So I was dating her for about 4 years prior and truly feel like she was my soulmate. Part of the thing I loved about her is she didnt seem to have the same problems some of my previous girlfriends of the past have had with things like being the center if attention and too flirty with guys. She has appeared to have somewhat of an alcohol problem, as she has wrecked a car while drinking one night, she has treated me very poorly (hit me) when she has been drinking and just the week before drove home completely drunk

Well we have been married for 14 months now and getting ready to move across the country to start a new life together, everything was going perfect then she drives home drunk last week..ok we talk she understands she was wrong then this week gets wasted again but ends up sleeping with another guy she had seen the week previous while drinking.

She knows what she has done and of course feels awful and says she made these decisions from being drunk and realizes she has a drinking problem and this is not like her. I do beleive her somewhat, I know she is a little insecure and goes out of her way for people to like her but this guy took it wrong supposedly and it ended up with her making a bad decision while drunk

am I fool for not divorcing her and running away right now? I really do beleive she wouldn't do anything like this sober and have seen her drunk and knows how incapacitated she gets but I do love her and dont think she would put herself in this position again

I do feel she is my soulmate still and this is just a bad mistake..am I crazy?

I am very sorry for you. First your wife needs to get checked for STD's at once. More importantly I think you should seriously consider thinking of divorce. You have been married a little more than a year and your wife has sex with another man while drunk.

Your wife clearly has a major drinking problems. She treats you poorly when drinking. She has previously wrecked a car while drinking.

It is amazing that you are making all of these excuses for her. The previous week she was drinking with this OM. Why was drinking with this guy? She is recently married to you. She meets up with this guy again the following week (why is drinking with this guy?) and flirts with him and sleeps with him. You say this guy took the flirting wrong? and he sleeps with her because she is willing to do so. You say she is insecure? Stop making excuses.

I don't mean to be harsh but get your head out of the sand. Your wife has a severe drinking problem and lucky she did not kill herself in a previous car accident while drunk. She treats you like dirt while drinking. Two weeks in a row your WIFE is drinking with this other guy and admits to flirting with him and having sex with him (probably unprotected). She totally disrespects and humiliates you and your marriage. This is more than just making a bad decision. You are clearly delusional if you now don't think she would put herself in this position again. Why does she drink to getting drunk with other men and constantly flirt with them? I feel very sorry for you. The chances are great that this is just the beginning of hell for you. I am sorry but you clearly picked the wrong woman to marry. Save yourself and find someone else who is does not have a drinking problem and has boundaries and has no need to flirt and have sex with other men. You cannot save her. She is toxic to you.

IM, yes. You've M'd someone with an alcohol problem, and the results are basically what you should expect in such a case. My advice would be to walk away, rather than make this situation a permanent fixture of your life because, unless your WW makes some drastic changes, this likely going to be a repeating pattern of behaviour.

I know what you are saying and understand it, I know I am making excuses but am also trying to be realistic and not base all on emotion. My emotions say divorce but my mind says she has a problem.

I talked to her that night and she was not really in her normal state of mind she was wasted, so realistically yes she has a drinking problem and does bad things when drinking but if this infidelity is mainly due to her drinking and her drinking is fixed is it worth throwing away.

Its either the bar or your marriage. If she can stay out of a bar, and never get smashed again then your marriage might be fine. If she can't stay away, gets hammered each weekend, and who knows what she will do next weekend, then that will be the state of your marriage.

Id say it is up to you to decide, but if you decide to live with an alcoholic then you will have to live with your decision.

Are there kids involved?

I understand I will have to deal with the alcohol and it makes a greater chance it could happen again. I do with my heart (trust me I can be emotionless and also realistic) that this is due to her drinking...she doesnt drink all the time but sometimes it gets out of hand, her mom is also an alcoholic

No kids involved

Soul- unfortunately for your sitch, MB concepts won't work IF/UNTIL the alcohol is REMOVED. Even if it wasn't the "cause" of the A, it is a problem that impede the effectiveness of the MB Program.

Why would you WANT to save this M? You are in the "honeymoon" stage and you have no children together. This is a pattern that you will see repeated and then there may be children to hurt as well. Are you willing to do this for the next few years and then D anyways?

I would want to continue and save this marriage due to the fact I think people can make mistakes..grant it a huge one but seeing her drunk before knowing she is not the same person at all tells me it really could be a mistake

so if the alcohol is cured then the chances of this happening are very slim, I do feel she is in enough control and smart enough to fix the alcohol before it gets bad. We were together for 4 years without a hitch even with her drinking

I too believe that people make mistakes. WHat I was asking was, what kind of M did you have before? You were married for less than 1 year before she had an A.

How old are you? How old is WW?

Her adultery wasn't a "mistake", soulcrushed. It was a CHOICE, albeit one that was fueled by alcohol. Unless she makes some HUGE changes in her behaviour, your M is likely going to be characterized by many more of these "mistakes", as you call them.

