ALCOHOLIC WIVES

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are several hypotheses that explain the choice of a spouse with an alcohol addiction.

“The hypothesis of a disturbed personality”, according to this hypothesis, a woman - the future wife of an alcoholic, is an inadequate, dependent person who is looking for in marriage the possibility of realizing needs that she is not aware of.

“The dominant personality hypothesis”, according to this hypothesis, “spouses of alcoholics” are characterized by a tendency to leadership, a subconscious desire to fix deficiencies and defects in the spouse in order to maintain a dominant position in the family.

The “decompensation hypothesis”, according to this hypothesis, assumes that when an alcoholic spouse tries to stop drinking alcohol, the spouse experiences personal decompensation, and therefore subconsciously sabotages the spouse's desire to start a sober life. Let me give you an example. A woman (K.) from childhood occupied leading positions in children's groups due to the fact that she studied well, participated in various events, and won prizes at the Olympiads. At the same time, the woman, starting from elementary school, suffered from excess fat, which she was always ashamed of in the depths of herself, the girl compensated for the unpleasant experiences with good grades, the ability to be the first, the respect of teachers and classmates. K's spouse is a quiet alcoholic who does everything that his knowledgeable and active spouse tells him. The only thing that did not work for K. was to overcome the ailment of his spouse. After K.'s husband attempted a suicide, K. fell into depression, on the advice of the doctor's brother, she turned to a psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressants to K. and recommended that she see a psychologist. All this time, K.'s husband, pulled out of the noose, was drinking and drinking things from the house, which had never happened before. Working with a psychologist, K. realized that she was satisfied with such a spouse, that she herself provoked the breakdowns of her husband, who sometimes tried to get out of addiction. The biggest nightmare for K. was to lose her husband, who, as K.'s unconscious dictated, "would definitely leave her if he stopped drinking."

The choice of a spouse with alcohol dependence may be dictated by the stereotypes of marital behavior formed in a woman. Polls of women whose husbands suffer from alcoholism show that, despite alcohol dependence, the women’s father remained a significant person for them, which was an indirect reason for choosing a spouse on the basis of “paternalism”. (V. D. Mendelevich)

Many women note the presence of a strong similarity in character traits, behavior, life priorities between a father and a husband, the main similarity of which lies in the alcoholic form of the implementation of addiction.

In other cases, the wives of alcoholics were distinguished by their tolerance to the use of alcohol by their spouses, since they saw only such examples around them. Let me give you an example. Father N. is a hard-working, intelligent, respected person throughout his life had a weakness for alcohol, while he never abused, did not drink up his salary, he was never fired from his job for drunkenness, his family never suffered serious damage because of his love for alcohol. Father N. can be called a "household drunkard", therefore, when N. met her future spouse, she was more guided by the fact that he had "golden hands" (N.'s father was also a jack of all trades) than she saw that the man is a big drinker. After marriage, N.'s spouse quickly became alcoholic, arranged drunken fights, set fire to the house, took out valuable things from the house, was rarely employed and brought money to the family. N. said that for a long time she could not realize that the form of her husband's alcohol consumption was sharply different from the form of her father's drinking.

The choice of a spouse with alcoholic hobbies can be carried out in accordance with similar character traits. In the process of studying alcoholic families, frequent similarities in character were revealed in both spouses: inconsistency and instability, irresponsibility and self-indulgence, poor predictability of actions, dishonesty, poor control of their emotions, lack of deep interests. (V. D. Mendelevich)

So, A. from early childhood loved to torture animals, was a great skill in choosing the perfect mat, with which she accompanied all her actions (raising children, asking her husband, cleaning the house, performing professional duties, etc.), was distinguished by great laziness, lack of any interests, gluttony, envy. The spouse is a violent alcoholic, beat A., kicked him out of the house, showed extreme ingenuity in cruelty; at the same time, the man suffered from an obvious inferiority complex - with other people he was quiet, shy, envied the "wealth" of a neighbor with a purchased electric saw, did not dare to enter the yard for a long time, and eventually got home by "roundabout ways").