? Because most people in general, sober or otherwise, find it near impossible to sustain a healthy relationship with an addict who is using.

   In other words, I don’t think the issue is that your partner drinks. I think the issue is how much, how often, and how few other social connections or hobbies you seem to have that he supports. You describe it like your partner is drinking 8-10 drinks in an evening. That’s a huge amount. You’re describing him basically drinking all weekend enough that it interferes with his ability to be functional the next day. And you’re describing tagging along multiple nights a week (you know you don’t have to do that, right?). That sounds more like something more akin to a substance use problem on his end than just someone enjoying drinking. That also sounds like codependency on both of your ends if you feel you have to tag along, have nothing to entertain you on the mornings he does want to sleep in, and if he’s jealous and unreasonable about you forming outside friendships. I just told you my partner drinks. He sleeps in on Saturday. He’s still up on Sundays by 8am for us to go on our weekly bike ride. The idea of finishing a 6pack after a trip to the bar on Saturday isn’t even on his radar. Similarly it doesn’t bug me that most Saturdays he does want to sleep in since I have an early morning run, Pilates, and brunch with friends routine and he’s up by the time he’s back. He’s never once expressed jealousy about my friends. When I say my rather drinks I certainly don’t mean he’s regularly hungover, slurring his words, or vomiting. I mean he has a few drinks over the course of a night out. I’m reading this and I really don’t think the issue is just your partner drinking, it’s about him not being supportive of you forming friendships with people different than himself. Its about you being sober or having sober friends being threatening to him. It’s about drinking being the focus of a night out with alcohol (for us it looks more like a show where we dance and my partner drinks, or seeing a play or movie with a couple beers). And it’s about drinking to a level where it ruins his next day. I think you need to ask yourself whether your partner enjoys going out, being social, and having a few drinks or whether the goal is to have many drinks. In other words, does he enjoy drinking or does he enjoy being drunk? Is your partner someone who uses alcohol or is he someone with a substance abuse problem or someone headed that way?

   Many people wouldn’t be happy in a relationship like the one you’re describing and it’s not just about the fact that he drinks and you don’t. It’s about amount and focus/ reasons why. It’s also about whether it’s the healthiest dynamic for you given your history with addiction. It makes sense that you’re feeling resentful because he’s literally choosing a night of drinking a 6-pack of beers on top of several drinks at the bar over spending time with you the next day on a weekly basis and you’re describe it as hard for you to enjoy yourself and stay sober while around him. There is a difference between someone who drinks and someone whose focus in life is drinking/ is drinking to get drunk every night. For my partner it looks more like 1-2 drinks at night and a Bloody Mary in the morning after we go on a hike together. For yours it sounds like the entire focus of the weekend is what’s in his cup or bottle. If your partner is usually drinking during his free time and you don’t enjoy being around him when he’s drinking, you’re basically saying you don’t enjoy being around the person your partner is during his free time.

   You need to ask yourself if you want/ need a partner who is also sober, one who drinks but whose drinking habits are different than what you have, or if you can find a way to be happy with the one you’ve got. He’s been like this since you started dating and has told you he has no intention of changing. It’s been 8 years. Expecting him to suddenly change is unfair and unless he recognizes his drinking as a problem I don’t think he will. If he does recognize it as a problem then you’ve got a long road ahead of you (as you know well from your own addiction experiences). Either way, bringing children into this is a terrible idea. Even if he magically reduces or stops drinking when you have kids, do you even know if you like each other sober?

6. This sounds like a compatibility issue to me, to some extent. But your bf does sound kind of exhausting. I mean, I like having a drink as well, but he gets actually DRUNK every single weekend? I feel like he should have grown out of getting drunk years ago. To me, what he’s doing isn’t “normal drinking”, it’s binge drinking.

7. My ex was like this and all I can say is that these people get worse rather than better. I made excuses and put up with it for years but he would never change and cared more about going out to drink than about me or our relationship.

   If I knew then what I do now, I would cut my losses and leave because you never get less fed up of it either.

