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What Does Your Partner Think of You After You Have Quit Drinking?

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 3 comments

This video is in answer to an email I received where the person asked if my partner had given me any feedback on the changes that they have seen me.

Today I want to answer a question that was asked over on http://www.patreon.com and it was – “What does my Partner think about me and the changes that I have made in my life since I’ve stopped drinking alcohol?”

To put it bluntly, she said it’s like chalk and cheese. My partner met me before I quit quitting, when I was probably drinking at my heaviest. She was working at the place that I used to drink in. We were friends for quite a while before we started going out with each other.

I was a drinker for the first five years of our relationship and a non-drinker for the second five years. My partner has said that I am just a different person and she much prefers me as a non-drinker. Not because I was a violent person when I was drinking. I could get shirty. I could get angry and say a lot of things I didn’t mean, but I never got into fisticuffs. I got into a few fights when I was drunk, but that was more in my younger days.

Mr Partner thinks I am way more level headed, way more at peace with myself, since I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve regretted some of the things I’ve done in my life. The most regretful things have been done whilst I’ve been under the influence of alcohol.

When I say under the influence I’m not just talking about being drunk. Being under the influence also means when I was trying to get to drink alcohol and telling lies because I wanted to get out drinking. It includes doing stupid stuff when I was drinking, the consequences; the suffering the hangover the next day and the two days after that and there is a lot of stuff that is put off or is not done because of the alcohol.

I don’t get a lot of that now. There is still stuff that I want to do that I don’t get done, but that’s just a fact of life. You only get twenty-four hours in a day like everyone else and you can’t do everything. But this is because of a time deficit it’s not because of a deficit caused by habit, caused by something you are doing to yourself.

My relationships with everyone around me have changed. When I was a drinker I was a person who suffered fools very gladly. I would listen to almost anyone. Now I don’t do that. I choose the people that I am going to listen to very carefully. I don’t suffer fools gladly any more. I don’t listen to bullshit. I don’t like drama. I don’t like bitching.

I don’t like negative talk and as soon as I hear that type of stuff even when if it’s from members of my own family, it turns me around and backs me out the door. I don’t like that and I don’t like to mix with that kind of thing.

You’re stuck with your family and you have to be there and you have to listen a bit more than you would with other people, with so-called friends. I just don’t listen to it any more. If somebody’s giving me negativity all the time or drama, then they’re not my friend. I don’t do that.

Another aspect of this is that drinking affects so many different aspects of your life. It’s not just your relationships although your relationships can be and probably are the bedrock of most people’s lives. We do most of the things in our lives because of our relationships, whether it’s our partners, husbands and wife’s or children, friends.

That’s what motivates most of us to do things, even when we are going out and getting good jobs and doing the necessary things in life it all evolves and comes back round to our relationships so your relationships are altered by the things that you do in your outside life, whether that’s drinking or not drinking.

Once I stopped drinking, so much benefit comes back onto my relationships because I am a different person, because I am a person who has more respect for myself and you can’t have respect for other people if you don’t respect yourself. The old saying is “You have to love yourself first before you can love anyone else” and it is totally true.

If you disrespect yourself enough to pour a toxin into your body and I know most people don’t see it like that but that’s in effect what we’re doing. Most people don’t see it like that because they choose not to see it like that.

Anybody that wakes up with a bad hangover, where they just can’t do anything, knows and understands on any logical level, what they are doing is wrong, that this is a toxin that they are putting into their body but they sweep it under the carpet because they think this is the way the world and life works.

They think “This is the way relationships work and celebration works and socialising works and without this I am a lost person.” Bullshit!

With this you are losing yourself slowly but surely. Alcohol consumption in this way takes away so much from your life, not just your abilities to do things, your ability to think, your abilities to relate to people. It’s a selfish thing; any addiction is.

You are focusing more on the internal feelings that you have rather than how other people feel or how it is affecting other parts of your life and that in turn affects the other people in your life so, for me it’s a top down thing.

I started off this thing because of a specific relationship with my Son and it’s just had a knock-on effect with every other single relationship that I’ve had. I just wanted to treat my Son better. To treat myself better so that he looked at me in a different way and so he didn’t repeat the mistakes that I made.

I’m trying to teach that to him now. He understands now what it’s like to be a Father and to understand that you don’t want any harm to come to your child and that includes when you see your child put a cigarette into their mouth for the first time or putting a drink of alcohol into their mouth for the first time. Life just goes in cycles.

If you have any questions at all, leave a comment down below. If you want to sign up for our free Alcohol Mastery Starter pack which has a few different videos in it, just come on over to the website and put your name and email in the box and I will send it out to you straight away. There are courses with different perspectives to help you get started onto this journey, tips on quitting drinking alcohol and there is a course on how to relax and de-stress once you have quit alcohol – which is very important. There is also a course that basically tries to break down some of the bull shit that we’re accustomed to in our lives as drinkers so you can get that for free, no charge at all.

“Imagine who you want your Children to be …. and then be that.”

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

 

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3 Comments

  1. Dave

    Excellent…needed this reminder of the benefits of being straight. Gonna try it again…. thanks

    Reply
  2. Pandabonium

    Another very insightful video, Kevin. Thanks. I totally agree about being reprelled by “drama”. Another word might be stress. It can be a killer, both directly and indirectly (as when a person seeks relief from it through food, drugs, or alcohol). Home should be a refuge from stress or drama – a place to relax, be yourself, repair your psyche. No chemicals required.

    I laugh to myself when I hear someone talk about the trivails of a hangover. I woke up one morning and had a hemorrhagic stroke! Not fun at all – because of the part of the brain it affected, I could not stand, the room was spinning (as sometimes happens with a hangover), I felt nauseated and would throw up every few minutes. Lucky for me the long term effects were not serious, but it took a long time to recover and a lot of work and physical therapy. On the up side, it made it very easy for me to stay away from alcohol! So I would recommend that people who are worried about getting a hangover should perhaps worry about even worse possibilities. Don’t wait until it happens, or the doc tells you, “I’m sorry, but there is nothing we can do for your liver”….

    Onward and upwards!

    Reply
  3. P

    Hi. Thanks Kevin. I’ve found this blog really inspiring & helpful. I am just starting on my alcohol free journey, up to day 9. I am really concerned about how my marriage will survive while I’m trying to give up drinking as my husband still drinks a lot around me & continues on with life as when we used to drink together. I feel annoyed & intolerant already. He won’t give up. I know I can’t make him but do you have any suggestions how to live with a drinker day in day out while trying to quit. Thanks, p.

    Reply

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