What to Do if You're Worried Going Alcohol-Free Will Create a Rift In Your Marriage

What happens if you and your partner drink together? What if it's something that's always been ingrained into your relationship? Are you scared your husband or partner doesn't want you to change? What if it creates a rift in your marriage?

This is a common fear. If you're partnered up, it's very likely that you and your partner share similar drinking habits. Maybe you get sushi together and have some sake. Maybe you go to the brewery together, maybe you have game nights with alcohol, maybe you split bottles of wine on the porch.

My husband and I met when I was 23 years old. I literally just finished up grad school. I was still in college mode. Basically, I had no responsibility yet. When we met, I partied really hard. He was a little older than me, and we just drank A LOT together at first.

But I grew up. I got a job. We got married, and we bought a house. We didn’t drink at the bar at 2 a.m. anymore. But we definitely still drank together. We brought beers when we went to the pool. We drank at friends’ barbecues. I remember being really scared of what would happen if I wanted to stop drinking and he didn’t. These days, I have so many different strategies to help you nip this fear in the bud.

BE INDEPENDENT

You might want to change and your partner might not, and that needs to be okay. In the beginning, we may think that we can't stop drinking unless our partner does it too. Imagine if you wanted to run a marathon. Imagine if you wanted to go back to school and get a graduate degree. Imagine if you wanted to do anything for yourself—start a new hobby or a new passion. Obviously, it would be nice if your partner joins you for some of those things, but it’s not a requirement. Do you need your partner to run a marathon with you? Does your partner have to go back to graduate school with you? Of course not. We need to be strong and independent to make changes.

Allow your partner to be on their own journey. People need autonomy to change. Often, people are so much more influenced by our actions than our words. Your partner may have no desire to go alcohol-free at first. But you have no idea what will happen if you continue this journey. One year or two years later, they might get a lot more interested in it.

What happens if your partner isn't interested in changing? Is that okay with you? Can you be okay if they choose to drink? I'll be honest with you, my partner drinks. Over time, he began to drink a lot less. Now, he rarely drinks alcohol. He supports my business 100%. He totally gets it. He has no misconceptions about alcohol anymore. He's not protecting it. He sees alcohol for what it is. Oftentimes, he will take a break. When he drinks, he'll wake up the day after and say that it wasn't worth it. But I don't need him to be 100% alcohol-free. It doesn't matter to me.

That's the first thing to keep in mind. If you change your relationship with alcohol, it doesn't mean that your partner needs to stop drinking for you to be happy. They don’t have to share that with you. They share something much bigger and stronger with you.

LEAVE BREADCRUMBS

The way I teach embracing an alcohol-free life is by taking a break. Experiment with it and allow yourself to fall in love with the alcohol-free lifestyle first, then decide what you want to do long-term. You don't have to decide what you’re going to do forever. The same applies to telling your partner. You don’t have to say, That’s it. I quit. I'm never going to drink with you again. That can be a lot to swallow.

I recommend the strategy of leaving bread crumbs. The idea is that you don't have to make a big proclamation about how much you're changing. That can scare them a little bit. Instead, hint at the changes that you're making. What do I mean by that?

If you're taking a break from alcohol, start there. Be open about it. Say something like, I'm going to take a break from alcohol. I'm not feeling too great. I really want to feel better. That shouldn't be that threatening. Then, as you're taking your break, you can start sharing things like, Wow. I wake up feeling so much better. I'm waking up with so much more energy. Basically, what you're doing is you're giving them these little breadcrumbs about how much happier and healthier you feel when you're taking a break from alcohol.

Keep leaving breadcrumbs so that, when you go longer and longer stretches of time without drinking, you can build on that. Maybe you can say something like, You know what? I don't think I'm going to go back to drinking. And it will be easier for them to process because they got all these breadcrumbs from you. They’ll realize this journey is making you happy. Ultimately, out of the deepest love from the deepest part of our hearts, we want our partner to be happy, right? That's one strategy you can use to get them on board—to really get them to understand why this is important for you without it being a big shock.

SPEND QUALITY TIME TOGETHER

Here’s another strategy. My husband and I ran a half marathon together. We trained together on date nights, and we really enjoyed it. After this race, my husband continued to really, really incorporate running into his life, and I didn't. Sometimes, my husband wakes up early to run. Sometimes, I even find myself annoyed, thinking, You can't eat dinner right now because you have to go on a run? Now, do I wish my husband wasn’t a runner? Do I want my husband to give up a hobby that brings him joy? Do I want my husband to stop being healthy and fit and working out and lowering his risk of diseases?

Of course not. I feel uncomfortable because now I'm the one who's left behind. Now I'm the one who can't run as fast. Now I can't keep up. Maybe that sounds like a silly example because it's such a nonconsequential thing in our lives, but you can see how this can play out in so many different ways. Our partners fear that we will outgrow them. That we'll leave them behind.

How do you combat this fear? Spend quality time together.

I bet you there's something your husband or partner wants to try. Maybe it's something like sailing. Maybe it's hiking. Maybe it's mountain biking, running, or even playing board games. By choosing not to drink—by choosing to be clear-headed and have more energy—you might actually be the impetus to get you guys both into that.

When it comes to growing closer when you go alcohol-free, there are infinite possibilities. You are not serving your partner's ego anymore, you are serving their soul. What do I mean? All of us have what's called a higher self. A higher self is literally our connection to our soul—our connection to the wisest and most loving version of us. Then, there are parts of us that are driven by our ego. They’re driven by appearances or selfishness. They’re just these smaller parts of our personality that maybe aren't as admirable. Let's call it our lower self to make it super simple.