8. He has the right to drink, you have the right to not drink. You both have a right to not want to be with someone that drinks/doesn’t drink. But neither of you have the right to demand the other drink/not drink. And it would be really annoying to have someone nag all the time.

9. “Normal” will vary from person to person and location to location. Most of our friends from NYC (the area I grew up) get drunk every weekend. Most of our friends from rural Arkansas (my wife’s home town) drink a couple of times per month. Don’t worry about normal, find what works for you.

10. You arent happy and not doing the things you want.

    You clearly see his drinking as an issue in both health and time, both of which you are correct on.

    He’s unapologetic about his drinking and doesn’t acknowledge there might be an issue with his health.
    Same goes with wasting your time just watching him numb himself with drinks.

    He’s clearly not listening. You cant keep going on like that. You need to put your foot down. Give him a timeline and you will break up with him if he doesn’t shape up. Offer help with therapy if you are so inclined.

11. When my husband and I started dating, I was a casual/social drinker. A lot of our dates were going out to the bars to watch games or play darts or socialize. I ultimately quit drinking due to some health issues about 2 years in. As we got older, had kids, and other responsibilities increased, I assumed his drinking would subside. But it did not. He drank almost every night, and definitely drank every weekend. When it’s football season he would start at 11am. I talked to him about it for several years about slowing down the drinking, but he thought it wasn’t a real problem because, in his words, he wasn’t one of those people that had to drink when they woke up or to get through work. Which is true, he never called out of work because he was hungover, he just went to work hungover. He still did a lot of housework and it didn’t really impact his ability to be a great dad. It was just how he was and acted toward me when he was drinking that bothered me. I felt like I couldn’t ask him to completely stop because I knew that he drank when we got married, and it’s not fair (I think) to ask someone to change out of nowhere, and if I brought up slowing down or decreasing the weeknight drinking, he disagreed because he just didn’t want to stop.

    4 months ago we started going to a couples therapist for mostly unrelated reasons, and they told him our second session (when I wasn’t in the room) that they thought he had a problem with alcohol, the impact it’s having on his marriage, life, and child, and that he should consider going to AA. He immediately reduced the drinking. He used to go through a Costco sized bottle of gin easily in a week (plus beer) and now that same bottle will last over a month, and he only drinks beer when he’s out at a restaurant or bar. It’s been great.

    All that to suggest that maybe getting some input from someone that’s not “the naggy wife” will help drastically, and being open to a compromise of “slowing down” vs “stopping completely”.

12. This seems like a compatibility issue. If he wants to spend his whole weekend drinking and you don’t, you guys can either work out a system where you mostly do your own thing on weekends (which is not ideal for obvious reasons), he agrees to drink less (seems unlikely) or you walk. But i would be miserable in your shoes.

13. Oh boy.. Very similar situation between my wife and I. We have been together 7 years now, we started off drinking a lot when we first hooked up because we were in an industry that loved drug testing. Over the years I had maintained my box of beers a week, maybe I would end up buying two boxes and it would last me an entire week. I would come home from work and crack a beer. It was my way to relax. Every. Day.

    We moved states to where I originally came from, moved in with a childhood friend of mine and his partner, everything was peachy and it was a semi serious professional/party house. We all have jobs, we all pay our ways, we would all cook together and when it came to hosting a party it was all out. 2 years we lived there. The cracks started to show as we were talking about buying a home for us. My best mate who I have known for 25 years at this point is acting odd. His missus is showing her true narc colours. Then we started finding empty vodka bottles EVERYWHERE. My best mate finally came clean that he is a full blown alcoholic and drinking maybe 1L-2L a day. Our home loan was approved and we were moving on but my friend and his partners world imploded in front of everyones eyes and the only one who could have stopped it was my mate.

    We moved into our new place just after 2020 and then covid hit. My mate and his missus had moved into another place with another couple friends. Their problem was they had signed their lease before the news came out about the alcoholism and they were not only stuck in the same room, but with a lock down of epic proportions. I felt horrible for my best friends partner, she has her problems but no one deserves to have to live like that with absolutely no compromise. It went as badly as you’d expect it would have, probably worse, there’s probably parts I still don’t know about that I appreciate she didn’t tell me due to (her words) “if you knew the things he does when he’s drunk you would never want to see him ever again”.

