INTRO
On this week's episode of midlife AF, we're going to be talking about partners, loved ones drinking when we are either not or taking a break from, or the partners are drinking more than we think that they should, regardless of what we're doing with alcohol, it's a fascinating subject and one I get asked about all the time. Often I have clients who are getting triggered because their partners are drinking when they have stopped. I have friends and family and clients who talk about other members of their family and partners who are drinking more than they wish that they were, and what can they do to help those people? And then the other part is, you know, if you have decided that you're going to live an alcohol free life, how does that work when your long term partner has not? So I hope you enjoy this episode. It's a lot of fun to make, and I talk a lot about my own personal experience of this. So I'll see you in the podcast.
MAIN EPISODE
Welcome to this week's episode of Midlife AF. This week, we're going to talk about - by popular demand - what to do when your partner or friend or family member is drinking in a way that doesn't feel comfortable for you. And I think there's three things to cover around this. One is when you stop or take a break from drinking, and a lot of feelings are coming up about a partner still drinking or friends or whatever. The other is, if you decide to become alcohol free, and your partner doesn't from a long term perspective, what that looks like. And the third is regardless of whether or not you are alcohol free, planning to be alcohol free, sober curious. But if you have a partner or close friend, family member who is drinking in a way that you think is problematic, and you want to know what the best thing to do to help them is. So there's a few different things there. So the first we’ll start with is something that I quite often get from friends, and also from clients as well. But let's start with what to do if you have a partner who's drinking more, then you think they should. And this can apply to a family member, it can apply to anything, it's the same. All the research says the same.
03:41
You cannot make somebody else change. People can be forced into changing through fear. But until they decide to change for themselves and really want to do it. Now it might be that they end up feeling like that because you're making them do it, they might end up feeling that that's the right thing for them to do and feel good about it. But in most cases, unless a person comes to their own decision around taking a break from or reducing, they will generally go back to drinking because it is one of those things that really has to come from inside ourselves. And so with that in mind, what to do when you've got a partner who you are worried about their drinking, you think that they are harming themselves, their behaviour isn't great. And in terms of boundaries, and I'm just going to preface here that you know in terms of violence in terms of domestic abuse, emotional abuse, none of that is ever acceptable, regardless of whether a person is suffering from alcohol use disorder or not. So, in that situation, that's a, and I will put a reference in this podcast as well, for the domestic violence helpline. And some way you can go for that and emergency services as well. But in this situation, I'm talking about a relatively healthy relationship where one person is drinking problematically. And, again, I would still say that boundaries in terms of what we accept and what we don't accept, in terms of people's behaviour around us and people's behaviour around our kids, they are very valid conversations to have, regardless of the person's relationship with alcohol, because that is about their behaviour and what's acceptable and not acceptable for you. And so you're telling people about what boundaries are, which is basically how you need them to be in order for them to stay in your life, in order for it to be you to have a good relationship. So boundaries are important. And there's no under acknowledging that and keeping yourself your physical and mental self safe, is your primary and your children is your primary concern. But if we want to help people change their relationship with alcohol, the very best thing that we can do is, number one, be the change we want to see.
If you want your partner to stop drinking, don't drink with them. Show them, that you can live a happy, joyful, great life without alcohol being involved in it. You know, that will be my recommendation - be the change, you want to say. You know, even if that is that you you just have one drink here and there. But be the change you want to see. But what I would suggest is really unhelpful is to just be constantly criticising and nagging them about alcohol, because you then become the thing they're rebelling against you then become part of the problem. And I often have this with clients, is that sometimes clients want me to take that parent’s role so they can rebel against me, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, you don't need to rebel against me, I give you permission to do whatever you want, you're a grown up. Yeah, for me, it's no skin off my nose, what you choose to do, I'm just here to help you, if you want to change the mindset, work with understanding your nervous system, and so on. So it's really important not to become a parent with a person who is struggling, because there's a really a in relational therapy, which is something I believe very, very strongly in and it works very well for me. And some, it's really helped me and my relationships and my family, is we have this concept of same/same. So we as a human being are the same as anybody else as a human being. Neither one of us is better or worse than the other. So neither should we be holding other people in contempt. Or should we hold ourselves in contempt and often in relationships that are dysfunctional we're doing one or the other. And I, for a long time, held myself in contempt. And I had a very dysfunctional relationship. And I'm still working on that. But it's something I bring in quite a lot. And I think again, it's, you know, I will talk a lot more about this as we go through but inner child work, it's so important understanding where each other's coming from - allowing each other to have our own realities, and not making the other person bad.