Alcohol is not an excuse. All alcohol does is remove inhibitions, so the person does what they want to do anyways. She wanted to cheat, and she drank until she was able to do it and enjoy it. Simple as that. Dump her and find someone who won't want to cheat on you. Stay strong.

Even though she may not be an alcoholic, it is still a pretty big gamble. It could get worse if she is not making an active effort to control her drinking when she does go out. She sounds like a binge drinker. This can lead to binge affairs, binge DUI's, and binge DV. It may even turn into alcoholism. You love her, I understand, but all us anomynous armchair spectators can see that your marriage will not be complete unless the binge drinking goes.

I would strongly advise against staying in this marriage. You are only in this marriage for one year, and she's already cheating. At this pace, by your 25th anniversary (if you WW doesn't kill herself first), she will have cheated on you 25 times. It's not your job to "fix" her and her problems.

If you do choose to stay in this marriage, you should make AA and no drinking again ever a requirement. Even then, you need to have other rules on boundaries.

Why was your WW out at a bar without you drinking? Why did she meet up with the same guy two weeks in a row? These are the things you need to be asking yourself, instead of blaming it all on the booze.

I will add she was out with friends not specifically meeting this guy, he was just there both times since its mutual friends


Well let me ask this then

Do u think there is a small chance it could be due to her alcohol and a small chance she can recover from her alcohol problem?

Right now so far I do think there is a small chance and right now I am willing to take the small chance and see if it works out...is that wrong?

So now OM was a mutual friend of her friends. Guess what? This was not a one night stand. This was an example of her loose boundaries and lack of commitment to your marriage. Sure, being drunk maybe sped up the process of her cheating on you, but if she continued to go out with these "mutual friends" it was only a matter of time before OM got your WW's panties off.

Again, may I ask, why is your WW going out drinking w/ mutual friends without you? She has already shown she has a drinking problem. If she wants to stay married to you, she doesn't get any more of these "girls nights out" especially if other guys are hanging out as well. It's not just the booze. Blaming it on the booze is a copout.

I wont say our marriage is perfect although we were both generally happy but I can realize that there must have been soemthign wrong for this to even happen.

We trust each other allot, I was invited to come out that night repeatedly ..she kept calling and texting me to come and I didnt. I dont usually mind her going out with her friends or out drinking since she doesnt always get wasted generally she is fine just had a couple incidents over the past 4 years.

Right now she is reading books, she has booked appointments with counselors and very eager to find out what is wrong with her and what she can do to fix us

I know I may sound naive and dumb like I am believing everything she is saying..I just feel after the 4 years together I do know her pretty good and know about her moms drinking problems and just have some faith that this can be saved

I mean cheating is bad and there is no real good way of cheating but yet some people beat the odds and save their marriage so I am being optimistic

Yep, she's got a problem, alright. She's an alcoholic with no boundaries. The infidelity isn't due to the drinking - the drinking is an excuse for the infidelity. Don't let the tail wag the dog, here.

If you've got this problem this early in your M, you should consider walking. If you really want to stay, she's got to agree to stop drinking and get help for that issue. You both need to look at your boundaries, as well. What do you require of her? Obviously the drinking has to go. Obviously going to bars will no longer be an option. Read the articles on this site.

I would agree with you that IF the infidelity and poor treatment is due to drinking and IF the drinking gets fixed then the marriage might be worth saving.

This site and the Marriage Builders program can give you the tools to make a marriage wonderful. But the tools do not work when addiction is present. You will probably find you have to draw some lines and make some demands about having the addiction treated effectively.

Why don't you look through what the Marriage Builders founder, Dr. Willard Harley, says about a marriage with alcohol abuse:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5048a_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5048b_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5048c_qa.html

I would find it hard to beleive no matter how happy a couple is that the man or women never look at another person and say wow I am attracted to them and wouldn't mind having sex with them

so yes the infidelity is a decision and a choice and a bad one at that..no drunk drivers want to wreck a car or kill someone but they do due to putting themselves in a situation that would allow them to. So yea Im thinking our marital issues may have helped her make the decision when drunk but it doesnt mean it wasn't a mistake and that being sober she would not have made the same mistake

soulcrushed.

You said Alcoholism is NOT a mistake, it is an affliction/disease/addiction. It MUST be addressed or your marriage has no chance. It seems to me unless she will enter rehab and really work on this addiction you should in fact divorce her NOW. However, is she is willing to do this and actually work on her addiction, then I would advise you to consider reconcilliation once she has addressed her addiciton.

Binge drinking is just as much a sign of alcoholism as hhaving a few everyday and not being able to avoid a few.

Address the main problem first, the alcoholism. It will tell what to do about the rest of it, depending on what she does with this.

Oh! in case you are interested alcoholism does run in the family and may indicate an hereditary prediliction toward this situation due to body chemical processes. Some people can handle it and some cannot, and this is apart from the emotional dependence on alcohol.

Think about it, do some research and address her addiction first.

God Bless,

JL