Living With An Alcoholic Wife - Dealing With The Challenges

Living with an alcoholic wife can absorb your entire personal life. While you do as much as you are able to help your wife get through her alcohol addiction, you also need to remember that you have a life too.

To keep your sanity while living with an alcoholic, there is a decision you must make: Stop allowing your life to be entirely consumed with constant care for your alcoholic wife. It's a tough choice to make as feelings of responsibility
and guilt have a strong grip on you conscience. What makes it even harder is that you love her dearly, especially when she's sober. To begin breaking the destructive cycle while you're living with an alcoholic wife, the best thing you can do is to start taking care of yourself first. Find information, support and help for living with an alcoholic.

It is difficult to maintain but it is absolutely vital that you have solid patience when living with an alcoholic. Give yourself permission to put your own health first: mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. You need to do this so you can remain focused, positive and encouraging until your wife has once and for all gotten rid of her alcohol abuse addiction. Study the most effective ways you can help her so that you are best prepared and remain consistent in your support.

If you haven't done so yet, remove ALL the alcohol from your house. Don't even think of hiding it because living with an alcoholic is like having Sherlock Holmes around. You can bet your last penny that your wife will find it. You may even want to stay away from alcohol yourself and turn your house into an alcohol-free zone.

If you have been nagging at her to seek professional help, you'll need to stop doing it as continuing this way is ineffective. When living with an alcoholic wife one of your main goals must be to help her reach the point of no return where she definitely wants to change and improve her life.

If you keep fixing the problems which her alcohol abuse addiction has created, you must stop doing it. Stop picking up the pieces after her. Each time you shield your wife from the consequences of her alcohol abuse, it keeps her away from reaching the state of wanting to make a change. Make it clear that you love and support the woman you married, not the alcoholic.

Although living with an alcoholic is extremely hard, you can make it easier by finding out what else you're currently doing which is not helping. Reduce your frustration, resentment and stress by finding out what to do and what not to do while living with an alcoholic wife. Make sure that you are both eating well. Malnutrition can stimulate the alcoholism and you do not want that. Do not isolate yourself from the world. Make sure you continue to spend time with your friends and have personal life away from the alcoholic. Be kind to yourself and give yourself permission to have your own life and to be happy while you are living with an alcoholic.