Hi Brooke and Team!

I am new to SCS this month and the main reason I joined this month was because I wanted to work on my relationship with my husband. We have two young boys and our marriage has been in an uncomfortable place for a long time.

My husband started a new job about 2 years ago that has a very young culture and a drinking-centered environment. They have events every 3 months where they create an opportunity for my husband to drink and stay out late (until 2am some nights) on consecutive week nights. These are not events where significant others are invited to join. They are focused on team building and end of quarter celebrations.

My husband grew up with both of his parents owning bars and was surrounding by drinking his entire life. His parents divorced when he was young (age 7) and continue to drink a significant (in my opinion) amount even into their adulthood. So much so, that at family events, I started to get my own place to sleep for our 2 children and myself as to not be subjected to the drinking behaviors and late night of 3am and sleeping until noon the following day.

My husband is also not a clean person. He does not keep his spaces clean (desk at work, desk at home, car, etc) and he does not have the same beliefs around being organized to increase productivity and honestly his lack of cleanliness makes my life more difficult. I often have a hard time finding things or have to replace them because he didn’t put something away or properly care for it.

After my first son was born, I wanted to leave the job I was currently in because I didn’t make much money and I was miserable doing it. My husband and I disagreed and ultimately I ended up staying home and chose to sacrifice a lot out of guilt because it was MY choice to stay home. It took me a long time to realize what I was doing and wasn’t until about 7 months ago that I realized the amount of resentment that was created from my decision. Our marriage slowly deteriorated over the following 6 years and we have been sleeping in separate bedrooms since my 6 year old son was born.

After my husband took the new job with the young, drinking culture, I noticed a significant change in his drinking habits. He started to use work as an excuse to drink more and stay out late and would explain to me that he should be able to do whatever he wants because he gets up with the kids in the morning and keeps his job.

I have had a really hard time with the late night drinking and the lack of cleanliness and recently our conversations have turned to the lack of intimacy that has been created by my disinterest in having an intimate relationship with someone who is choosing to live a lifestyle of alcohol and mess. There have been several occasions where my husband has gotten angry with me about our lack of intimacy and blamed me for him wanting to drink. He has also lashed out with hurtful words and told me he is done with our marriage. He even went so far as to send me a spreadsheet of how he wants to divide everything up.

So my question is, how do I know when to keep loving him unconditionally and try to make this work to keep our family together and when to honor myself enough to walk away from these circumstances. I am afraid of choosing to break up our family because of the impact it would have on our small children and on myself financially. I am working part time and I value spending as much time as possible with my kids.

What are the models I can use to help me make such a difficult decision?