The minute we make somebody else bad, what we're doing is we're struggling against what is and struggling against what is is what leads to our biggest discontentment which is why myself and a lot of other therapists and people who work in this space are very big on things like radical acceptance, which again, we'll go into in a different a different podcast episode. But so it's really really important not to be the preacher. It's really nobody ever and you have this everything thing to do with alcohol. Nobody wants unsolicited advice. So nobody wants someone to tell them all the reasons why alcohol is bad for them and why they shouldn't drink and why when they do drink they are x y&z. So the very best thing that you can do, as I said, is be the change you want to see. And then the other thing is just let the person know that when they need help, you are there for them. And that's why this judgement, if you're judging, looking down and finding them bad and finding them wrong, you're not standing next to them in empathy, and I'm not saying you have to fix them or make them better. In fact, quite the opposite. You are not responsible for them, you are only responsible for yourself, but the kindest thing that you can do for them is say “When you're ready, I'm here for you”. And the thing is, and if you're you know, you don't even have to say that it's actually just about being showing them that you're the change, showing them that you're not judging them, showing them that you understand that alcohol is an addictive substance to anybody made of blood, skin and bone. And that there's we know, and you're hearing more and more on my podcast, but it's never about the booze. People drink because they're unhappy. People drink because they have anxiety. People drink because they need to numb out, people drink because they need to escape. It's not about the booze. Yes, but alcohol is an addictive substance. And yes, once we start to use it to alleviate pain, it has, you know, it becomes harder and harder for us to stop using it. But it's never about the booze. So if we care about the other person, we don't fix them, because that becomes codependent and never really works. And again, we can go on to that in another episode. But we let them know that we're not judging them. And if and when they are ready to change, and they need any help, and they need a soft place to land, and we will be that soft place to land for them. So that's, that's that part of the podcast, I hope that's helpful. But it's not about enabling, it's about being the change you want to see. And it's about letting them know that you're not judging them, you're not making them bad. And that you’ve put your boundaries where you need to. But let them know that you're a soft place for them to land when they're ready. So that's the first piece.
Then the second piece is you stop drinking, and your partner still drinks. And it's the beginning of your journey without alcohol, you're taking a break or whatever you're doing. You're your partner still drinking, and it's triggering you. So it's making you want to drink. And so this is a really interesting one. And I hear this so often from people because this is the brain the brain loves us to blame somebody else for something. Because what happens with the brain is when the brain blames somebody else for something, it relieves itself of all responsibility.
So if you're blaming somebody and saying, “that person's triggering me because they're doing this”. And then you're making it mean something about them. “Oh, they're not supporting me. They're not loving me”. Well, that's, that's just not true. They have their own journey, and you have your own journey. And if you start blaming somebody else, your brain thinks “I don't need to do this. It's their fault”. So it's really important that your journey with those isn't about somebody else. Yeah. And I remember for me with Damien and I, we always did healthy eating, we always stopped drinking together. And then I started, and he wasn't doing it when I wanted to do it, and I suddenly realised that this was a problem for me. And whatever he chose to do. I wanted to stop drinking for a year because I wanted to see what that was like. And he wasn't going to come with me. So I could sit around and wait for him to come with me and wait for him to support me and keep abandoning myself and my needs and what I felt in my deepest, inner knowing was something that was going to change things for me in a big way, in a positive way for my mental health and from how I felt about myself as a person. And so I had to make the decision to do it without him. And when I made that decision, I was not making any of this about him. And really, it's been like that ever since. So for me, Damien still drinks, he still drinks the way that I used to drink, he drinks at the weekends. He, and he has his own social life around that, and your social life revolves around drinking and doing things that he enjoys. And that's fine. Yeah, for me, that is totally fine.
What I don't like, and this is what a lot of people will talk about who have partners who drink is when they become inebriated, and you're on a different level to them. And that is problematic. But again, it doesn't mean they're bad. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. It's just on a different plane. And they can become a bit annoying, like anyone can write when they're drunk. And yes, it does mean things change in your relationship. I've been really lucky. Mine and Damien's relationship has not got any worse from me stopping drinking, it's actually much, much better. It’s still got a long way to go. But it's much, much better than it was because I have more space in my brain so I can respond rather than react. So whereas before we used to, and have massive fights, and become this parent child dynamic. And we built this again, though, this is more relational relationship stuff, which we'll get more into. But like, we were under the wrong impression that in an argument, somebody had to win, and somebody had to lose. And I went through most of my life thinking that was what had to happen in an argument. So every time I felt like I was losing, I felt like I was under threat for my life. Because that was how things worked. And I didn't like to lose. And that's it. That's a whole, it's a whole other conversation.
