7 Things You Should Know if Your Partner Still Drinks

Here are seven things to know if your partner still drinks while you’re trying to go sober.

A common concern from the coupled-up ladies at Thrivalist is how to maintain a healthy relationship with their partners who are still drinking. Some ladies are lucky enough to have unwavering support from their partners, but for others, the change in the drinking dynamic is more complicated. And we get it. Alcohol is often tightly interwoven in their story as a couple. It certainly was in my relationship.

The first time my husband and I kissed, we were shaking our tail feathers on the dance floor of a nightclub in Cape Town. I was drunk, had lost my friends, and left to find them before he could take my number. But he tracked me down and the weeks that followed were filled with alcohol-fuelled dates and cosy, boozy nights-in. From day one, we loved to drink together. Fast forward ten years plus a couple of kids, and a few drinks in the evening was ‘our time’. A way to hold on to the younger, more carefree versions of ourselves.

So when I pulled the plug on drinking and marched myself off to AA, I don’t think my poor husband knew what had hit him. Not drinking suddenly became this huge thing in my life, and it was a thing that he wasn’t a part of.