What you stated above doesn't sound silly. I have been there myself and I know what you are describing. I experienced the same thing myself where there would be an incident and things would be fine for a while and then I would end up experiencing another incidence where my husband got together with friends and ended up drinking himself into incoherance etc. His friends were often way worse than him and what I did learn FINALLY was that I was living with HIS pattern of binge drinking/alcoholism. He genuinely did not think HE had a problem as he could actually go a while without engaging in drinking and using other drugs. Truth is he did not KNOW there was such a thing as binge alcoholism.

That being said, part of why I did not know was that my father was also a binge alcoholic so I actually thought it was normal because it was normal in my own environment growing up. Also, people who have this problem actually "can" be nice people, but are nice people that do have a problem and it does affect others around them.

That disease caused a great deal of heartache in my life. It ruins relationships and unless a person that has the problem gets help to recognize it and chooses to stop living that way, they gradually get worse and begin drinking more and more and a lot of people do die from that disease. It's a progressive disease AND it actually keeps a person from growing and maturing so they tend to be way behind when it comes to their maturity level. So, in effect, you are not really in a relationship with another ADULT. Instead you are in a relationship with someone who's real relationship is all about the alcohol. And I will tell you, that in my own experience that has been consistent even when my husband got so bad that I got to a point where I just could not live that way anymore and I told him if he did not do something about it that I would leave him. He ended going to an AA meeting and that's when he realized that HE DID HAVE A PROBLEM. Yet, even though he stopped his life is still about that disease and staying sober and going to meetings and I am still living around that disease and at times it just can be LONELY.

I loved my husband and I went to alanon meetings hoping to find another woman who stayed with her husband and helped him and got past it. Well, the only women I found that managed to do that were women who themselves were alcoholics and she and her husband got sober together and their lifestyle became about that disease "together". What I learned is that statistically, women leave their husbands within three years of him finally becoming sober. They just want to see him getting help, but they choose to walk away once they see the man they had loved getting help. Truth is, they just are too lonely and tired out to continue living with the challenges that come with that disease.

I have been married for 39 years now, but I will tell you that I have been married to that disease all this time too. I have been LONELY in my marriage as that disease always took presidence. Now, I don't want to seem mean about it as someone who has that problem and works at it may be hurt by my honesty. Yet, I feel it's important to be honest to someone who will face ALL the challenges that do come with staying with someone who has this disease.

And there were so many times where he dismissed me, told me that I was the one with the problem too. There are times he still does that too, and I get triggered when he slips into that mindset. What you don't really realize about this challenge is that you are becoming a "victim of abuse" that is what comes with loving and living with someone with this disease. What you don't realize is how you are gradually living your own life around their binges, it's not disimilar than living a bipolar type mentality either as you unknowingly are trapped IN THEIR CYCLE that presents with this disease. Yet, this is what I had thought was normal because that is what I watched my mother deal with because that is what my father was like. My father never admitted he had a problem either. He constantly insisted he was not hooked and was able to control his drinking. I believe he stopped because as he aged and drank, he fell too many times and actually broke his ribs. Thing is, when he drank, he ALWAYS drank the entire bottle and if there was another bottle there, he would open and drink that one too. He liked to drink wine and tended to talk about how wine is healthy to drink. Always defending and denying his disease.

Thing is Outsider, it's what happens when they drink, they drink and can't stop and often drink until they just pass out and are completely incapacitated which is why often they simply don't come home too. I had spent many nights when my husband was active where he never came home. And it was at a time where there were no cell phones too, so I really never even knew where the hell he was. His uncle is just his "disease buddy". When a person FINALLY gets sober they learn how they have to literally walk away from all their old drinking buddy friends and anyone who stays engaged in the disease that tend to coax them into hanging out and drinking and drugging.

I honestly implore you to take the time and commit to really seeing the REALITY of the relationship you are in. It doesn't matter how long you have been with him or how long you have been married to him. And these individuals can be functional and work too. Yet you ARE in a relationship with this disease and I can't say enough how important it is for you to make it a point to LEARN ABOUT IT.

I have even listened to women who are in relationships with individuals who for whatever reason no longer drink, yet, these women CONSTANTLY describe the unhealthy pattern they are dealing with in the man they are with and how they can be nice and then be disrespectful and mean and how these women end up having to distance and they struggle with feeling "depressed". Some even think they might be "bipolar", when in reality they are experiencing the patterns of this individual they are in a relationship with and the affect it can have on them. It really can be having a relationship with a person who has two different personalities to them. I fell in love with the kind and even intelligent Dr. Jeckle, and yet that is intruded in intervals when MR. HYDE is present and he is not nice to me and tends to be quite SELFISH.