But what it has enabled me to do is create a bigger and just by stopping drinking, you get a little bit of a gap, that little pause between stimulus and response, which, you know, they say is, I think it's Viktor Frankl has a really great quote on that. Which I don't know. So that's really useful for this podcast, but I'll put it in the show notes. But basically, it's that ability to pause and and choose a different action, that's not a risk, a reactive action and be able to kind of, and for me, stopping drinking is about giving yourself that pause, and then starting to unpack the onion reasons why we drink the reasons why we do all the things we do so that we can evolve into this integrated human being with all our faults, or warts and all, loving ourselves just as we are. So that was my, that's my experience of that. And that's my recommendation is just try and let the other people be, they don't have to be the same as you, they don't have to be on the same journey as you. And if you blame them, you lose your power. Because if you blame them, then your brain starts to say, I'm not responsible, it’s somebody else's fault, which often then leads to people drinking.
So then the last piece of the pie is longer term. So longer term, what do we do when our partners are drinking, and we have become a long term, non drinker, which is exactly the situation that I'm in with, Damien. And even to the point where Dames actually works for a big alcohol company. So it's quite funny. We're like chalk and cheese. But what I found with Mike with Damien is again, his journey through life is not my responsibility. And I think many of us who are codependent who have been brought up - particularly women - to think our role in life is to fix people to make everybody else okay, and to be responsible for everybody else's experience. Letting go of that is huge in terms of our overwhelm and our stress levels because we don't have to fix everybody. We are not responsible for everybody's behaviour. The people around us, the people, we love our kids, our partners. They exist and we exist and we will do our best to show up and be there for them. But we don't need to take their stuff into our bodies, we don't need to try and fix them. We're all on our own journeys through life. And so for me and Damian, it's been about finding things that connect us that aren't drinking, because we don't really drink together anymore. Like we might go out for dinner or something like that.
But whereas we used to spend days and afternoons together, just drinking, and that was our, you know, experience with each other. So, now, what we discovered in COVID, we both did silly yoga together in the morning before work, because we were all at home in Melbourne in the big lockdown. And we don't do it every day anymore, like we used to. But at least once or twice a week, we do yoga together before the kids, we get the kids up for school. And we have a giggle, and we're not great. And we've got bellies that stick out, and we can't do all the things. But we have fun together and laughing together is really, really important.
We still have a laugh together, like we have a good giggle. And I think that's really quite important as well, we're still working a lot on our relationship, there's a lot more to go to make it how I'd like it to be. And I think he'd like it to be as well. But we are progressing. And he is keen to do that with me. And I think that's another really important thing because a lot of people do. Relationships break down once they stopped drinking, because you're in growth and the other person's not wanting to grow. And that can be problematic. And I hear that a lot. And often people get over it as well. He's always been a seeker of knowledge, when we met each other, he was a hippie, like we both worked in corporate but we both went to raves. We're both into spiritual stuff, he was into Buddhism and is a very clever guy. Science fiction kind of nerdy. But we went to raves, and it would all be like, you know the meaning of life and all that kind of stuff. And so he's always on a spiritual quest, an inquiry, he's an intelligent person. And one of my core values is learning and growth. And so we have that in common.
And other things we like to do like the other day we went roller skating with the kids. It was so funny. We went to this great place in Collingwood. It has a really funky atmosphere and they do roller disco once a week. Me and Damo going around the roller skating rink. He was loving it. I was loving it. We were having a great time. You know, having a bit of fun like that together, everything we both really enjoyed. We love SUP Boarding, that was something I got a few years ago for my Christmas present. And we really enjoy in the summer to get up early and going out and talking. We find that side by side talking is really good to work through things. So that's really good for us.
We've been to Katie Underwood's sound healing session together, and that's been really good to have that kind of spiritual awakening experience with music because he really loves that. And one of the things I'm going to try and get him to do is come with me to an ecstatic dance session. Because he loves raving he loves dancing. So it'd be quite cool. I think it's about it's just about keeping that connection isn't it and sort of loving and, and understanding the other person. And they don't have to be the same as you. You don't have to be on the same journey. You know, I'd love it if he did end up coming on the same journey as me but you know, that's not going to make any difference to what I'm doing or to our relationship.
So I've covered everything there that I can think I'd love to hear. If you've got any questions just reach out to me on either send me a direct message on my Instagram, or through my email, [email protected]. And if any of you've got anything else that you'd love to add to the podcast, anything else you'd like me to chat about or any guests that you'd like me to approach? Let me know and we'll do that too. So wishing you a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining me today on midlife AF.
