She’s “terrified” of me
Tonight she told me she experienced heart palpitations during the day due to anxiety, from me.
My wife is what I would classify as a daily, high functioning, binge drinking alcoholic. I admit I would know, I’m a little over a dozen years out from putting alcohol behind me because I recognized my own problem and had to do something about it. She gets up early to stay her day. I’m talking 3:30 in the morning early. She doesn’t day drink to my knowledge, but once she begins, usually around 4 o’clock, it’s game on until bed. From the summer of 2023, to around February of 2025, she was putting down nearly 4 gallons of rum a month. It finally came to a head when I snapped and brought evidence of the drinking through her DoorDash and Instacart purchases of rum and the consistency to her parents, her childhood best friend, and called her brother to discuss that I just can’t do this on my own anymore. She was belligerent, mean, incoherent throughout most evenings, and I had grown completely tired of it.
Since then, she stopped drinking rum, and fell back to wine. She drinks boxed so it’s not nearly as measurable, but I’d still venture to guess we are talking about at least a bottle and half of wine a night, every night. That was what was essentially her compromise that we never agreed on. There is more to her drinking habits, she drinks (rum I’m sure) every Saturday night with a small group of women that she plays cards with. All of whom are widows who are honestly looking beyond her problem because it benefits their own loneliness to have someone younger around. It’s a sad situation if you ask me.
As I have explained to her before, I’m to the point that it has nothing to do with the quantity, and everything to do with the behavior. We have an almost 8 year old together, and it sends so many mixed signals to a child when half the parental input can be so chaotic. Life advice is just horrible coming from someone who is cockeyed on booze and ready to fall out by 8:30-9 every night.
This upcoming weekend, we will be headed to my in-laws lake property to celebrate the holiday. The big trick of course being that she will not be there. She is staying home to take care of some things around here that are beside the point discussed here. Details I will spare you all of for the sake of TLDR. She came to me and told me about these panic attacks. She then said they were because I was going to be with her family all weekend without her there and she doesn’t trust that I won’t “betray” her again. She said she is terrified of me. The last 3-4 nights she has been sleeping in the livingroom by 8:30, which is whatever. If you are tired, go to bed, don’t allow yourself to just constantly crash in the livingroom when you are spending the last few hours staring through your eyelids, but I suspect it is her long work schedule that she forces upon herself, as well as her wine intake. Her blood pressure is regularly 150-160/100-105, and she is an otherwise normal built woman under the age of 40. Not overweight by any means, so I suspect her alcohol intake is the major culprit.
I honestly had no intentions of discussing her drinking while we were down at the property. This was an opportunity for me to know there would be some stability for a weekend away from rolling the dice with her around.
Yet, here I sit, a woman who constantly tells me I am gaslighting her, is gaslighting me into a corner where I actually almost feel bad for how she feels and the anxiety she felt today. I believe it to be true. I believe her anxiety is real. I just find it so frustrating that her anxiety is more about the reality that her intake could be a justifiable topic but she is pretending I am the cause of it all and putting that on me to the point where I feel bad and am worried that *they* will bring it up and I will feel like I’m letting either party down.
If you made it all the way through this, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Everyone here spends so much time supporting one another while we dump these pent up frustrations and concerns on one another. This subreddit is something so therapeutic for me and being able to share my experience and hear that I’m not losing my mind is so powerful and I have all of you to thank for it.