Think about how you can serve your partner's higher self. Their higher self wants to have a connected relationship with you where you guys try new things. Maybe traveling and trying new things on the weekends is something that you will really incorporate into your relationship. Honestly, it's not about your partner changing their relationship with alcohol. It's about how you guys can come together at the end of the day and continue to build a solid relationship together.

BECOME A BETTER PARTNER

There is this part of this one book I really love. It's a completely different example showing what it means to serve someone's higher self versus their lower self, but I think different examples help us think a little differently.

Here is what Duane Packer and Sanaya Roman write in Creating Money: Attracting Abundance.

True love is serving people's souls, not their personalities. For instance, one man did not want his wife to get a job, although she felt it would bring her much joy and aliveness. He thought he made enough money to support the family and he wanted her to stay home and take care of the house and the family's needs. She was pulled between staying home and going back to work, because she had always felt compelled to take care of others. She began to look at the situation through the eyes of her soul, and she saw that she was not serving her husband's soul; she was serving only his personality, his smaller self, not his greater self.
She knew that by going to work, by growing, becoming happy, and increasing her aliveness, she would be much more powerful, and that her power would empower him as well, even if he didn't believe it at the time. She knew that at the soul level, the greatest gift she could give him was to be all that she could be for it could free him to be all that he could be as well. She realized that anytime you hold another person back, you are also holding yourself back, and by trying to hold her back, her husband was at some level holding himself back. So she got a job.
He was not happy with her decision, objected loudly, and gave her many reasons why it would not work. He made it difficult for her to go to work, complaining frequently and not helping her in any way. She kept reminding herself that she was serving his soul, and if one of them broke through to a new level of personal power and higher purpose, it would help the other one do so also. She still had moments of feeling that she was being selfish by going to work, but the inner joy of learning made her feel so alive that she knew she couldn't sacrifice that aliveness and still love herself or him.
Eventually, they were able to use some of her income to pay off their debts, and even take a long-postponed and much-needed vacation. He stopped complaining about her working and even began to like the changes in their lives. He was able to spend some money on a hobby he wanted to pursue and his sense of aliveness began increasing. A few years later, he decided to quit his job which he had not liked for a long time and got into business for himself. Although it was a risk and meant less income in the beginning, they were able to take the risk because her salary, combined with a loan, was enough to launch his new career. Her willingness to pursue her path eventually made it possible for her husband to pursue his life's work. Her commitment to her aliveness brought them both more aliveness.

Now, I think that's a powerful example. Because in this example, someone literally doesn't want the other person to change. And yet, the woman can tell that by holding someone else back, you're really holding yourself back.

For me, going alcohol-free has literally created a ripple effect and positively changed so many relationships and people in my life. But it's not just helping other people change their relationship with alcohol. By me going alcohol-free, I've become more alive. I've become closer with my partner because we share more of our interests, stories, and our lives together. I launched a business, quit my job, and wrote a book. All these things have influenced the people around me. All of these things have propelled them to make changes, too. You becoming more alive is literally how you empower other people. It’s how you inspire other people. You can't play small for the comfort level of someone else.

There was a point when my business was kind of making money but not enough money to sustain a living. I was trying to decide, Is it time for me to quit my job yet or not? I really wanted to work full-time at my business. I remember talking to some girlfriends about it. I remember saying to them, deep down, I'm scared of quitting my job and having it ruin my marriage. I was scared that I would quit my job, my business wouldn’t make enough money, I would deplete my savings, and my husband and I would fight about it. I was afraid that I would ultimately break up our marriage. That was my deepest fear.

I remember telling that to a friend and she said, “You know what else could break up a marriage? Resentment. Resentment that you stayed stuck in a career that wasn't fulfilling your soul to make your husband’s lower self happy just for a moment in time. Resentment that you felt that you gave up your dreams because you wanted to play it safe for your marriage.”

So, ultimately, I want to leave you with this one thing: have faith. Have faith that becoming more alive, more empowered, and more connected to your true feelings will actually make you a better partner. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether your partner chooses to follow you or not. That’s not the point. The point is that you believe that, no matter what, there is room for you to share and grow. To make this partnership better than ever.

As long as you are changing your relationship with alcohol, they won't be a trigger for you because you're going to remove your desires from a subconscious level. If you still feel tempted when your partner drinks, that’s a sign that you haven't really looked at your beliefs on alcohol yet and you haven't worked through them fully. Now, that's a problem that you can solve, right? That's something I love to help women overcome. My programs literally focus on that. It's not this thing that will bother you forever if you commit to working on it.

I had so much fun diving into this topic. It's near and dear to my heart because I really, really have so much faith in the power of love. We don't get married to someone because of what they drink. We get married to them because we love them for who they are. And I want you to remember that your partner loves you for who you are—not for what's in your glass—and take time with it. There may be an adjustment period. Have Grace. Have compassion. Allow it to settle.

Don't jump to conclusions that this will tear your marriage apart. Allow yourself to have faith that this could actually bring you closer together. This could inspire your partner to make big changes. Maybe it's not about alcohol, but maybe it's about getting healthier. Maybe it's about launching a business. They see you more alive and empowered than ever, and that gives them that same spirit. Two years later, they may literally be telling you, this is the best thing you’ve ever done. Because it's changed both of your lives for the better. My husband can definitely say that about us. We are going to live in Europe this summer. None of that would have been possible when I was drinking—if I didn't take a break from alcohol five years ago. You have no idea what might happen. Take the leap. Have faith.

Ready to get confident in your alcohol-free identity and value your growth by working together? Book a call here.