Well if you are scared of losing access to your kids your best bet is not to sit on your ass but go ahead and see a lawyer and get some kind of temporary custody order in place and bring up your fears with the lawyer about the dual citizenship thing, don’t wait for your wife to make the first move. Since you’re married she could take the kids to say another state or something right now, you can’t kidnap your own kids, but maybe she doesn’t have a lot of financial resources to go anywhere from your description.
The drinking is a safety issue at the very least. If you’re the only one home with the kids and someone needs medical attention in the middle of the night, you’ve got to be sober.
You mentioned in another thread that your wife doesn’t like your drinking, but she also didn’t like you abstaining on date night. Do you think that the divorce talk is brought on by your efforts to change? If she’s that controlling, she may feel threatened by you trying to change.
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The effect of your drinking isn’t confined to the act of drinking, or to your general status while under the influence. It spreads through your body and mind and changes everything; your eating, sleeping, sex drive, mental stability, relationships with other people and every other aspect of your life. Stop saying that you drink only after the children have gone to bed, because this doesn’t mean anything, and doesn’t mean they aren’t impacted by your drinking. I understand how pissed off you are that you came here to write about your issues with your wife and no sooner had you done that than everyone has picked up the tether of your self-confessed alcoholism and started to address the problem from that perspective, but that’s the problem with alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse: it’s quite difficult for anyone to exonerate you or accept your account of the inter-family dynamic when your judgement is questionable (I won’t say impaired, but at least questionable). The reason for this is that alcohol isn’t a peripheral injury that you can contain and know the extent and damage of; it’s like a virus that invisibly spreads everywhere, and eventually ends up commandeering your body.
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Your wife’s anger is as serious an issue as your alcoholism, in terms of how the children are impacted by it. You must sober up for enough time to know exactly where you are and exactly how substantiated or unsubstantiated your wife’s behavior is. This isn’t a luxurious psychological problem that you can reckon with while staring at the bottle, thinking about yourself or the kids. This is a an issue that needs to be addressed immediately, because if your wife’s anger is as bad as you say it is, then that’s a problem your children need protection from. I don’t even understand how you can’t grasp the urgency of the situation when your wife is a foreign national with a home country she can disappear into. I’m not a fortune teller, but I can very easily imagine an adverse scenario in which you’ll wake up after one of your drunken stupors (quite innocently or otherwise; it won’t matter who’s at fault then), and you’ll find neither the wife nor the children.
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You are now in what I consider to be an ideal situation: things aren’t yet fucked beyond repair. Things are bad, and you know they are, but they’re still in the phase before the final act which will determine the lives of your wife, children and yourself, forever. There are things that can be done, but they need to be done immediately, and they start with you taking a leap of courage and not putting yourself in front of the drink tonight. Just for one night and see how things go. Don’t take this lightly, because if you do, then you’ve got only yourself to blame.
Wake up and be there for your children.
HMS Irruncible Two things. A house where their parents hate each other and create a toxic environment is no place for kids to be. If you love them as much as you say you do, you owe it to them to grow up seeing their parents happy in their lives, and civll with each other, even if you have separate homes.
Two, you need to get your drinking under control. We had close friends who split over his drinking. He thought it was hidden, only at night, no impact on the kid. Last December his 6 year old daughter finally started to notice, and comment about it to her mother. He died in bed the next week, liver finally gave up. His mother found him. Had he died 1 night earlier, it would have been his daughter. Stop drinking.
You are an excuse making, sorry for yourself drunk and you apparently have zero understanding of how insanely frustrated and angry that makes people who have to deal with you on a day to day basis. “But it’s my life and I only do it during these hours etc.”. She may be an evil, grasping bitch but compared to dealing with a drunk she is a saint. You are the shit ball in this vignette not her.
Drunks are often oblivious about why they dial up people’s anger into the red zone. I loved my mother, but she was a drunk and my fury at having to deal with that part of her eclipsed my ability to deal with her rationally and lovingly for a very long time. Dealing with it as the oldest kid on site poisoned my world view as a child.
If I were your wife and had two kids with an alcoholic I can see why she would want to burn you alive. All you’re doing with your drinking is rolling a round on the floor feeling sorry for yourself. Who the fuck wants a piece of that? If you don’t step away from the bottle you’re going to lose your marriage, and more than likely your family before too long. How can a wife have any respect for man who’s a drunk?
