The line
A drink problem and a dangerous house are not the same situation.
Most advice written for partners of drinkers cannot tell the two apart, and gives guidance that is sensible if you are safe and dangerous if you are not. So this page comes before the rest of it.
This is the page this site exists to get right. Almost everything written for partners of drinkers treats the drinking as the whole problem, and gives advice — talk to him, hold a boundary, get him to a meeting — that is sensible if you are safe and dangerous if you are not.
So the line is drawn here first, before any of the rest of it.
Things that are not a drinking problem
If any of these are in your house, what you are dealing with has stopped being a question about alcohol. It does not matter whether he only does it when he has drunk. It does not matter whether he is sorry afterwards. It does not matter whether he means it.
- Being hit, pushed, held down, or having your way out of a room blocked
- Hands on your throat, or any pressure on your neck — this one is singled out because it is one of the strongest known warnings of serious harm later
- Threats to hurt you, the children, himself, a pet, or anybody else
- Being kept short of money, having your wages or your card controlled, having debt taken in your name
- Having your phone, your keys or your car taken, or being checked up on constantly
- Being stopped from sleeping
- Being told, repeatedly, that you are imagining it, that you are mad, or that nobody would believe you
- Being pressured into sex, or having sex you did not agree to, including while asleep
- Damage done to your things, or to the house, in a way that frightens you
- A child who is frightened, hurt, or being used to get at you
You do not have to be certain, you do not have to have proof, and you do not have to have decided anything. The services that deal with this are used to being contacted by people who are not sure, and they are used to being contacted by people who are going to stay. The routes are on the safety page.
Why the distinction is not academic
The standard advice to a partner is to be direct, to say what she needs, and to hold to it. In a safe house that advice is good. In a frightening one it is a description of how to provoke the person you are frightened of, delivered by somebody who will not be there at eleven o’clock.
That is why this site refuses to give you a script without knowing which house you are in, and why the guide on this site will stop working on the drinking and say so plainly if what you describe belongs on this page.
The harder, greyer half
Most of what people live with is not on that list. It is a man who gets maudlin, or cold, or unbearably boring, or absent while sitting in the room. It is the same argument at the same hour. It is money going somewhere. It is the holiday that was ruined and the family occasion that was survived. It is being tired in a way sleep does not fix.
That is not danger and it is not nothing, and you are allowed to find it intolerable without needing it to be worse than it is. You do not have to qualify to mind.
What this site will not do with this page
It will not tell you to leave, and it will not tell you to stay. It will not score your situation, rank it, or tell you how bad it is compared with other people’s. It will not ask you for details to establish severity, and it will not suggest couples counselling, mediation, or waiting until he is sober to raise it.
It publishes no telephone numbers, because numbers differ by country and change, and a wrong number is worse than none. The routes are named. The number is the one where you are.