    My partner and I had been seeing our own therapists throughout this entire time, we knew we had our own issues in life from how we were raised. My partner doesn’t drink a whole heap but I looovveeee beer and throughout all of this I would without fial be drinking beer every single day. Functional alcoholism. I never missed a day of work. Never drank at work or before I had to drive, I operated my life around it. Morning, work, home, beer. Rinse & repeat. Justifying my shitty job as the reason I need to drink. Telling myself if I didn’t have to sit in traffic getting stressed everyday I wouldn’t need to drink but it’s my vice and what I need to calm down from the daily stresses. My partner had been “nagging” me on cutting back since around 2019 and I did even tell her at one point I would walk away from her if she made me choose because I am NOT an alcoholic and I am free to make what decisions I want, it doesn’t affect me so stfu or fuck off. The absolute angel she is, she picked her times, she never walked away and she never gave up.

    After we moved into our house, we really had no stresses other than crappy employers, I still drank. Every day. Even after watching my best mates life implode in front of me. Still getting daily to weekly updates on how bad his situation is getting I still drink and tell myself “it’s okay, it’s beer and not vodka, I’m not him”. The justification of it runs fucking deep. My partner still on my back. Me being irrate and screaming for her to stop trying to control me.

    Another year goes on. I’m fucking depressed. I hate my job. I hate being told what to do at work, I know my job and I’m better at what I do then 90% of people in my industry. I go home and then I get an earful about “here we go drinking again…” and I hate that also. Fuck this, the world is against me, just let me do what I fucking want to do. OK??

    I get a new work mate, reluctantly I say OK I’ll work with someone even though I prefer to work alone. He’s 10 years older than I am and he obviously has his own issues in life, he never once tried to downplay a situation. Told me 3 years prior he was on the edge about to jump. He was a proper alcoholic that had overcome his demons but here he is talking to me so calmly and openly about it all, offering advice when I’m obviously so angry at my partner for telling me what to do. He being so grounded at that time, he planted a seed within me I think. He didn’t mind going to the pub and enjoying a NA drink while everyone else got shit faced, to him it reassured him why he didn’t need to drink. What really stuck out at that moment was my “supervisor” stopping him in front of about 20 blokes and asked him want he’s drinking, he replied “all good mate, I don’t drink.” my supervisor would not accept that. “why what’s wrong with you? What have you done? You know who doesn’t drink? People who are trying to hide something. What are you hiding?” like bro seriously fuck off he has reasons and if he doesn’t want to tell you then fuck off and don’t berate him for not fucking drinking in front of 20 of his peers.

    That sat wrong with me. Seed had sprouted. Why do I want to be like these people I fucking hate. I hate spending time with them, I want to go home and see my wife, she’s the one who matters, not this little bug eyed fuck telling my mate there’s something wrong with him for not drinking… Ding ding ding. The work mate I never wanted is more than a work mate now.

    2022 rolls in. Still hate my fucking job. Hate my employer with a passion. Since the 6 months prior I had been cutting back on the beers as my wife was STILL “an incessant nag” as I would tell her. But, to keep her happy I’d make a show of cutting back for a few weeks and then a trigger moment and back on it again. Quit my job and started my own business, so so so much weight taken off my shoulders in a moment. The world had been lifted. Drinking seriously cut back but not gone.

    Still never wanted to quit drinking. Expected I would drink beer until the day I die but I wanted to be more in control of it. My best mate is now homeless, not answering his phone, lost his license, crashed his car, needs to pay thousands in fines and have a breathe locker installed on his vehicle, lost his job so can’t pay for any of it anyways. He’s constantly lying about where he’s gotten this new scar across his face or why he got arrested.. Haven’t seen him in 3 months now and I do worry but he’s a big boy… The realisation of how it destroyed his life has started sinking in.

