It seems a safe bet to suggest most British marriages begin with a drink. Without the pop of a cork, or the unscrewing of a cap, few couples might make it past the first date, let alone to (or through) the sofa-bound child-rearing years. So, a week into Go Sober for October, some 66,000 brave “Soberheroes”, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support, are probably gaining a fresh perspective not just on their own drinking habits, but also those of their other half. A recent 10-year study of 2,700 couples by University of Michigan researchers found that those who drink together, stay together. As do those who don’t drink at all. It seems to be the synchronicity, rather than the Cotes du Rhone, that’s key.
Mismatched drinking habits, meanwhile, might suggest a marriage that’s on the rocks. When analysts at the University of Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) in New York followed 634 newlyweds through the first nine years of marriage, they found that nearly 50 per cent of those in which one partner drank more heavily than the other were divorced by the end of the study (compared with 30 per cent of those who drank the same amounts). Certainly, when Zoe Ball and her husband Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) announced last month that they were splitting after 18 years of marriage, most reports noted that, though they had both given up drinking in 2009, Ball had begun having “the odd one” again, while her husband, who had checked into rehab for alcohol abuse, is still teetotal.
Macmillan stresses the Sober October challenge is for “social drinkers” to change their habits for a month, rather than those who are alcohol-dependent. But that line is blurred for quite a few people. So can coming off the drink – especially if our partner doesn’t – put more strain on a relationship?
Alcohol is “very much part of the British culture”, says Sarah Turner, of the Harrogate Sanctuary, a CBT-based service for women concerned about their drinking. “Very often, relationships are formed around drinking: they have a couple of glasses of wine; inhibitions go.” So it stands to reason that the converse could be true.
Lucy Rocca, 40, founder of Soberistas, the online support group for people who want to give up alcohol, warns on her website: “Quitting drinking may result in you radically reassessing the people you want to share your life with.” She and her ex-husband both drank – but only Rocca had an alcohol issue. At the time, she says, neither would have attributed their difficulties to alcohol. But now, six years sober – and joint-author with Sarah Turner of The Sober Revolution – her attitude has changed. Turner agrees that difficulties can arise when partners drink for different reasons – when one can take it or leave it, while the other drinks “to self-medicate”. Sometimes, a partner’s remark – “Have you had a drink?” or “I think you’ve had too much” – prompts a row. “The drinking ramps up.” Or “they spend their evening not connecting. One will be on the laptop, the other on the bottle.”
Certainly, Louise Ash*, 51, from Exeter, knew her husband Martin, 54, had begun drinking too much because he was depressed about his mother’s death, but says it was impossible to discuss it as he refused to admit he had an issue. “He only believed it when he heard it from a doctor,” she says.
They both subsequently became teetotal. Ash says: “I didn’t drink much anyway, so it wasn’t hard for me to stop, too.” However, after five years of joint abstinence, Martin decided he could drink again, in moderation, as he was healthier, psychologically. “He’s no longer dependent, true,” Ash says. He says he’s drinking for different reasons. But I still think his default desire is to escape.
“Because I don’t drink, I feel that one should be enough for him. It’s crept up, and now, even if he only drinks a couple of nights a week, if it’s there, he’ll drink it. He’ll have three large G&Ts, or drink a whole bottle of red quite fast. There’s a point at which I feel I lose him to the alcohol.”It makes me tense and resentful. So I cut off. This summer, on holiday, he drank every day and consequently, we weren’t intimate at all. I didn’t feel close to him, or want to be. He becomes brasher, slightly less kind. It’s not his behaviour on the drink, per se. It’s to do with trust. It feels like a betrayal.” Raymond Dixon, lead addictions counsellor at the Nightingale Hospital in London, says: “One of the biggest hallmarks of any kind of excessive drinking is denial. There doesn’t have to be screaming rows and people vomiting all over the living room. Some people just retreat into themselves and don’t communicate. And they feel there isn’t a problem.”
He also says it’s a myth that depression always lies behind excessive drinking: “Addiction is not always born out of unhappiness or trauma. Sometimes it’s purely an inability to control alcohol.”
Dixon, himself, used to be an alcoholic. Now, he says, “I do not drink at all”, while his wife keeps wine in the fridge. “She has a glass in the evening. She’s never had a problem with alcohol.” He’s “absolutely fine” with it, but notes, from experience, “you have to reach that stage”. Antonia Wills*, 45, from Leeds, married to Lucas, 47, has been teetotal for nearly five months, with the help of the Harrogate Sanctuary. “Our habitual at-home drinking grew together,” she says. “When you have children you can’t go out, so you stay at home and open a bottle of wine. And I don’t honestly think my husband thought it was a problem. I don’t think he realised how much I was drinking.” In fact it was up to two bottles of wine a night, while Lucas drank a couple of beers. “I became quite depressed. When I told him: ‘I need to stop drinking,’ it was not only a big thing for me, it was big for us as a couple, for socialising, for holidays.”
At first, Lucas was supportive. His mistake, Wills says, was to assume she had recovered “after a couple of weeks”. “It gets on my nerves now, when he’s drunk,” says Antonia, “but I try to curb that, because it’s not very fair.” Overall, the changes have improved their relationship: “I’m much happier, more confident,” she says. “When I drank, I was paranoid, in chaos. I’m a lot more tranquil, and therefore so is our life at home.” So a difference in drinking habits within a couple can work – but perhaps only if both partners are confident that neither one has a problem.