You need to get your ass into a program ASAP before you make any more stupid drunk man decisions and rationales.
You may confine your drinking to after the kids are in bed, but the inevitable hang over and crappy next day is apparent. You can still be someone your kids look up to. Give it a try!
Or alternatively, if he keeps going as he is, he can be used as a bad example for others.
Oh dear.
Nope. You’re a guy. Sorry, but we guys really draw the short straw in family matters.
Better a clean break now than later.
Your wife will bring this up against you in court. Get yourself sober.
Start recording this. Make a log.
You need to speak to the police about that NOW to mark them as flight risks.
The very best of luck to you. And start getting yourself sober.
Having driven this road twice before I am sorry to read this. If you have any love at all for your wife first try counseling and work hard at it. Even successful marriages take a lot of work.
If that fails then you need a lawyer and prepare for a very rough time. Divorce brings out the very worst in people with few exceptions.
The good news is that you will get through it (like everyone else) and life gets better when it’s over. You aren’t the first and won’t be the last.
The other advice here is good and you should follow it. My advice is get a lawyer and follow their advice. They are the professionals. This is not something you want to screw up.
You are going to get the short end of the stick if you are an alcoholic. Chemical abuse is not looked at positively by the courts when it comes to parenting.
I’ve been following your threads on your alcohol problems, and if the drunken incomprehensible posting is the sort of thing your wife has been putting up for for years, no wonder she is getting a divorce and taking the kids. You seem to have reached the point of alcoholism where your irrational thinking is permeating your life.
You love your kids, but won’t give up the bottle for three days. At this point you are making a choice of the bottle over them. If that isn’t the choice you intend to make, you should be taking every step you can to change your choice - not your lame assed “I went to one AA meeting a didn’t like it.”
I have the best wishes for you in wishing you success on getting your alcoholism under control. But your children should not be collateral damage while you work on that.
I really think the crucial question you should ask yourself is if you really could safely supervise your kids alone with your current habits. Are you capable of saving them if there is a tornado or a fire in the middle of the night? What if they wake up throwing up-can you hold their heads and change their sheets? Can you diagnose a fever and accurately give medicine, can you determine if it’s an emergency that needs an ER visit?
It’s not irrational predudice towards alcoholics they will cost you the kids. Its the rational observation that a stumbling drunk isn’t a safe supervisor.
And while they grow out of the huge need, the need to be there for them will exist until they leave the nest. We have teenagers. We’ve been called for rides in the middle of the night when there isn’t a sober driver. We’ve had to be aware of our situation to make sure they get homework done, get enough sleep and put the cell phone away at a reasonable time. And I’m pretty sure my seventeen year old son could sleep through a middle of the night tornado siren.
This is true. You think she is mean now? :dubious:
Would you keep your job if it came out that you were an alcoholic?
On the plus side, you’ll find you’re entering an exclusive club whose membership consists of a bunch of men who “own their faults,” but who complain constantly about how terribly the world has it out for them.
No you don’t, since you keep blaming her for it. You can’t solve a problem you don’t own.
This is exactly what I came in to say. It’s the OP’s wife’s fault he drinks? Bullshit.
But whatever. I was a kid in a family where my parents really disliked each other. It was terrible. Breaking up such a dysfunctional family is a plus for your kids IMO.
We could answer that if we were to meet both people. 
Christ no, they might turn ME into an alcoholic!
This. No one makes anyone drink. She might stress you out, fine, but there’s constructive and destructive ways to relieve that stress; drinking is a destructive way. Regardless of the eventual outcome of your marriage, dealing with your addiction is the first step. That is, even if you do stay together, it will, at a minimum, improve your ability to interact with your kids and deal with your wife, and if you get divorced, it will help make you a more fit parent, either as potentially the primary custodial parent or at least when you spend time with them.
As for the marriage itself, I haven’t been following your threads and, even if I had, I can’t really make a great judgment on whether it’s reparable or not. Have you discussed with her seeking counseling or some other steps to deal with the issues? If it’s done, or whenever you decide that’s the case, don’t drag your feet. Get a lawyer ASAP as he’ll be able to give you advice on how to deal with things so when things do go to court, you’re in the best position possible to end up in the best situation and, more importantly, make sure the kids are in the safest and best environment for them.
And, again, own your alcoholism and get help now, everything only gets more difficult if and until you do.