    Come to new years eve that just rolled on. I love to BBQ. My wife and I went down the coast with another couple who are very close friends of ours. I was going to BBQ for two days leading up to new year, it’s a dream come true. Spent two days in the sun, drinking, good company, good food, we had our dogs and are all having a great time. Another couple came along for the party around 7pm on NYE, we had all had a massive couple days and were now ready to relax, watch the fireworks and bring the new year in with good friends and some music and our doggos. The new arrivals drank a bottle of wine in an hour before they arrived and then an extra two bottles each before midnight had even struck. The moment they arrived I was done, I went to bed. My dog felt the same and she came to bed with me. She then had to sleep lightly because in her mind she saw these drunks as a threat, the drunks got too close to me sleeping and she was up and ready to take his fingers off.

    I woke up new years day with no hangover, I stopped drinking at 7pm. The house was trashed from the newcomers, I didn’t even see them the next day because they were so hungover, vomiting in the spare room. Gross. Is this the way I usually behave when I’m partying? Fuck. Wtf. This is fucken disgusting. Something clicked and I decided to say that’s it. I haven’t had a drink since. Today is day 17. I’m fresh sober but you know, I dont see it that way. From drinking every day for 15 years to this? I snapped. My want for drink evaporated on the spot.

    After one week sober, google must have heard my wife and I talking about sobriety. The next day I had a video in my YT feed from “soft white underbelly” who I had never heard of before. I watched this video and burst into tears. I watched more on the topic and I know I’m not alone. Everyone is in the same place. Their justifications are the same, their reasonings. The biggest thing of all is “you need to do it for yourself”. I love my wife with all my heart but that wasn’t enough, I had to get there myself. Without me coming to the table there was no way I could do it.

    This isn’t a new year resolution, this has been a long time coming. I believe I am fortunate enough to have people who have stuck by me to get me to here, their patience is incredible. These two weeks have been tough as shit but last night I slept 9 hours with no help from drugs. I am feeling fatigued as hell at times and then fine an hour later. I have told myself I don’t have a problem for more than ten years. Keep justifying it to yourself but until you stop on your own accord you will never be able to do it for someone else. I now understand where my best mates head is all these years later, it only took 2 weeks of sobriety and a few videos to sink in. I knew we couldn’t help him because he doesn’t want to help himself but God damn I will be there with bells on when he calls me to tell me he is ready.

    I’m so sorry to write a post that seems like it is fifty times longer than your own. I’m a baby in sobriety, not a seasoned veteran who should be giving advice. I’m in awe that you have already been to rehab to help yourself before. Time, patience, understanding and love.. I think that’s the only thing that can help from your end. I texted my wife yesterday to apologise for the times I’ve called her a nag. I thanked her for nagging. I apologised for gaslighting her to nearly believe she was a nag when she only wanted me to survive..

14. I have similar drinking habits to you but work as a bartender so a lot of my social group has similar drinking habits to your bf.

    Things that help me are

    1. I genuinely enjoy being out at a bar or club, having one drink or a soda and just dancing with my friends as long as they’re not getting to a point I have to take care of them.

    2. If I don’t feel like being sober at the club all weekend, I make other plans that don’t involve alcohol. These can be with or without your bf- you don’t have to spend every time he goes out together or wake up together every day, but you do have to assess how much quality time you need and in what form and if he’s a fun person to do that with sober and can moderate his drinking enough to show up fully to your quality time.

    3. Assess your values and also your own self control. Know when to stop going along to something (my boundaries are not going out to the bar when I’m tired physically or emotionally, and I don’t go out often enough to throw off my sleep schedule a lot, and I reduce the amount I go out if I notice I’m feeling down and struggling to get out of bed as quickly). If these boundaries are not compatible with your relationship, you should consider leaving and finding friends and partners who you can have strong healthy relationships and quality time with that are compatible with your boundaries.

    You shouldn’t stay expecting him to change his lifestyle habits for you, but it’s fair to expect him to change the energy he puts in to meet your needs of quality time sober and with no phones and spending time doing certain activities a certain amount of times per week and it’s fair to tell him that if he gets sloppy, you won’t look after him every time and need him to arrange to have friends do this unless it’s an emergency.